Cutting the cable

[Grieve]

You get the smug satisfaction of giving your money to a douchebag in a turtleneck for something that should cost nothing.

Hell, the new TV we got for our bedroom has streaming and hulu and everything built in anyway.

You don't think that was factored into the cost of the TV?

Can the new one do the ridiculously simple task of streaming a divx file off a pc without having to hack it yet? That was a bit of the flaw in the "make things easier" portion of the old one.

You're missing the point. Regular folks don't have divx files to stream off their PC. The geeky folks who do buy the geek boxes or use their game console or whatever. Or they just convert it from divx to mp4, which is ridiculously simple in of itself.

I remember before it was released someone saying that it would be easier to use this to stream Non Steve Jobs Explicitly Approved Forms of Media (sold by apple, natch) - but hadn't heard since anyone bought one..

MP4 is an international standard, not sure what your point is. That's like complaining that iPhones don't support Flash (a proprietary standard), only HTML5 (a, yes, international standard).

If so for 99 bucks would be an okay device for someone who doesn't have a game system or a new tv and just wants to stream.

Or that wants to rent movies or TV shows.

I haven't used my Xbox360 to stream, since I can't comment on how straightforward it is or isn't to use for streaming or Netflix, but I'm guessing it's far less straightforward than Apple TV. Again...this thing, like the iPad, like the iPhone, is aimed at regular, non-techie people.

And I very much doubt that all new TVs (or even a majority of them) have streaming built in. Of course, the US is generally behind Europe on this stuff anyway...