The one disadvantage the Apple TV has compared to cable (and maybe satellite) is that Apple does not own nor control the pipe.

You not only have to pay for the rental, you have to consumer your cable/dsl/whatever bandwidth to download it.

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence that Time Warner started talking about pay-per-bandwidth the same week Apple TV Take 2 was announced, but I can easily see the pipes trying to throttle Apple by adding usage fees on the bandwidth, while leaving their own competing services with free access.

(I’m in Canada, with a 20GB cable limit per month, no such thing as over-the-air or clear qam HD, no cable card, and large ISPs reportedly down-throttling things like Skype to try and “encourage” their own VoIP services already, so I’m not hopeful that HD downloads via Apple TV would be practical based on file size alone — though some independent DSL resellers are still unlimited)

Apple TV Promises to Take 2008 — RoughlyDrafted Magazine

While 2007 was the Year of the iPhone, 2008 appears to be set as the Year of Apple TV. After languishing for a year with weak sales, derisive media scoffing, and an official designation as a “hobby” for Apple, the product’s newly unveiled software upgrade has already kick started sales, even prior to the new “take two” software being released.As one Apple Store employee observed a day after Macworld ended, “Apple TV is crackin. We went from selling one a week to one or two an hour.”

January 21, 2008 - Apple, HD -