iTunes Radio would be great.

eyeTV integration should be there.

And of course a web browser.

All that controlled from a Mac wireless keyboard and mouse…

The biggest oversight I see in this ‘tv’ device is a tuner, preferably a twin DVB-T jobby that will pickup standard freeview. It would be even better if it had a huge hard drive that could also be used as a PVR. Even better would be to upscale digital TV to HD as some other products can.

I currently have a VCR, digibox, DVD player, hard drive media player and PS2. An apple TV with tuner/PVR could help de-clutter a hell of a lot.

Of course, getting the movies into iTunes is a problem since the program doesn’t support MPEG-2 and DVDs are copy-protected. Currently, the only way to get DVDs into iTunes is to illegally break the copyright protection (CSS) and transcode the video into MPEG-4. Re-encoding the video into MPEG-4 is a processor intensive, time consuming process that also reduces the video quality of the film. So, for the time being I’m sticking with my DVDs.

HD content in 1080p will be available one day but most consumers don’t currently have the bandwidth and disk space to handle it. Thus, I wouldn’t expect HDMI 1.3 and 1080p to be introduced for a while. If it is, it’s a nice plus, but you won’t benefit from it until iTunes starts selling movies in that format.

Actually, just to clarify, the maximum resolution supported by Apple TV is 1280 x 720, which is only 720p, and not 1080i. The Apple TV can be set to *output* a 1080i signal, but it’s just sending out a maximum-resolution 1280×720 image using 1080i, so that makes no practical difference in reality.

Once the Apple TV can actually push out a 1920×1080 signal, it will very likely be 1080p-capable just by practical design… With no bandwidth constraints there’s really no reason to limit the output capabilities to interlaced output when the device is already capable of supporting that resolution in the first place.

At that point, the only real limiting factor will be the content that you put on the Apple TV.

Here’s what I think Apple TV2 should be:

- 40-inch to 52-inch Apple Cinema HD Display
- integrated 250 hard drive (user upgradeable)
- Blu-Ray DVD drive (slot-loading of course)
- EyeTV/DVR
- Background visualizer for songs (as it is in iTunes)
- Cover Flow
- VGA + DVI, and such

And personally, I don’t feel that the main-menu/home screen navigation doesn’t fit Apple. It looks more like a half-hacked version of Front Row, what I would like to see a new navigation look and feel of Front Row.

I read about a subscription service offered from Apple, but I’m not sure how well that would work out, although I would be interesting to see Apple do something along those lines.

I will admit one flaw in my thought of turning the Apple TV into an actual television – the Apple remote doesn’t have numbers, but I figure if Apple can transfer its entire platform from PowerPC to Intel, then they can make a remote with numeric keys to change channels.

Well – those are my thoughts on the whole Apple TV ordeal.

*shrugs*

“cheers”
will