Apple's iTV: What Do I See?

Back in mid-September, Apple took the highly unusual step of pre-announcing iTV, an under-development $299 set-top box that won't be available until sometime next quarter. At first glance, iTV is simply a product that I predicted back in late July of 2005, i.e. a still image- and video-enhanced (and much more expensive) version of the company's existing audio-only AirPort Express, enabling streaming of multimedia content from a network-connected Mac computer, and functionally mimicking Elgato's three-year-old EyeHome.

But…iTV contains a hard drive of unspecified size and capacity. And that opens the door to all sorts of interesting product possibilities. First off, let me run down what we do know (thanks to Wikipedia for the summary):

• Built-in power supply
• USB
• Ethernet
• 802.11 "wireless networking (Air Port)"
• HDMI
• Component Video
• Internal small hard disk
• S/PDIF digital optical audio
• RCA analog stereo audio
• Works with Apple Remote

Lots of gaps in the published feature set, aren't there? Macworld Expo is in less than a month, and we'll likely know a whole lot more after Steve Jobs' opening keynote. For grins, I thought I'd get down on cyber-paper my predictions for what he'll unveil. Before I continue, a message to Apple Legal. The following prophecies come directly from my noggin. I do not have access to confidential documentation. I have not had NDA-breaking conversations with any Apple employees. So please do not subpoena or sue me. Thankyouverymuch

• iTv will deliver Draft 802.11n wireless capability. With AirPort, Apple was one of the first computer companies to embrace 802.11b. They were early on the 802.11g train with AirPort Extreme. And latest-generation iMacs, MacBooks and MacBook Pros already ship with Atheros and Broadcom draft 802.11n transceivers inside. Streaming video, even VGA-resolution, needs all the bandwidth it can get. This is a somewhat risky move on Apple's part, since the 802.11n specification won't be finalized until at least 2008….but it's a leap the company (and many of its competitors) has already taken. If iTV works best with Macs, that's all the better as far as Apple's concerned. And Draft 802.11n silicon will be backwards-compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g for the rest of us.
• iTV's hard drive will be magnetic platter-based, not flash memory-based, and will be either 1.8" or 2.5" in format, depending on capacity, height and price-per-GByte factors. The HDD will first and foremost be used to buffer up streamed multimedia data, both to comprehend the 802.11b and 802.11g networks now prevalent in homes and to account for inevitable wireless glitches (Wi-Fi will be the predominant network connectivity scheme, not Ethernet). Buffering would inappropriately thrash limited-erase-cycle flash memory media, regardless of how intelligent the wear leveling algorithm is, and anyway as you'll soon see I also have other plans for that HDD.
• iTV will contain multimedia decoders. Alternatively, this data could be decoded at the Mac source and streamed uncompressed to the iTV destination. But that'd be silly; in this type of application, bandwidth is a much scarcer commodity than MIPS. Look at a video iPod as a path to the processing subsystem that'll likely be in iTV.
• iTV will not only stream multimedia data stored on other network-connected computers and storage devices, it'll also directly stream and download-and-store content (free and purchased) from the iTunes Store. As I stated above, multimedia decoders are built-in, as is a hard drive. It doesn't take much processor muscle to run a Front Row 2-D GUI, nor to handle handshaking with a server somewhere else on the 'Net. So, as you can do today with the Xbox 360 and its Marketplace, you'll be able to directly download from the Internet to iTV (and subsequently stream from iTV to a network-connected Mac? Could be….). No need to keep your computer on. And the USB interface? For direct iPod docking and syncing. If I'm not right here, iTV's $299 price tag is way out of whack.
• All this talk of Apple getting into the game console business is silly; with that said, you'll be able to play simple games on iTV. I'm thinking of the kinds of games you can play on a video iPod right now; stuff that isn't computationally or graphically complex, and that you can navigate through using only a few-button Apple Remote.
• Finally, iTV (or some enhanced-feature proliferation of it) will also act as a NAS. I agree with Tom Rowley; there's ever-increasing value in a home media server. NASs are currently complex to configure and administrate, although UPnP has certainly eased the process. Who better than Apple, with plenty of Xserve experience under its belt and a knack for clearly understanding consumers' needs, to take NAS to the next level of simplicity? Apple's the single largest buyer of 1.8" HDDs in the industry, and gets excellent pricing. 80 GByte drives are available today, and Toshiba's just announced a 100 GByte PMR-based model. If there's enough room in iTV for a 2.5" HDD, Seagate's already got a 160 GByte one shipping, and Fujitsu's talking about 300 GByte PMR models sometime next year.

There you have it, my iTV wish list, just in time for Christmas. Let's check back in a month and see how I did, shall we? And until then, what do you think?