Apple’s iTV – The pieces come togehter

For those who weren’t following along, Apple had another one of their special events yesterday. And as expected, this Apple love-in brought us another string of new product and service announcements.

iPods got a little love, Nano’s are officially 2nd generation (and look a lot like the old iPod Mini), and the Shuffle is now “impossibly small” (am I the only one who thinks it’s the Shuffle that should be called the Nano?). Curiously, we didn’t see the “real” iPod video that’s been tearing up the rumor sites for months now, but I expect it’ll make an appearance at some point… it’s just a matter of time. And what about the iPhone?

iTunes got a lotta’ love with the release of version 7. I’m still on the fence regarding the UI - Apple loves to change shit for the change sake. Why did they change the scrollbars and buttons? Is this what get to expect in OSX 10.5? Anyway, there’s some fluff and some substance, but it’s looking good nonetheless. Of particular interest however, were the changes made to the iTunes Music Store. Officially re-branded, the iTunes Store is now selling the full spectrum of media. Music, TV shows, games (iPod only) and now movies. And with a move completely out of character, they “pre-announced” a new piece of hardware that will tie the whole package together (as an aside, how does someone actually go about pre-announcing something… aren’t you making an announcement when you pre-announce something?).

iTV (tentative codename at this point) is a small device that plugs into your TV and wireless connects it with your computer. It looks like a flattened Mac Mini, and it’s UI looks a lot like Front Row.

Finally, the remaining pieces of Apple’s digital hub strategy are falling into place.

Now, I want to take a moment and really put this into perspective. In the not-too-distant future, you’ll be able to all but abandon your cable services entirely. Imagine the ability to have a central library of television and movie content, accessible from all TVs in your house. DVDs all ripped and stored in a central location. TV shows automatically downloaded off the internet, and stored in the same place. And instead of a piece-of-shit cable box, you’ll have a slick little device that serves it all up for your big-screen TV.

Now, this technology already exists. If you were so inclined, you could string together a similar system and have it working quite well. However, that’s not Apple’s goal here. When you connect the dots (iTunes Store + iPod + Mac + iTV), it becomes quite clear that Apple’s looking to completely displace the traditional cable companies with an entirely new content distribution system. They’ll sell you the hardware/software to take advantage of this system, but their endgame is the delivery method.

As Apple announced, their Music Store has a 74%+ market share in the US, and they are officially in the top 5 of legal music retailers. That’s actually a very import note – for the first time, a store that sells nothing but digital content is now in the top 5. And with the TV+Movie content, Apple’s looking to repeat that success. They want to own the content delivery system to your living room, with your computer as the central hub.

However, there are still a few outstanding questions I have:

1. Can I browse and download content directly from iTV?
2. Can I rip my DVDs and have them accessible from iTV?
3. What if I want/need to have local TV? Is there anyway to interface with traditional cable?
4. Will iTV play video content acquired from other sources?
5. How much bandwidth is eaten up with the wireless streaming? Will there be enough to still surf wirelessly?
6. Can iTV replace my existing cable service?

The last question is a big one. One has to stop and wonder how the cable and satellite companies are reacting to this. Because if it wasn’t clear when Apple started selling TV shows via the ITMS, this is clearly a shot across the bow. These companies are spending millions attempting to deploy HD services, and it looks as if these investments could quickly become antiquated.

Whatever the case I’m definitely looking forward to it’s release in Q1 2007. And for the record, I welcome our Apple overlords with open arms, and will be disposing of my Rogers HDTV PVR piece-of-shit set-top box the second iTV becomes available.