Apple previews iTV set-top device

Media junkies will have another item from Apple on their wish list when 2007 rolls around: iTV, or at least, the set-top device currently being referred to as iTV.

True to last week's whispers, Steve Jobs took advantage of the "It's Showtime" media event to offer a glimpse of the new product, which is scheduled to ship in the first quarter of 2007. Boasting a slew of connectors, from the computer-centric USB, ethernet, and 802.11 to yester-year's RCA video connectors and today's more advanced HDMI and optical audio, Jobs & Co. are putting every television in your household in Apple's cross-hairs.

Mimicking the Mac mini's enclosure, the iTV (Jobs said it will be renamed later) features the same shape and aluminum accents, but at less than half the height. It will also sell for half of what a low-end Mac mini goes for, or $299, making media streaming a more affordable endeavor.

In a demonstration to the invited guests at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, Jobs showed off the new iTV, which features a more polished Front Row-like interface, undoubtedly a sign of the improvements yet to come to other Front Row-supported Macs when Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard ships next year.

The iTV will seemingly pull content from other computers on a network. Rather than simply list what media one has access to, as is currently the case with Front Row, Apple's media hub will go a step further, listing a movie's synopsis, stars, and cover, for example.

While Apple is hoping the iTV will encourage more customers to purchase television programming and movies from the iTunes Store, the iTV will not be limited to playing purchased media only. Photo slideshows with accompanying music will be be supported, for example, as is the case with current Front Row Macs.

343 Comments

zedrac 41 comments · 19 Years

About 18 years ago

This actually looks really cool. Extremely simple interface + fast content streaming will win many fans.

666 112 comments · 21 Years

This does sound pretty sweet, does it have it's own hard drive?

xool 2397 comments · 23 Years

Looks like Front Row 2 on a set top box to me. Probably still finalizing the software and hardware. I hope Apple finally opens the API for this so I can write my own plugins.

Either way, I'll buy one!

mrtotes 746 comments · 19 Years

Erm I love the concept and so long as it gets S-Video and Composite connectors to make it more universally useful I will be getting one.

However who wants to pay $14.99 for a VGA (640x480) video? That will look fine on an iPod but it's going to look nasty on a "big flat screen TV" especially compared to the quality and features of £9.99 DVDs you can play on the £30 DVD player without maxing your DSL download cap (P.S is 6Mb broadband really the norm nowadays?). There is some work to do here. I suspect this is Disney holding back on good value movies at the moment whilst they aren't sure how the service will pan out.
Do a little test for me - whack OS X down to 640x480 on your Mac. Nasty eh?
And in fact most movies at 16:10 or 16:9 will end up at about 640 x 360/400.
VGA is not good enough. These need to be SVGA minimum to play on non-HD TVs (NTSC or PAL) with no degradation.

Really these movies need to be HD but I guess no downloads would be practical and streaming over Airport may be juttery. I'v tried streaming a ripped DVD over original Airport - no go. Airport Extreme should be okay and I'd guess this will be 802.11n by then.

animal farm 64 comments · 18 Years

I highly recommend you all watch the "live" stream (that was actually delayed... kudos, AI). It was a pretty good show and this device looks quite interesting.