Apple Movie Junkie

On those long, cold winter nights in New Zealand, there is nothing more satisfying than being able to curl up in front of the TV and watch a rented movie…Renting, as opposed to buying, means you can secretly watch that B-grade schlock you’ve been wanting to watch for ages, without ever having your friends discover the aforementioned movie sitting on your shelf (What’s this? Kevin Costner in Waterworld? Oh the shame!)

Now online movie rentals, that’s another thing entirely. It’s one of the selling points of the Apple TV. It should be a seamless, empowering experience.. freeing you up from having to venture out into the dark, cold night; weave through the suicidal traffic and converse in grunting noises with some spotty-faced video store clerk. You can also browse the movie catalogue at your leisure, view trailers as you go and there’s always a copy to rent…Bliss.

However; renting movies from the iTunes store in New Zealand just leaves me feeling ripped off… No, it’s not Apple’s pricing. NZD$4.99 for a rental is OK (I can get a new release with a coupon for NZD$4.00 from a video store). The problem lies with the NZ ISP’s.

Take, for instance, my service provider. I get a pretty good speed (10Mb/s) from my cable connection.. and all for the princely sum of NZD$79.95. Sounds pretty reasonable… except I have a data cap of 20Gb/month.

Let’s explore this theme. If I were to rent, the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King from the iTunes store it would cost me $4.99. But LOTR is a 2.17Gb download (for the SD version!) That’s almost 11 per cent of my monthly download allowance, or $8.67. Add that to my rental cost and we have a rental that is going to cost me NZD$13.66. But, to add insult to injury, I have chewed through 3 days worth of data in a day… that is likely to leave me short at the end of the month.

My ISP charges me an additional $2.95 per Gb over my allowance… that extra 2.17Gb means my bill will increase by 3 Units or NZD$8.85..

As I said in the headline… What’s the point?

One of the advantages of living in New Zealand is that we are a full day ahead of the USA. So, tomorrow for me is the day after tomorrow for the USA. That means tomorrow is the 28th and I will be taking delivery of my shiny new copy of Snow Leopard…

This version of OSX should solve one of my biggest bugbears with the Apple TV… in order to access all of my media (far greater than 160Gb) I need to leave my synchronised computer switched on. According to the Apple blurb, with Snow Leopard and a compatible AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule base station, my iMac can go to sleep yet continue to share its files with my Apple TV, waking when I need it and sleeping when I don’t.

That’s got to be a good thing.. for my iMac, my power bill and the environment. I’ll let you know how it goes…

Ever wondered what it would be like to live outside of the Apple friendly ecosystem that is the USA? Well, living in New Zealand at the end of one very small, narrow internet pipe; I know.. My name is Darren Dumble and I live in Christchurch, New Zealand. I am a technical instructor and writer and am the newest member of the expanded ATVJ contribution team.

I love my Apple TV. I have owned one since the 160Gb model was introduced; and have rejoiced as every update made it better and better. However; as much as I love the functionality, the elegance, the simplicity; every update seemed to highlight the inadequacies with the NZ media/ISP infrastructure.

My contributions will be about living with an Apple TV in New Zealand. I will write about how we, the Apple TV Junkies of New Zealand, make the most of our lot.. I will also post about any changes to the NZ iTunes Music Store and maybe even review some NZ specific content.

So, put yourself in my shoes and imagine hideously expensive internet, data-capped downloads and next-to-no video content available for (legitimate) download… This is a world without Hulu, TV.com, SYFI or Netflix. A world where HDTV has only just begun to take off , digital radio is just a dream, TIVO has been hobbled and the majority of TV content is ruled by one satellite pay TV provider…

Enjoy; and don’t pity us too much.