So Apple announced the iTV later to become the Apple TV in September 2006. It went on sale (in the US) during February 2007. Now they’ve just released a new update for the software called Apple TV Take 2 and reduced the price. So where does this get us and why am I even bothering to talk about it. Well back in 2006 I’d a conversation with a friend about Myth TV a linux based opensource TV/PVR tool with some additional features. It’s fairly neat however he was having trouble getting it to run on his old hardware that he planned to stick under his TV. In the end this perhaps isn’t surprising as video is traditionally quite demanding for a computer. Our conversation moved on to the, yet to be released, Apple TV.
In my mind the Apple TV was always going to happen. I’d similar conversations before it was even announced with friends about the Airport Express and whether Apple would do a video version. It was clear to me at the time that 802.11g wouldn’t have the bandwidth to stream video and thus we’d have to wait for 802.11n to appear. Even then I wasn’t sure if n would hack it in real life. The need for a video version of the express was essentially driven by their release of TV shows and later movies to the iTunes store. Of course what way Apple would do it, was another matter.
The original Apple TV was a slight let down in my mind. At the time there was no TV or movie content on the iTunes store in the UK, there’s still no movies and little TV content. Thus it’s still not a lot of use in the UK. I also felt that they should have added the following (assuming that it was to run OS X, which we now know is the case).
- Full 1080p HD resolution
- An API set so that people like Elagto can do eye TV (mac TV PVR) on it, TV PVR would be nice.
- Dashboard widgets.. it would be nice to have your dashboard replicated on your TV. Lots of people probably don’t use it but you can pull handy info like weather and stock data etc to it..
- RSS feeds, the Squeezebox does this and it’s handy. OS X (Tiger) does this in it’s screen saver in a nicely rendered fashion.. should be little to no effort and would be cool.
- iChat AV, usb port, sort out the iSight. Plug into Apple TV and add an icon option for audio or video only for iChat. Seriously video chat in the living room would be very nice and shouldn’t be hard to implement. All those children with parents who aren’t very computer savvy would love it.
- Movie rentals would be the most useful feature. Save people having to go out to the rental shop or wait to see what the online rental store has sent them to watch. Clearly bandwidth is an issue.
At the time I pointed out that the problem with some of the above is in order to make it full proof you’d want to tell it to just copy settings from you Mac which locks out functionality for Windows users making them feel like second rate citizens. So the question is has Apple done much with Take 2 to add to my requested feature list. Lets deal with each in turn.
Well there’s now 1080p but this is provided by upscaling so there’s no real gain here unless your TV has a particularly cheap upscaler in it. But it’s a welcome addition I guess. Fundamentally the Apple TV will need new hardware to support 1080p natively. Will this happen? Well eventually yes but if your going to deliver content over the web then there’s currently a trade off between quality and size of file. Until the mass of people’s broadband connections are 24 Mb or above we’re probably not going to see a step to 1080p and much larger files with less compression. To be honest the convenance of being able to decide to watch a movie, browsing one and then watching it there and then outweighs issues of quality for me.
Apple appears to be completely resisting the idea of either opening up the Apple TV or doing PVR functions on the Apple TV. Now I guess if you plan to make money from selling TV shows and movies you don’t want people recording stuff from free to air digital broadcasts. However in most countries there is no content on iTunes (or next to no content). I wouldn’t mind having an Apple TV to provide access to my music, photos etc. in the living room but I’m not going to buy a handful of TV programs that are largely American in the UK. No I want BBC iPlayer available and C4 maybe even iTV. Interestingly the Beeb have talked about this recently. Either way allowing someone like Elgato do PVR for the Apple TV would allow me to ditch my Freeview PVR and have one better device. We also still need content on the iTunes store in the UK.
Dashboard widgets and RSS feeds are still a no-no. Though Apple has filed for a patent suggesting that it may be considering such a move. It also includes the inclusion of iChat features. Honestly my mum would love to be able to talk to my brother via his flatscreen telly in the living room while her 2 year old grandson plays around in the foreground. When you’re a flight away, an way of seeing your grandchild is much sought after.
So what have we got, well movie rentals are here (if your in the US) which is great. We’ve also got You Tube which Apple appears to be in love with, flickr and .Mac web galleries. Good additions but there’s still not the content or feature set to convince me to go out and buy one. Maybe one day.