After a several year hiatus, Apple once again brings supplemental movie content to Apple TV in the form of iTunes Extras. It’s the sort of DVD and Blu-ray goodies you’d expect in cut scenes, featurettes, and the like. Whereas initial Apple TV models sported hard drives, over the last few years this downloadable content was only available to desktop iTunes clients given Apple TV’s small form factor. But the new implementation is cloud-based (and high def) – so content can now be streamed down to aTV, you’re not eating up local storage, in the case of computers, and studios are able to update their offerings. Come this fall, Extras will also be streamed to iOS 8 devices.
While I ebayed my Apple TV, in favor of Amazon’s Fire and assuming an upcoming hardware refresh, our pal Tim loves his… and buys lots of movies from Apple (and the UltraViolet consortium). He shot the brief video above to demo iTunes Extra and show some funky launch bugs, in relation to previously purchased content (which, fortunately, cleared overnight without intervention).
View Comments
Isn't the (very surprising to me) report that Roku outsold Apple TV 2 to 1 in the US last year worth a post?
Heartening to me that hype and marketing doesn't always win the race...
@Chucky
Except AppleTV hardware hasn't been refreshed in years and I can't think of anytime they've marketed or hyped it.
I'm not surprised its not selling so well because its so limited in function. Now look at the resale value of the previous version of the AppleTV which can be jailbroken.
Chucky, I'm generally reluctant to cite third party reports who release that information merely to promote those reports. I've reached out to both Google and Roku to confirm or otherwise shed light the numbers. IF they provide anything interesting, I'll riff on it. Having said that, Chromecast and Roku can be had for much less money than Apple TV and is sold in far more locations - so greater sales wouldn't surprise me. Raulr2 brings up a good point on resale... and why I unloaded my Apple TV for just about what I had paid (whereas my last Roku I wanted to retired ended up in my mom's condo).