Apple + TiVo = Mac Media Capsule?

19 years ago

“When Apple’s Steve Jobs announced his iTV strategy last fall, for many of us it sounded pretty weak. You have to pay $300 to buy a device that then downloads movies that you still have to pay for and then to top it all off you only get ‘near DVD quality?’ While I understand why the Apple fans would like the product, it’s hard for me to imagine it having a more widespread appeal without DVR functionality or a Nintendo attached,” Davis Freeberg writes for Seeking Alpha.

MacDailyNews Note: Freeberg makes too great a leap: nobody knows the full capabilities of Apple’s ‘iTV’ and to confer capabilities onto ‘iTV’ based a sneak peek or on iTunes current video offerings – which can change at any time, and have changed in the past – is foolishness.

Undeterred, Freeberg continues, “At the time, there were a lot of questions raised about why Apple still hasn’t launched their own PVR product and a lot of debate over whether or not the iTV would end up being a DVR after all, but in typically Jobs style he gave out enough information to get everybody all lathered up, but not enough to give out any real details. Over the years, I’ve never understood why Apple hasn’t introduced their own PVR. It seems like it would be a natural compliment to their business and would fit in nicely with their media strategy.”

Freeberg writes, “As it turns out though, PRVBlog is reporting a pretty wild rumor that Apple is in fact planning on launching a PVR at Macworld and the kicker will be that they have licenced TiVo’s techology into their new iTV box. Interestingly enough, his tipster also says that they will be changing the name of the product to the Mac Media Capsule, which sounds a little screwy to me, but then again I never really cared for the name Wii, so I’m probably the wrong one to ask when it comes to branding.”

Full article here.

PVRblog reports, “I’m going to disclaim this upfront as a wild rumor that just landed in my inbox… Again, this is a crazy rumor with nothing to back it up and I’d be really surprised if any Apple device recorded TV, much less running the TiVo OS on it, but damn, if this is true, I would love to own such a device. I do have to say the entire iTV concept as previously described is a little thin. People won’t pay a couple hundred bucks just to have a device that plays iTunes Store purchases on their TV — it has to do other stuff, but will it be TiVo recording TV for you?”

Full article here.
Sounds pretty specious to us.

In related news, Ars Technica is reporting today that the TiVoToGo DRM has been cracked and the resulting utility, “TiVo File Decoder,” also runs on Mac OS X.