This piece of news came out a week or so ago but we missed it because we were all on a beach near the Indian Ocean watching these delightful sunsets every evening.
Anyway, after we’ve been banging on about a wireless Apple-Tivo device, they finally showcase it. It’s a box the size of a Mac Mini that pugs into your flatscreen TV. Your computer can stream video (and we guess music) content to it. There’s also a hard-drive, so we imagine that it might act like a Tivo device too, downloading programming off the TV network.
We promise you. This is going to be huge.
Expect it out in 2007. Gizmodo has a whole category on it.
Related PSFK Articles
The Apple Tivo (Nov 05)
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Oh Snap! First comment. Anyway I love Apple products (I spend about 10-12 hs a day on aMac), but this has to be the most disappointing product Apple has shown in a long time.
1. The hard drive is for storing movies and TV shows off iTunes, it does NOT have a connection that allows you to “Tivo” programs (this would after all counter the purpose of the iTunes TV store).
2. Apple only has distribution deals with Disney, which owns Miramax and Touchstone. Other studios are hesitant to make deals with Apple as they receive higher profit margins from Big-box retailers.
3. Due to bandwidth and storage issues movies are limited to 640×480 pixels. These must be scaled up to watch on TVs bigger than these dimensions, causing a drop in quality. Plus no HD, no Dolby digital.
4. This does nothing my current cable provider doesn’t do. For the cost of my cable I can stream new releases and record or “Tivo” TV programs-all at broadband speeds. I don’t pay per show and it would take me forever to download a movie or TV program over my crappy DSL (thanks SBC).
If only 17% of iPod owners buy music from iTunes and only 5% of the music on the average iPod is from iTunes-then how can iTV do better?
sources: http://www.slate.com/id/2149572 , http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/06/AR2006090601972.html , http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/09/20/itvdominate/index.php
September 20th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
thanks. very informative. but I still think the wireless computer – tv connection is very interesting none the less.
September 20th, 2006 at 11:03 pm