Ordinary Gweilo

Some people get very excited about announcements from Apple.  I don’t. 

The truth is that I am not going to rush out and buy any of these fine gadgets, and anyway Hong Kong doesn’t appear to feature in Apple’s plans (we still don’t have the iTunes store or the iPhone) – so although the new version of Apple TV seems like a step in the right direction, it isn’t all that much use in Hong Kong because we can’t rent (or purchase) films though the device.

However, it may be quite a significant development.  It seems to me that rather than a battle between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, what we are really seeing is a 3-way battle – the different flavours of DVD vs. illegal downloads vs. legal downloads.  For the last of the three. the concept of Apple TV seems exactly right – thousands of movies and TV shows that can be downloaded to a small box to watch on TV, and no horrible computer.   

Meanwhile, there are plenty of bits of hardware coming along that make it very simple to play Divx videos on your TV.  The movie companies must surely realize that if they don’t offer legal downloads in a convenient form (whether through Apple TV or something else) people will find alternatives.  Hence their decision to work with Apple, at least in the US.

Given that it’ll be a long time before iTunes Store comes to Hong Kong, why don’t PCCW do something similar using their Now TV service?  They have technology, but currently all they offer is a pathetically limited selection of "on-demand" movies from HBO, most of which are old or rubbish (or both).