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Could YouTube Be the Killer-App for Apple's iTV?
mrspin writes "With Macworld Expo just over a week away, many expect Apple CEO Steve Jobs to announce further details (and the availability) of the company's yet to be released set-top-box, codenamed iTV. Powered by something similar to Apple's Front Row media center software, the iTV is designed to get the media content that's housed on a Mac (music, movies, and photos), streamed to the living room television. However, with its built-in wireless networking (suspected to be the faster 802.11n), why not bypass the Mac and have the iTV connect directly to the Internet? The combination of iTunes and DRM-free MP3s provided the 'killer app' for the iPod. YouTube could well do the same for Apple's soon-to-be released set-top box."
It's a code name, as the article points out. It won't be released as iTV.
No, the point is that the iPod can play DRM-free music, wheras the Sony alternatives, at least at the time, couldn't. (The software slapped DRM all over your files as soon as you imported them).
The last few builds of Xbox Media Center have included a add-on script for Youtube watching (that's where I first saw the "Pachelbel Rant"), not to mention the Launch.com one for music video watching. Incidentally, have you noticed that "pre-owned" Xbox1s are down to $99. So we're talking no DRM, expandability and you can get the hardware for just under $100.
So can the Wii, just tried it.
Do not trust this signature.
If Apple can come up with a box that (a) can control external boxes, (b) has an EPG equivalent in functionality to Tivo, and (c) has HD capture via component it'll clean up (especially in this country where Tivo died in 2002 and we were left with the crappy DVR wannabe Sky+).
The third one is the killer. No MCE box currently available will do that.
I have an old Xbox with Xbox Media Centre - and I can play all the YouTube stuff I want on my TV.
As a person able to do this I can tell you:
a) You don't want to sit on your couch f'in about with millions of crappy little clips.
b) The crappy little clips look REALLY crappy on a big TV.
Proper IPTV is here and will only grow. Multicast handles all the broadcast stuff, what we need is a P2P addon that'll handle the OnDemand stuff (I don't just mean conventional PayPerView, I mean providerless YouTube style stuff) and I want a nice Open front end that'll let me view all this on anything (and if MS will support it in MCE2, then I'll buy MCE2)