“With Macworld Expo just over a week away, many expect Apple CEO Steve Jobs to announce further details (and the availability) of the company’s yet to be released set-top-box, codenamed iTV,” Steve O’Hear blogs for ZDNet.
O’Hear writes, “Powered by something similar to Apple’s Front Row media center software, the iTV is designed to get the media content that’s housed on a Mac (music, movies, and photos), streamed to the living room television. However, with its built-in wireless networking (suspected to be the faster 802.11n), why not bypass the Mac and have the iTV connect directly to the internet?”
MacDailyNews Note: Steve Jobs explicitly stated that ‘iTV’ works with both Macs and PCs.
“Anybody who has used Front Row to watch movie trailers streamed directly from Apple’s website, will have wondered why they can’t access other internet-based content in a similar way. For starters, think Flickr for photos, and of course YouTube for video,” O’Hear writes.
O’Hear writes, “The combination of iTunes and DRM-free MP3s provided the ‘killer app’ for the iPod, and YouTube could well do the same for Apple’s soon-to-be released set-top box.”
Full article here.
Steve Jobs gives sneak peek of Apple’s “iTV” wireless set-top box:
The possibilities for the iTV are endless, but in the traditional Apple way it will initially have the single purpose of streaming video and music to your TV set via iTunes. Content will either be bought iTunes content or a DVD in your mac. PC’s may be included since iTunes works on both platforms.
That doesn’t mean to say that someone will work out how to play ripped DVD content or video streamed from an internet site. Apple may even add some of that functionality as long as it is legal and doesn’t piss off Hollywood.
The big thing for me is good HD resolution. Obviously H264 can compress HDTV content well and that or a future version may be able to get good quality video in a GB per hour.
HDTV content is pretty sparse today. Sure we have Buu-ray etc and cable does HDTV content too. But the amount of content available is lame. I’m still waiting for common channels like SciFi, Nat Geo etc to go HD. They clearly have HD content but the cable company still only transmits in SDTV. That’s increasingly irritating me since I pay extra for the HD cable box.
Okay, that’s just nuts. Why would Apple want such crappy quality video? Not to mmention so much of it being violations of copyright.
There is ZERO chance this is going to happen as this obviously dope-smoking pundit is bloviating about.
Dog Gone, if Apple intends to initially release iTv without being able to bypass the computer then they will be selling to a very limited consumer demographic.. 802.11n is needed to stream movies, and only Macs and Pcs sold in the last 6 months or so do this..
HDTV content is pretty sparse today. Sure we have Buu-ray etc and cable does HDTV content too. But the amount of content available is lame. I’m still waiting for common channels like SciFi, Nat Geo etc to go HD. They clearly have HD content but the cable company still only transmits in SDTV. That’s increasingly irritating me since I pay extra for the HD cable box.
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HD content is increasing all the time, not to mention that nearly all prime-time broadcasts from the major networks are now available in HD.
Say, say, say, say!
Does this mean I can watch Hard Gay videos on my television?
Convergence, Huuuuu!
I can’t even get my Express to talk to my Wii – much less a set top box probably…
So I’m now a “dope-smoking pundit”!
As the writer of the original post, I was using YouTube as an example of where an API open to third parties might take the iTV or Front Row. The developer community will make the iTV so much more valuable.