Apple to release iTV video streaming box in 2007

In an unusual turn of events, Apple has pre-announced a wireless video streaming set-top box to be released in Q1 2007 with the tag line "you can take content to your computer or iPod, but now... TV." Going by the codeword of iTV, the box looks like a flattened Mac mini -- apparently it's around half the height -- and features a built-in power supply, USB 2.0, Ethernet, 802.11 "wireless component video", optical audio and HDMI ports, plus regular ol' RCA stereo audio ports. Controllable by the standard Apple remote, the iTV will come with an updated version of the Front Row interface that shares Front Row's smooth 3D graphics, but differs in that it has a menu on the right side of the screen. Apparently it'll work with both iTunes on both PCs and Macs, and will sell for $299.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 13th 2006 2:19PM]

I think the USB port lets you plug in a printer and use this as a wireless print server, much like the Airport Express. Because this is, in essence, just an Airport Express with video.

Also,
Dear Kevin,
Steve Jobs has been negotiating with all of the major studios for months. The only reason they haven't yet agreed to sell their movies through iTunes is Wal-Mart. Yes, that's right. Wal-Mart is thinking about making their own movie-downloading service, and doesn't want any competition. So they threatened to stop selling DVDs if the studios sold their movies to Apple. Wal-Mart sells 60% of all (legal) DVDs in the world, so that would mean billions of dollars lost for the movie studios. There was a great article on Slashdot, I believe, about this subject, if you want more information.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 13th 2006 4:25PM]

Does anyone know what's inside? Is this another Intel / Mac combo? If so, where is the Viiv sticker?

What this looks like to me is a running advertisement stuck on your TV. Why didn't they ad PVR functionality. That would have been the killer app.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 14th 2006 11:04AM]

This is just going to be a base model. Apple will add HD content in the future. Why would they spend all the time and research on a product and not allow growth for the it in the future exspecially when all media is moving toward HD content. I also think that apple will release a large terabyte drive to go along with this device.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 13th 2006 11:23PM]

Let's have some perspective here, folks...it's an UNRELEASED product...a prototype. How many prototypes do you know of end up getting released to the market as-is? It'll probably have more features when it's released, and given Apple's penchant for secrecy, it's probably kept the best stuff under wraps.

Personally I was hoping for the all-in-one media hub with PVR, or maybe some functionality that connects it better to TiVo, to actually be announced, not previewed. It seems TiVo can't get it's acted together with TivoToGo for Mac so maybe Apple should compete there?

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 14th 2006 1:12AM]

"$299 is far too expensive without a TV tuner. I'll stick to my tivo."

Ummm ... the latest tivo is like $800 US, so it's not that expensive. I just think Apple are short changing themselves coming up with a "media extender".

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 14th 2006 9:11AM]

This has got to have every cable tv executive shaking in their boots. What few are recognizing is that iTV would be a delivery system with a predictable revenue stream. It's all about money people. Plus they've got Disney standing behind them, you know Magic Kingdom, Touchstone, ABC, Pixar.... DIsney.

Once they got this delivery system cranking they could give the box away!! When you take away distribution, then content is king. BTW, no one creating entertainment is going to continue to sit back and let people steal their content, that's there livelihood you're ripping off.

The average consumer doesn't want to spend there time, recording, ripping, re-encoding, they want to watch TV on their couch. Ofcourse this box will deliver 1080p with 5.1, duh! It's an h.264 codec with a DRM wrapper. There is no better codec to deliver content to the home, that's what all the broadcasters will be using to their headends as well.

That slim little box will fit into my entertainment center with a minimum of hassle, it will play all my h.264 podcasts I've got on iTunes. Give me fiber to the home, now everybody is a HDTV Broadcaster! Holy Sh*t! watch out TV networks, watch out cable, watch out IPTV, you are all obsolete. Content is King. I can watch what I want, when I want, and pay only for what I want to watch.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 14th 2006 1:39PM]

Right now I have a Mac Mini that I have 300+ GB of downloaded DIVX/XVID/MPG/MP4 content on. I also have a MacBook that I hook up to my HDTV via DVI/Optical connection. I can access the shared DIVX/XVID movies on the Mac Mini (by 802.11g) via Front Row from my MacBook and play the content on my HDTV. If the DIVX/XVID/MPG/MP4 was recorded in HD it looks very good on the HDTV. Not great but very good.

