Hi All,

i actually wrote to Apple about this topic the day after Apple TV was released here. I have pasted the reply from their customer service.


Dear Mr. XXXXX ,

please accept my apologies for my late reply, the iTunes Store is dealing with a large volume of enquiries at the moment.

If I understand correctly, you would like to purchase English language Films from the Swiss iTunes Store.

My Name is Spiridoula, I would like to help, but can do very little at the moment.

Right now the only step I can recommend, is to suggest you request English language films via the following page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html

Whilst I will forward your request to the colleagues in charge, I would still like to ask you, to send your request via the link mentioned above, too, as this will add weight to the request.

Considering the sheer amount of Swiss customers who seem to demand films be also offered in English, I would assume these should be available sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, I myself am not able to say when or if English language content will be available in the Swiss iTunes Store.

I apologize for not being able to help in a better way

Sie werden unter Umständen eine E-Mail mit einem Fragebogen zu AppleCare erhalten, in dem Sie meine Leistung bewerten können.

Bitte beachten Sie, dass diese Fragen sich ausschließlich auf den von mir gebotenen Support beziehen.

Wenn Sie Kommentare und Vorschläge zur Verbesserung von Apples Produkten und/ oder Leistungen einreichen möchten, ist dies nur über eine der folgenden Webseiten möglich:.

http://www.apple.com/de/contact/feedback.html auf Deutsch

http://www.apple.com/contact/feedback.html auf Englisch

Apple freut sich über alle Ihre Kommentare und Vorschläge.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Spiridoula XXXXXX
iTunes Support Customer Care
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/ww/

If leaving feedback as above, note that the feedback page links to the global itunes request page, so make sure you mention the "Swiss itunes store".

Playing 1080p movies on a device that supports max. 720p doesn't make much sense. Furthermore, it doesn't support any of the popular movie formats, such as MKV.

I believe you are right. On the other hand...

Apple's excuse is that the average home would not be able to support live streaming of such heavy 1080p content, and unless you are watching a huge TV from very close, you should not notice the difference anyway. Let's face it, a lot of people spent too much money buying full HD TV sets and not getting the benefit of it anyway. (Although, these days, the price difference is marginal).

I have a different excuse - I have a rather high end TV. Feeding it 1080p content from any device that is made by a computer company and not from an established AV firm doesn't make sense. If I wanted to watch 1080p, I use my Blu-Ray player. HD TV shows are 1080i. From this point of view, I prefer to get my signal in 720p and let my superior TV upscaling capability do its job and bring it up to 1080i.

As for mkv files... well, I have never come across it.

Matroska

Just a normal case of Apple ignoring common formats.
Is my Apple hatred showing again?

It's only encountered in downloads from torrents or rapidshare, currently.
AFAIK.
Or can you actually buy (licensed) media that contains mkv files?

Problem with torrents is the upload. The advantage is that searching is relatively easy, and downloads can be very very quick.

I did newsgroups for a while - advantage is that downloads are very very quick too, there are no uploads, and you can even keep it reasonably secrtet what you are downloading (easynews for example used to allow you - using their web interface - to password zip files). The disadvantge is the time to find, sort and manage the downloads, although I believe there are a few tools now that automate this.

Currently I use torrents when I am looking for something. However, if I get a nasty letter one day, then back to usenet...

You'd now have a lot more reason to buy an Apple TV2, as XBMC has officially been ported (as well as for the iPad and iPhone 4).

fair enough - but you still have to jailbreak it, which I'm sure many will find that a daunting task / can't be bothered to do it...

I have the same issue. Any English-speaker with an Apple device in CH that has tried the Swiss iTunes store knows that the selection of movies in English is really really poor.

German, French and Italino... great... English... forget it!!!!

Switzerland has a huge English-speaking community (both native and expat).

If we all drop Apple them a message using their feedback form letting them know what we want... it might just happen!

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

I created an open Facebook group to spread the message too.

http://www.facebook.com/groups/296669350380030/

nobody seems to know why Apple isn't offering the same number of English-speaking movies in Switzerland they have in all other countries.

Anyway - we've recently moved away from Apple for this reason and are now renting out movies from Acetrax - they have a gigantic selection of English content and cost less as well :-/

thanks for the info... will look it up... would still prefer to use the Apple TV and have a better deal from Apple... they're probably having lot's of fights with local regulators and vested interests... that's the world we live in :-)

It's the content-owners that fight this.
Have you ever wondered why it takes months for a blockbuster or tv-series to appear in Europe?
There is no technical reason that prohibits the global distribution of copies of a new movie simultaneously.
Hollywood likes the status quo.
The movies "need" dubbing - if they would release undubbed versions long before the dubbed version, people would eventually settle for the undubbed version in the first place - making dubbing less- and less profitable.
Same is probably true for DVDs and all the other links in the commercialization-chain.

But I don't care - I can download all the stuff via bit-torrent as soon as it's aired in the US. The internet took care of the distribution problem a long time ago.