MacWorld Keynote Comments Part 1: Apple TV

On Tuesday, January 9, Apple officially became the new Sony.

Of course, Apple’s gradual metamorphosis into Sony started in 2001 when they debuted the first iPod. However, I think that metamorphosis was completed when they changed names. “Apple Computer, Inc.” died and “Apple Inc.” was born. Apple is now a consumer electronics company. The iPod was their first major consumer electronics product, and they announced their second one.

A few months ago, Steve Jobs debuted a prototype device known as iTV. He said then that the name wouldn’t stick; the final device would have a different name. Well, Steve announced the new name on Tuesday: Apple TV (“TV”). Personally, I like the old name better. But what is this gadget? TV is a device that allows you to stream whatever is in your iTunes library onto your TV. Okay, if you don’t have an iPod and have never used iTunes, stop reading right now. I’m serious, this article ain’t for you.

Now back to what I was talking about. Let’s say you bought a TV show from the iTunes store. Traditionally, your options were to either watch the show you bought on your computer, or download it to your video iPod. If you wanted to watch the TV show you bought on an actual TV, you had to either figure out a way to plug your video iPod into your TV or you were just plain out of luck – until now. You plug your TV to a TV and then that show you bought will be available on your TV. That’s cute and all, but what good is that?

First, let’s assume you have a home-theater setup with an HDTV or and EDTV. If you don’t then there isn’t much point in buying TV. Why? Because it only works with HDTVs or EDTVs. If you have a regular TV, forgetaboutit! In fact, you can stop reading right here and move on with your life if you’ve only got a regular TV. TV won’t work on a regular TV. Apple’s cold like that, sorry.

However, if you do have some type of home theater with said HDTV, you’re in good shape – if your HDTV has a component or HDMI input. Your HDTV doesn’t? Stop reading, go get a snack and wonder why you got gypped. Oh yeah, if your HDTV doesn’t have HDMI, then you can forget about Blu-Ray Disc and HD-DVD as well. And if it doesn’t do component either then you’ve pretty much defeated the purpose of getting an HDTV. In other words, that’s what you get for: 1) not doing your research, 2) buying cheap shit. Back to the story.

So you get the TV and hook it up to your HDTV, or better yet, your receiver that hooks up to your HDTV. The TV device can connect wirelessly to a Mac or PC with iTunes software (if you have an iPod, you have iTunes). Now EVERYTHING that you have in your iTunes library is available to your TV/home theater. Every song, every podcast, every TV/movie you bought, even pictures that you might have in iPhoto or Adobe Photoshop Elements can be shown on your TV. I think that’s really cool and here’s why.
Let’s start with audio. TV lets you finally get those damn CDs out of the house! First, you take every CD you own and rip them using iTunes. I recommend you make sure the music is being converted into MP3 format. Once you have ripped every CD you have ever owned in your life (and some you borrowed for me and never returned, thieving bastards), you can decide whether or not you want all of them on your iPod (probably not). Regardless, they are all on your computer’s hard drive. Then I HIGHLY recommend you back up your computer. Once you get your TV set up, all of those CDs will be available to your home theater. Now, why would you want to do that? Because chances are your best speakers are part of your home theater setup, regardless of how humble that setup might be. And it’s nice to have access to your ho-biscuit baby making slow jams playlist from your living room on those romantic evenings. Ironically, the TV was made mainly for video, but audio might be the Trojan Horse feature. But lets talk about video.

So TV lets you display the video you bought from iTunes on your TV. That’s real cute, but what if you didn’t buy any video from iTunes? Can you rip your regular DVDs into iTunes and then stream them just like you did the CDs in the previous paragraph? Well, that’s illegal. You see, unlike CDs, DVDs are encrypted. So, technically, it isn’t illegal to copy your DVDs that you bought onto your hard drive, but it is illegal to defeat the encryption, which keeps you from copying your DVD to your hard drive. Yes, some lawyer thought up that shit. Of course, I can’t encourage you to break the law and de-crypt the encryption. However, if you did do such a bad, bad thing, you’d still have problems. Why? Because TV is not set up to stream regular DVDs, even on a hard drive. And even if TV could do that, DVDs have a lot of data, which would clog up quite a bit of bandwidth. But fear not, funky children, I have a plan! It’s called compression.

Basically, it works like this: let’s say there happens to be a decrypted movie on your hard drive. I don’t know how the hell it got there, and I don’t want to know (I ain’t going to jail with y’all). You can shrink that puppy down using your choice of compression/decompression algorithms, or “codecs.” Your two codec options are H.264 or MPEG-4. So you take the movie that somehow magically appeared on your hard drive, shrink it down with H.264 or MPEG-4, copy it over to your iTunes Library and voila – you can stream your movies over to your TV using your shiny new TV!

Before you get too bored, think about this: you can theoretically take all of your CDs, podcasts, movies you recorded with your camcorder, pictures you took with your digital camera, your DVDs (if you don’t mind breaking the law), your porn and anything you bought from the iTunes store and put it on your computer. After that, you can hook up the TV and ALL if it can be on your TV/home theater. You’ll never have to get off your couch again! You can put those old CDs from the 1980s in storage! You can show your vacation video to everyone! On the other hand, will Apple’s new gadget take the place of your cable box? Not really. Will it take the place of your DVR? Not really.

In fact, let me tell you what this device is not:
- Not a cable box, which okay because you already have one.
- Not a DVD player. That’s fine, because everyone who wants a DVD player already has one at this point.
- Not a high-definition disc player. That’s fine because there is a format war happening right now and there is a risk of ending up obsolete if you choose the wrong side.
- Not a DVR. I think Apple was smart to leave DVR functionality from the Apple TV. DVR functionality is increasingly being folded into the cable box. In my opinion, the day of the stand-alone DVR is coming to a slow end. Soon, people will just use a cable box with a built-in DVR.

Basically, think of the TV as an extension of your iPod/iTunes situation. In fact, the cost of a TV is not much more than the cost of a high-end iPod: about $300. The device should be available in February. I’ll write a letter to the Easter Bunny in March. Maybe he’ll bring me one. If not, I guess I’ll have to sell my sperm or peddle crystal meth for the government.