So far; if I can play the content on my MacMini I can stream it to the MacBook and play just fine. So its a "reasonable" assumption at this point if I can play it on a Mac I can stream it to the ITV. So I don't see that the comments about being locked into ITMS content as being entirely valid. I can rip a DVD on my Mac Mini and stream it accross just fine also so I assume I should be able to do this with the ITV.

Yeah, $300 for that. I'll pay it. I would guess I can also stream music from my MAC/PC to the ITV just like I do with my Airport Express now and for $129 that is a bargin.

BTW I have watched an iTunes movie and TV program in the 640x480 format this way and its pretty darn good. Think about it, 640x480 is "near" DVD quality so its probably alot better than you think. The TV show I downloaded is an episode of "The Revolution" from the History Channel that I had on my DVR. I dont get History Channel in HD so the downloaded version was significently higher quality than the broadcast version. Not that thats a perfect test, but it worked for me...

Will this be a perfect product when it is released? Probaby not. But its something I will have fun with..

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 14th 2006 4:52PM]

i dont see why all of the i pod stuff has to be so expensive...why cant they make like a little music player for like $50 or so..and all of the i pods accessories seem to cost almost the same as the i pod itself...

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 15th 2006 3:33AM]

" think many have overlooked this product’s true features. WIRELESS "
I agree with Joe here . but even on that count Apple is a late entery in this game . there are already some excellent wireless place shifting device available in market . i am using HAVA from Monsoon Multimedia and its a great device. it has got all the essential feature like DVR & support for MCE .Good thing is that it comes without any baggage of itune or Mac legeacy of closed community .

i will think thrice before spending my $$$ on this
it seems that this iTV is just a smoke screen for pushing itune as a defacto video content distribution portal .

Steve is going to commit the same mistake which he did with Mac . something never changes.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 24th 2006 2:21PM]

This is interesting to me because I absolutely HATE my cable company (just reconnected after 6 years without too--still can't stand the advertising) and if there was a way to get the few shows/channels I like ad-free for around the $65 a month I pay now--that I'd do. I'm not a channel surfer, I get my news from the internet and there's really only room for a few good TV shows in my life (Thank you, Jon and Stephen). Significantly, I'm tired of corporate america's endless thump-thumping on our brains and especially the psyches of our children. I might be the demographic that Jobs is going for here.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 15th 2006 3:24PM]

Plthft!

Smells like an interim solution. Too much money for an interim solution to computer/tv integration. Plus, my TV screen sux.

[RobQuads Posted Sep 19th 2006 3:28PM]

I think it will be a success overall as its marketed at the Apple lovers who will go out and buy it.

Will the techies buy it comes down to 1 thing IMO - will it support other codecs. If it does it will be a killer app as it will not need a power hungry server to dish the files out (although that said if itunes has to be running its bloatware will hit ram)

If it does not support other codecs the sales will cut off a fair % of the market

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 19th 2006 5:42PM]

I am actually really looking farward to this.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 19th 2006 5:43PM]

heh, woops. Forward*

Apparently the period of unconsciousness you humans call "sleep" is required far more than I thought.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 20th 2006 4:21AM]

mi comentario simplemente es que por favor , deberian publicar esta pagina en espa�ol , ya que las personas que no sabemos otro idioma , nos es imposible enterarnos de nada , muchas gracias

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 20th 2006 4:22AM]

les solicito por favor que publiquen esta pagina en espa�ol , ya que las personas que no hablamos otro idioma no podemos entender nada y por lo tanto no podemos hacer uso de ella , muchas gracias

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 22nd 2006 1:40AM]

Well folks. We must remember that not everyone takes the same path. For my part, what I see here is someone finally producing a "transcoder" that will take a video output from DVI/SVGA and convert it to component video. Long overdue facility! Now a user can take a standard computer, and run its output to a HDTV. That means everything from DVDs to 320x240 videos, all of which can be played by any player, and their frontrow style player as well, presumably directly through the PC/Mac. For my part, I have a 250Gig HD (Mini look-alike) holding my videos.

Currently, I play them to my HDTV through S-Video from the Mini, which is just okay. My transcoder/HDVT combo only supports 640x480 for a display resolution (VGA), but even that looks as good as DVD quality. HDTV? Well, we'll see how much of that quality can be stored on a 250Gig HD... not much, I'd have to say... Maybe what, 30hrs?

