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On Wednesday, the Internets had its collective loins all a-quiver over the announcement of a new AppleTV box. Lacking any internal storage, the device is now streaming-only—the iTunes store won’t even be offering movies for sale anymore, just for rental.

At Ars Technica, John Siracusa analyzes this offering and finds it lacking:

As with any new electronic gadget, I must be of two minds about the new Apple TV. The first, most difficult question is, will the new Apple TV be a successful product for Apple? The second question is easier: is this a product I want to buy for myself?

For any consumer electronics product, the degree to which those two questions have the same answer is dictated by—for lack of a better term—one’s geekiness. Mine is substantial. I have not wanted any of the Apple TV products (including the one released yesterday), and thus far, none of them have had much success in the market either. But does that mean that an Apple TV designed to my specifications would be a hit? The easy answer is, probably not.

But pondering the prospects of a cheaper, smaller, streaming-only, renting-only, iOS-based Apple TV device in the rumor-filled weeks leading up to its announcement yesterday has changed my mind. In this particular case, I think my desires are actually very well aligned with the mass market—and continue to be at odds with the products Apple has decided to create.

Siracusa goes on at some length on the topic, but I really don’t think it’s all that complicated to figure out why even Apple is struggling with home video. While it pains me to admit it, Steve Jobs is right—this market is a hobby.

Cable and satellite television, along with the content they provide, pretty much define ubiquitous. The small percentage of people who opt out of the standard delivery methods have already found solutions—home theater/media center PC’s, hacked/augmented game consoles, and Roku/Slingbox-type stuff—that fit their needs. For the rest of the video-consuming population, though, there is no clear benefit to counterbalance having yet another box to plug into their television.

Wretched as cable companies’ set-top boxes may be, they provide viewers with guaranteed and predictable access to their shows. Even the best alternatives come encumbered by delays and restrictions, and none of them provide a full range of programming. I love my XBMC setup, but I’m a hobbyist who doesn’t care about watching a show at the time it originally airs and would be perfectly happy to see a live broadcast of a sporting event.

To really achieve success in this market on the same scale that they have in the music and phone realms, Apple would need to have a box that fully replaces the set-top cable box. Short of that, I don’t see how the added complexity of yet another piece of gear in the entertainment center would appeal to the general public.

Besides, even if they stuck a CableCard in their device, worked out agreements with all of the various streaming services, and came up with the world’s greatest UI, they would still be dependent upon the pipe provided by the cable company. What possible reason could Time Warner and Comcast have to encourage or even tolerate that sort of attack on their cash cow of bundled cable packages and up-sells like pay-per-view and on-demand movies?