Singers' view on the world

The idea behind the Apple TV is really great but it’s missing some core features that would make me buy it. Just like the “22 things Apple should implement in the iPhone OS” post I’ve been keeping this list with features which I would like to see in the Apple TV. Apple branded the Apple TV as being the thing that your HDTV needs to display HD television shows and HD movies. It’s able to stream your iTunes purchased HD movies from an iTunes library on the same network as the Apple TV, it all sounds great but it could be good.

• Use the USB port on the back for iPod/iPhone/iPad/External harddrive: A lot of people have asked for this feature and I’ll try to just summarize what it’s about. So lets say you have an iPod/iPhone/iPad that you would like to connect to your HDTV to show your family some photos, videos or just play some music; well then you could buy the Universal Dock and play it on the TV but what the Universal Dock is lacking is the Apple TV’s interface. Image you plug your iPod/iPhone/iPad into the Apple TV with the standard 30-pin connector and you would then be able to access it as a library on the Apple TV and all of this is controlled by the Apple Remote. You would be able to show your photos from you iPod/iPhone/iPad through the HDMI cable on your 42″ HDTV. Some of this is partly possible with the ATV flash.
• DVR capabilities: People want this because they think it would replace their TiVo or whatever DVR they have right now but it really isn’t that simple. There is a lot of reasons why Apple wouldn’t implement a DVR features to the Apple TV:
  1. It would cannibalize the whole iTunes Store and why would Apple want to work against their own store. Apple doesn’t want you to be tied down to your cable-provider but would rather that you bought a season-pass on iTunes and you could then watch the episodes whenever you wanted to.
  2. Apple is really trying to push for more streaming media and a DVR wouldn’t make sense in that optic.
  Just for a moment imagine that the Apple TV could actually record a TV stream from the decoder it got then you would be able to stream you recorded contents back your main Mac.
• Ability to stream a DVD from another device on the network: I do realize that it would require a pretty stable and fast internal network connection. Well if Apple doesn’t want to add a DVD/Blu-Ray drive to the Apple TV then atleast make it possible to stream it like you do when you “Remote Install OS X” on a MacBook Air. I can’t believe this isn’t an iTunes feature yet it doesn’t seem to be that extensive.
• Ability to play files and formats outside of iTunes: If the Apple TV could stream whatever media file from you Mac to your HDTV people wouldn’t have to convert their .mkv(yeah I’m looking at you pirates, aarrgh) files just to playback on their TV. Right now it’s just easier for people to go plug their laptop into their TV and play their contents from that. This should be possible with the ATV flash.
• Play HD material over 720p: Really? Come on Apple? You can do better than that, we do write 2010 right now and that means 1080p movies and the people want it. We’ll soon be talking 3D TV(oh god no) and you should at least have 1080p playback at that time.
• Apple TV applications: Apps are the new craze and everything out there needs to have these so called apps. Car radios, eBook Readers,  Squeezebox and the list goes on. Why not give the Apple TV a little App Store of its own, you could have YouTube.app, Hulu.app, Netflix.app and so on – it would be kind of like Boxee.

As it is right now Apple sees the Apple TV as somekind of little niche hobby project that they can just leave and let people hack them. I think there is a lot of possibilities in the Apple TV and it could be such a great little delivery device. Apple might even go make a whole new product like a dedicated mediacenter computer, not like the Apple TV nor the Mac Mini. But who knows? I think they are focusing a lot more on the iPhone/iPad OS right now.

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