Apple is missing a trick, a small update for huge advantage.

icecavern · Sep 30, 2010

OK I know they want to push streaming, but stay with me a minute...

If Apple update the Time Capsule to include iTunes Home Sharing, I think they would sell massive numbers of Apple TV's and probably Airport Expresses.

You see, if your Time Capsule ( the hub of your whole wireless network ) supported home sharing, it could hold your iTunes Library and share it.

So now you use your iPad, Ipod etc with the Apple Remote app to get your living room aTV to show a movie. Meanwhile using airplay you also have this playing in the kitchen, and your son/daughter listening to some music in thier bedroom all streamed from your TC.

Then you decide it's time for bed, so want to watch the last bit of the film there. Hit pause, turn the TV off and then go to bed. Select the output to now be the bedroom aTV and un-pause to watch the rest of the movie.

You basically have a system similar to a Crestron or something ( OK slightly less complicated but for most it's all they want ) at a fraction of the price, and Apple take a large grab of the worlds households.

I've been chatting about this with a few people and I think with a few tweaks to the software, and the Home share on the TC, Apple have a massive potential.

Pete

balamw · Sep 30, 2010

I've been saying that for years. Since both the Time Capsule and AppleTV were introduced.

At least the introduction of home sharing has made using AppleTV and the iOS Remote app friendlier. You don't have to enter a long PIN to stream from your libraries, at least that is how Remote now works, and iTunes, I hope AppleTV does it too.

B

DeusInvictus7 · Sep 30, 2010

This might be why it's taking so long to update the Airport/Time Capsule line. If they can put a really basic version of OS X on the Time Capsule so that it can run iTunes, then the Apple TV will be able to stream from it any time. That would be sweet.

icecavern · Sep 30, 2010

DeusInvictus7 said:
This might be why it's taking so long to update the Airport/Time Capsule line. If they can put a really basic version of OS X on the Time Capsule so that it can run iTunes, then the Apple TV will be able to stream from it any time. That would be sweet.

But it doesn't need to run OSX or iTunes, it just has to have a service to act like an iTunes Home Share server. Companies have been making NAS drives with iTunes servers built in for a long time, but apple haven't. The problem now is that those iTunes Servers wont work with Home Share until they update, but if apple got there first with an update to the TC, they'd be on a roll.

dagomike · Sep 30, 2010

Yup, basically you want an iTunes NAS. I would buy that in an instant.

I would just like there to be more wired ports.

jaw04005 · Sep 30, 2010

I think we will see home sharing come to all of Apple's devices at some point including the Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme, iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

In the next version of Mac OS X, I think it'll be installed as a service rather than just as a part of iTunes (like Bonjour).

mstrze · Sep 30, 2010

I wonder if the natural progression here will be to go to owning something 'in the cloud'. Or maybe one can call it 'permanent rental' where you perhaps pay the full download price to be able to have permanent access to the movie or TV show from anywhere without having to dedicate what is turning out to be ludicous amounts of home storage space for the privilege.

Think about it, once 1080p becomes the iTunes standard, file sizes will be much larger and 2TB drives will fill-up quickly.

I was always against those sites like the reformed Napster that let you listen to anything, but you essentially could never own it, but I think this could be different where you could in fact, download the movie if you wanted...although most people would find having it stored offsite would be a much more reasonable option.

Thoughts?

dagomike · Sep 30, 2010

I would love it if I could store all my purchases in the cloud anywhere/anytime. That's pretty big on iTunes scale, however.

jas1973 · Sep 30, 2010

are they still having problems with time capsules? for a while users said after a few months they would crash and lose all their data. you can read the reviews about it on the apple store site.

that is why i never got one.

jas1973 · Sep 30, 2010

dagomike said:
I would love it if I could store all my purchases in the cloud anywhere/anytime. That's pretty big on iTunes scale, however.

i think that is one of the reasons also we are not seeing much storage space in the new apple tv's. apple is pushing streaming because eventually all your itunes library will be stored on their cloud system anyway.

steviem · Sep 30, 2010

If apple released a real server for iTunes, had wireless sync for several people/devices, then it would be awesome.

mstrze · Sep 30, 2010

steviem said:
If apple released a real server for iTunes, had wireless sync for several people/devices, then it would be awesome.

No need to sync. In 'my' future, your device is connected to the net via 3G/4G or Wifi and as long as it is logged on to your iTunes account, you have access to any purchased songs which will be streamed to your device as requested. NO files will be stored on the device, therefore no syncing would be necessary.

ftaok · Sep 30, 2010

jas1973 said:
i think that is one of the reasons also we are not seeing much storage space in the new apple tv's. apple is pushing streaming because eventually all your itunes library will be stored on their cloud system anyway.

If it were just an option, that would be OK. But folks with slow or glitchy internet connections would suffer. For stuff that I own, I'd rather have the file on my network. That way, if the internet went down, I'd still be able to watch my movies.

mstrze · Sep 30, 2010

ftaok said:
If it were just an option, that would be OK. But folks with slow or glitchy internet connections would suffer. For stuff that I own, I'd rather have the file on my network. That way, if the internet went down, I'd still be able to watch my movies.

Same for people who currently enjoy Pandora...or those whose batteries die...or if the power goes out.

My own opinion: It's getting rough to back up everything as I continue to store more and more on my own drives in my house. Even the fastest connection for an external drive will take many, many hours to copy over 1TB of files to a new backup. I would assume that will get quicker, but I also have to assume that file sizes will also grow making that speed increase a moot point. Having large files stored offsite just makes sense. And NOT having to copy them to that offsite locations makes even more sense.