Still, a better HDTV should be able to handle the higher resolutions found in DVI and therefore produce HD quality video, and if this is indeed a transcoder type device, with WiFi and digital audio out, and digital signals in, then it might actually do "most" of the tasks required of a Entertainment system... Hard to believe that a TV/HDTV tuner isn't added to complete the product, or a second upscale product. It really seems amazing how hard it is to get these guys to get the job right.

Apple, if you're listening... a complete solution is a HDTV recorder to the PC/Mac, then playing back from the PC/Mac, and outputting Component Video or at least HDMI (video+audio you know). Let us worry about the content, as in recorded TV shows (like vcr's, you'll recall), or other downloaded content as available for purchase or free. Cheers.
Jake

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 26th 2006 9:09AM]

All of you microsoft/pc users are confused. Who would want something that gives them more errors than hours of adequate functionality? If you have the time and desire to look up the latest/cheapest/"best" alternatives to mac's devices, AND the time to set it all up and fix it that's great. For the rest of society (who would rather pay for something that just works,) mac offers a solution. I'm sure you are all the same kids who were blasting the ipod when that came out - you were right, it went nowhere...

[lulianping Posted Dec 2nd 2009 8:03PM]

great.. this sounds quite nice!
http://www.laptopbatteryclub.com/

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 10th 2006 8:10PM]

This is the first step to the future.
So all you PC Goons leave yu negative comments at the front door.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 14th 2006 2:13PM]

You have to understand that this iTV devices isn't trying to be some High Def wonder machine as that would take too much for the wireless bandwidth standards and hard drive sizes that are available at the present moment. What this device is good for is if store your mpeg4 or H264 videos on a file server or other system and then use the iTv device to have ready access to your purchased or converted video libraries. If you think about it and do a little planning you can take your Tivo with the Tivo Desktop software and then use Tivo desktop or third party compression software like Tvharmony and compress videos off your TV for your own personal needs and then later play them back through your wireless home network to your TV. It is like having your own On Demand service. This does seem to embed your Tivo media access key in the file so use it for your own personal needs is a given. When wireless bandwidths and hard drives increase in size and performance High Def will be just and upgrade or two down the road. I mean who doesn't want 1gb per 3.5inch hard drive?

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 13th 2006 11:36PM]

Obviously I meant 1TB per drive

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 14th 2006 5:26PM]

Miglia has already got all that is needed at a much more reasonable price

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 5th 2006 5:33AM]

Look at the WHOLE of their road map people. "Apple's in you den now!" Remember also that Eric Schmidt is on their (Apple's) board of directors, as is Jobs on Disney's, and...not to mention that Google just acquired YouTube. Watcha got? One hell of a media conglomerate. Merger?!?! Who knows.

Mr. Jobs has thought of everything folks. Look to the upcoming release of Leopard. Time machine is reason enough for me to spend the anticipated $129 price tag. Worry free back-up!! Only an Apple designer or engineer could implement such a thing. Time machine keeping tabs of all your content, Front Row to access it, and Spotlight to search for it. Network attached storage is a must for the biggest wave of viewer owned, and created, content.

All of this will come crashing together in seamless , if not typical, Apple fashion once all of their software is in place, i.e. Leopard.

Oh yeah, as for Universal getting a royalty from iPod....Too damn bad. Who built it? Apple. Who designed the software? Apple. Would you offer a third party money for something you know is rightfully yours? I sure as hell wouldn't.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 9th 2007 3:15AM]

Here it is.

A bombshell.

I have the name Apple will use to market iTV.

Are you ready?

"iPod".

Think I'm dreaming?

Look at the pictures of the back of the device and tell me if you don't think
that Apple could cram all of those (ethernet? WTF?) into a simple dock connector.
Later (and I'll admit brilliantly), Apple will make a killing in their retail stores selling
all the cables you will be using to hook up your iPod to your TV. Did you know that
cables have more if not the most profit margin at your friendly neighborhood Apple store?

Oh, and One More Thing (he smiles coyly):

This beauty will sync wirelessly over your 802.11x ("N"?) connection.
or your "B", "G", whatever-this-is-a-bad-mofo!!!

There you have it. Clever, Apple.

with that whole "we will think of another name" ploy.

I guess the real question(s) are:

- Will Apple change the form factor?

- Is this the only reason Steve is so Happy?

It all falls into place from here.

im.

(now discuss) ; )