A new, very entertaining trailer for “The Expendables” came out last week and I had to show it to my wife. After work, I fired up YouTube on the TiVo but I couldn’t find it there. Anyone who has used YouTube on a TiVo can tell you how horrible it is to search for anything using that remote. I was disappointed but I had other options.
I grabbed my iPad, fired up the YouTube app and did a search. Nothing. Now I was getting mad. I went to Google on the iPad and did a search. I found the YouTube video on a dozen or so sites but YouTube didn’t have an Apple-friendly version available. Other sites had their own videos but they were all flash versions.
I’m now about 45 minutes into this and I’m loosing it. I use DownloadHelper and Firefox to grab a mp4 version of the trailer off of YouTube and save it to my desktop. I open it up in QuickTime and created an Apple TV version. I then synced it to my iPad in iTunes. After finally being able to show my wife the trailer I throw my Apple friendly version up on YouTube.Why didn’t I just sit her down at my desktop to watch it? Well, I don’t have external speakers and it’s not as casual as watching it on a big TV or an iPad.
[inline-ad]This seems to happen to me quite a bit on the iPad. I see a video at work, I want to show it to someone when I get home, only to find out I can’t, without using a desktop or notebook. If I could just watch flash videos, 90 percent of these issues would be avoided. I usually try the TiVo route first but that’s only because it’s connected to the big screen. With all the different gadgets I own, I still have to use my Mac Pro to watch a simple flash video. There has to be a better way.
This got me to thinking about what I really want in an Apple TV. If Apple would make its device just a 1080p video unit that could have videos thrown to it using an iPad or iPhone as the remote, that would be a good start. Next, give me flash video. I don’t want games or flashy website intros, just flash-based videos. I fear Apple is too proud to ever back-peddle on this and that may force me to seriously look into Google TV. HTML 5 may be the future but I’m stuck here with my device in my hand, waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

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