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."

Comments

Re:not youtube, but another

[slart42]

[i]The killer app won't be YouTube, but a youtube-like service that actually hosts full-length episodes.[/i]

You mean like www.alluc.org ? The question is of course how long it survives until they get sued..

iTV?

[evilbessie]

I don't somehow think it will be called iTV as in the UK this is used by "Independant Television". So another branding using this name for a television service would probably not be allowed or cause confusion with consumers.

Re:Not innovative

[Anonymous Coward]

I think 802.11n is suspected because a number of Macs have shipped with 802.11n chipsets - currently not enabled.

I'm not saying that it's proof, but it is an interesting decision by Apple.

YouTube also has the high quality somewhere

[Peter Bonte]

All YouTube clips get downgraded to the familiar size and quality we know now but they keep the original content on servers unused, same for Google's movies and other sites. Streaming them in high quality to the iTV would make the big difference, it all depends how well they can handle the enormous data transfers.

Re:not youtube, but another

[jacksonj04]

Would it not be easier to just expand the content available in iTunes (More TV, and please include the UK as well) and make iTV talk to that instead of a whole new system? The infrastructure is there, and having an always on Mac downloading the latest episodes independently of the iTV will make streaming over a network much faster.

My money is on Apple to become the first company to get the hang of housewide media networks. All they need is for the media producers to realise that they have potential access to a huge market by playing along, because I know damn well that I won't mind paying a couple of dollars and episode to download, keep, and watch whenever I want.