I have noted earlier the dubious value of Apple TV in Australia given that iTunes Music Store in Australia does not sell television or movies as it does in the US (and costs US$50 more to boot). That has made promotion difficult to say the least.
This week, www.apple.com.au announced that Apple TV was now shipping. The web page as different from the US one as you can see here. (The US one is on the bottom).
Notice that the US version has TV programs as well as photos whereas the Australian one (top) only has photos.
But if you scroll down the page (Australia, top and US, bottom)
Both pages are the same but for price. The Australian one clearly shows movies and 24. Oops.
You might think that that is a slight mix-up. However, click buy and you get this:
It pretty clearly shows movies (not just trailers). And just below this, it says:
At the bottom of the page it has a disclaimer that The Incredibles, Cars and National Treasure are “available on iTunes in selected countries.” But that is far from saying it isn’t available in Australia. And there is no reference to TV shows in the disclaimer. How hard would that have been to say and be upfront about?
[Update: Engadget writes about this issue].
Core Economics 
Apple sucks in America, but it sucks just that much more in Australia.
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I was approached by an American on a ferry in Greece a few years ago. When he asked where I was from I said “Australia”. His reply was then (very slowly) “Well – you speak very good E-N-G-L-I-S-H”. My reply “Thank you, we are taught it at school”.
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They are causing us internation customers, to get our media from other sources… If they sold it, I would buy it. But for now they don’t.
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More to the point, where is the “Rip A DVD” functionality? I doubt anyone would have bought an iPod if they couldn’t rip their CDs.
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Wow! Australian Apple customers being screwed while still vying for the title of the 51st US state with the UK. My other personal Apple favorite was the release of the video iPod with the world’s most anemic video download options on iTunes of Pixar shorts, music videos, and…no, that’s it, just those two.
Maybe Apple and Sony should join forces to ensure that while their products will be available to Australia at exorbitantly high prices, they will be unusable for anything more than looking at pretty pictures.
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See – I live in the UK and I have a UK iTunes account and agree that it sucks that I can’t download movie and TV shows from the iTMS currently. But as I use my Mac mini as a HTPC – I’ve been busy ripping my DVD library (only about 100 movies so far) then importing them into iTunes. I use MediaFork and can do about 4 on my MBP in the time it takes my Mac mini to do one. I’m doing it in preparation for Leopart which will have Front Row included, so no more hacking it on and then it breaking when Apple release a software update. I’m also going to get a Key Span Express remote so I can control it from afar. I so far have 62 movies in my library (the screenshots were taken a few days back and I’ve done 14 more movies since then.
Full screen cover flow is amazing.
I don’t see the point of getting an Apple TV even if I had a ‘big flat screen TV’ Steve kept harping on about.
pac
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well, you think that apple did it wrong in Australia an UK, but trust me, take a look at other apple store across the world! Here in Belgium the only thing we can download are Pixar short movies (trhee of them…), we don’t have any music video to download, we can’t even download same songs which are already avaible in UK, and we also have to pay 0,99€ per song (1,316$)… actually i’m Macfan but i know a few better ways how to use 299€ insted of buy an appletv (that only have 70 Gigas and can’t even read .avi files…) hope they’ll do better with their phone!
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It’s the same way here in Canada. We can downoad music videos, and pixar shorts. Apple tv is a great idea though, but until we can buy movies and tv shows, it will be sitting on the shelf for a long time here. For the price is not justifiable to spernd on for only pixar shorts, which I have on my kid’s movies and music videos, which I have grown out of. Hopefully it will change soon.
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