AppTV

28 Apr AppTV

Is there a more ripe platform for Apple to develop than the AppleTV?

I am constantly on the lookout for PVR applications, hardware, etc. Apparently I am never satisfied.  My current setup is pretty good, but for some reason I just feel like I am missing something.

Right now, I have an HP laptop recoding OTA high-def TV, of which I don’t receive very many channels so it’s not that great of a solution.  But I can get Family Guy re-runs and the occasional odd show on it and it works quite well.

Meanwhile, I have another PC setup to record standard-def TV from the cable connection.  No high-def here, but that’s okay.  I’m more into portability anyway, and high-def stuff won’t play on my iPhone.

Both of the above PCs are running Snapstream’s BeyondTV which will re-encode videos into MP4 and allow them to be subscribed to via RSS, podcast-style.  So I have a Mac Mini that holds my collection and that I use for syncing my iPhone (and iPod), which also serves content to my AppleTV.  It also subscribes to the PCs to get their content.

No, I’m not Apple’s bitch.  I am Google’s bitch, however… but that’s a topic for another time.

I know that I could bring all of this together into the Mac Mini itself, and I would dearly love to do that.  But it would require a bunch of upgrades, that I am not sure I have the time these days to do.  It would need a new hard drive, although a FireWire external drive seems to be faster.  So, figure a good $130-150 for a 1TB FireWire drive.  Currently, it’s running off a smaller FireWire drive (the internal drive seems to be a bit buggy, and has failed on me twice) and I have all of the video content on a 500GB USB drive.  I then have a 1TB USB drive for Time Machine.  Sure would be nice to move all of that to either internal or FireWire.  So, figure another $130-150 for a second 1TB FireWire drive.  We’re up to $260-300 now.

The Mac Mini could also use a Super Drive.  I originally bought the Mac Mini as my gateway Mac, to see what all the fuss was about, so I didn’t get the most expensive model.  Well, it only has a CD burner, and the Super Drive would be great for archiving off the stuff that’s gotten old (since iTunes won’t allow me to re-download stuff I’ve purchased).  One can be had for about $90 (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/mac-mini/superdrive/).

I upgraded the memory to 1GB, but it seems, according to Chris Breen (http://www.macworld.com/article/140216/2009/04/mwvodcast105.html?lsrc=rss_main), that 4GB is the sweet spot.  Okay, so now I really need to get 4GB of memory, which can be had at Amazon for around $64 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B001KUL012/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance).

I’m floating around half a kilo-dollar now and haven’t even looked into which model of ElGato EyeTV I need, which is anywhere from $100 to $250 or more (http://www.elgato.com/).

So as I look at this expensive project, that doesn’t have an assured outcome, I start thinking, “what can I do with what I’ve got?”  Which is what led to the 2 PCs pulling in video.  I have an Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 lying around, so I thought about hooking it up to the HP lappy, which is much more powerful than the standalone PC that’s recording the SDTV, and having multiple inputs, which BeyondTV should handle nicely.  I could even abandon the OTA high-def input in favor of another SD cable input and have multiple tuners recording at the same time… you know, in case 2 shows are on simultaneously that I absolutely cannot miss.  And it will resolve the conflicts automagically.

But I am also wondering if BeyondTV is the way to go.  The HP lappy has Vista Ultimate on it, so it has Media Center, which works like a champ.  However, I went to BeyondTV because of the ease of getting stuff into iTunes via the RSS-podcast thingy.  So in the meantime, I have also been looking around for other avenues of PVR-hood.

Which brings me to the AppleTV.  Apple has been calling this a hobby product for some time now, but I think they’re poised to make it a truly wonderful product, should they choose to do so.  Many of the PVR software suites out there allow plugins, which seem to be their strength.  It’s great to be able to get Hulu or the like right on the living room TV.  Or weather.  Sports scores.  Whatever.

But with Apple’s success with apps for the iPhone, they could release an SDK for the AppleTV, ($229-329 at http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/apple_tv?mco=MTE3MzI) and let nature take its course.

Think of the possibilities.  Apple is probably afraid that they would lose iTunes revenue, but come on, how many people have AppleTVs anyway?  They’re surely not buying that much iTunes content today.  And if they’re like me, they avoid (up to downright refuse) to get content from iTunes because of the DRM (and before you tell me about how iTunes is DRM-free now, stop.  Videos are still DRM’ed to the hilt).  And the sale of additional AppleTVs should more than make up for the loss in iTunes revenue.  After all, $229 is like 15 movie purchases.  And to be sure, more AppleTVs out in the wild will definitely bring more iTunes purchases overall, even if the per-AppleTV purchases drop.

In any case, apps could be had to show weather, Hulu, games, whatever.  And the AppleTV has a USB port, so setting up a situation where the AppleTV records content like a TiVo does would surely be a boon!

So there it is.  The almost-perfect solution… the AppleTV… but only if it had apps.

What do you all think?  Weigh in in the comments below.