Why Apple TV is a dud

Brent Schlender explains Why Apple TV is a dud:

• Apple TV's most highly touted feature is its weakest one: It requires an HDTV, but the video you download is so low-res that it looks as fuzzy as plain old broadcast TV.


• Apple TV's coolest feature is one that wasn't even intended: the screensaver, which plays an ethereal slide show of your digital photos.


• There's no way to order a movie directly from the iTunes store via your TV, even though Apple TV has its own connection to the Internet. Instead, you have to download it to your computer first.


• Apple TV lets you show photos only from a single computer, even though photos are the one source of HD content everyone has, and are easy and legal to share over a network. That is especially odd, because Apple TV does allow you to share digital music from multiple PCs.

As he notes, "You get the feeling that Apple didn't create this thing because it was insanely great but in order to freeze competitors out of downloadable video."