The more I think about this, the more I would be shocked if this wasn't a Steve Jobs announcement at a keynote within the next year or so. It all seems to make sense with the North Carolina data center and the streaming ONLY aspect of the new ATV. itunes will keep track of what your purchases are and stream them at will...or...allow you to download if you wish.

DouchGod · Sep 30, 2010

Bring on the "iTunes" Home Server.

KDR · Sep 30, 2010

This is a great discussion and I think it's the reason we see such a disparity between the home theater devices that are on the market right now. Think about the advantage about owning a movie and being able to watch it on a iPad wherever you are in the world without having to sync it. Think about being on a business trip when the family buys a movie at home that you can watch on the road. While an update to Time Capsule would be awesome, I think the cloud is where the future is and this is the reason why my money is on Apple as opposed to the other devices out there. Apple is in the single best position to aggregate the content and send it to multiple device types from the cloud.

The real problem, as always, isn't the technology, it's the studios and intellectual property law that have been holding this technology back for a long time.

dagomike · Sep 30, 2010

jas1973 said:
i think that is one of the reasons also we are not seeing much storage space in the new apple tv's. apple is pushing streaming because eventually all your itunes library will be stored on their cloud system anyway.

I think cost is the big reason. No way Apple could sell it for $99 with meaningful local storage. Second could be licensing. Likely the content creators will be far more enthusiastic if no one actually possess the content. I'd like to think also this opens the door for advertising.

Frankly, it's kind of silly to have multiple copies of your media in your own home. At the very least everything should reside on your computer/server if not the cloud.

ftaok · Sep 30, 2010

mstrze said:
Same for people who currently enjoy Pandora...or those whose batteries die...or if the power goes out.

Well, if your battery dies or the power goes out, it doesn't matter if you local or cloud storage. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have cloud storage or purchased material, I'm just saying that I personally would like to have that option.

The best of both worlds would be you can download and store locally, but also have the same material on the cloud server. That way, I can have the instant response of local media, but also the flexibility of cloud media. Plus, I agree that backing media up is a pain, so that aspect of cloud storage is very inviting.

dagomike · Sep 30, 2010

ftaok said:
If it were just an option, that would be OK. But folks with slow or glitchy internet connections would suffer. For stuff that I own, I'd rather have the file on my network. That way, if the internet went down, I'd still be able to watch my movies.

Yeah, wireless sync makes more sense. Storage will keep getting cheaper, but likely bandwidth will get more expensive/restrictive. Frequently access media stores on the device, but if you could pull down something from the cloud that would be cool. You can basically do this with apps now. I've often redownloaded apps that I bought but removed from my iPhone/iPad at no charge rather than syncing.

ftaok · Sep 30, 2010

KDR said:
Think about being on a business trip when the family buys a movie at home that you can watch on the road.

Hmmm, this has me thinking. Do content owners really want viewers to be able to do this? This opens up a can of worms where one country has access to movies that another country does not. What's to stop someone from having a friend or family member in one country to purchase a movie to be viewed in another country?

This would totally kill of the whole Region Coding system.

trip1ex · Sep 30, 2010

dagomike said:
Yeah, wireless sync makes more sense. Storage will keep getting cheaper, but likely bandwidth will get more expensive/restrictive. Frequently access media stores on the device, but if you could pull down something from the cloud that would be cool. You can basically do this with apps now. I've often redownloaded apps that I bought but removed from my iPhone/iPad at no charge rather than syncing.

bandwidth is only getting faster and cheaper.

KDR · Sep 30, 2010

trip1ex said:
bandwidth is only getting faster and cheaper.

Yeah, but it's the only thing the phone and cable companies can cling to right now so that might change as they try to keep their revenue up as their subscriber base is lost to skype and web-based video.

mstrze · Sep 30, 2010

trip1ex said:
bandwidth is only getting faster and cheaper.

Faster, yes...cheaper no.

I was paying $19 for dialup access about 10 years ago, then $29 for my first cable internet, now I pay $55 for my 6Mbs cable internet. And that super-speed fibre internet in Chatanooga, TN is going for like $300-some a month?

I have not seen it get cheaper. AND with cable companies soon relying ONLY on this as their main source of income if things progress as they are, I have no reason to believe it won't get more expensive.

Is it cheaper for you?

dagomike · Sep 30, 2010

trip1ex said:
bandwidth is only getting faster and cheaper.

See recent caps on ATT, Comcast, others. The future will be tiered bandwidth and we'll probably care about repeatedly downloading big media files. If we're lucky we won't have to pay for prioritized content.

trip1ex · Sep 30, 2010

This wouldn't be a huge advantage.

First a TC is expensive. And if your data is on the TC then you still have to back it up. So you'd need another hard drive on top of it.

That's quite an expense. So it's not something that is going to change the ATV's fortunes anytime soon.

Now I could how beneficial it would be if the TC served as a Time Machine backup and Apple developed a tech so it could access the backup of your iTunes content if your computers weren't on.

But even then it's still a large expense and is only going to appeal to a small segment of the market.

Apple actually specifically said people don't want to manage their tv and movie content. I have to mostly agree at this point. It takes up tons of room right now relatively speaking.

I'm sure 5-10 years down the road it's much less an issue as storage keeps on increasing. At the same time it's all relative. Consumers will want BR-quality downloads once they get more storage.

That's why streaming is the answer right now.

I'm actually surprised more tv companies aren't on board with the rental model. Streaming seems to be a pirate deterrent. But I guess they can still stream and copy.

Apple is missing a trick, a small update for huge advantage.

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