iTV
And where do you plan on getting the 1080p content. 720p is the best broadcast or upscaled to 1080i...only HD-DVD and BluRay provide 1080p content..there is no other source of 1080p.
Sure there are. HD television recievers, and user-content. Games (iTV is for PC too, remember?) But most importantly, iTunes will eventually bring high-def over the Internet. And why not with the release of iTV? The Showtime event showed that the iTV will have an HDMI port, which of course, is for HD content. Why can't Apple start offering movies in HD on iTunes? Present digital distrobution as a viable alternative to the costly HD-disc formats, and with more movie studios onboard (as rumored after the heavy-DVD holiday buying season), imagine being able to get whatever movie you want, in high def, for cheap on your living room HDTV. This might even be the right time to bring out subscription models for iTMS, $14.99 a month for unlimited music rentals, and $29.99 a month for unlimited movie/TV rentals, maybe $39.99. Make iTMS more like the media store of the future, streaming all the content you want to your computer and then to your computer. Essentially, this takes every single cable TV provider and knocks them out of the business. Another monopoly for Apple.
That is the future.
What's preventing it?
1) The computers: current US ISP speeds. Most US homes do not get more than about 4 MB/s of bandwidth download, and many get less. People who have cable (and dont have neighbors with cable) or Verizon's FiOS do have the necessary bandwidth. If you get the above model, you're only going to be able to download HD movies. No VoIP. No games. No Youtube in the background, cause you simply don't have enough bandwidth. As it is, HD movies take up TONS of hard drive space, much more than whats available on off-the-shelf consumer Macs if you're going to download more than a couple. Forget about laptops. Time to download actually isn't a problem, so the movie takes about 30 mins before you can start watching as you're downloading instead of a few mins. Its a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the current day, and as the future arrives, this wont be a problem with FttH (fiber to the home) becomes more prevalent and people get faster connections.
2) The content providers themselves. Content providers, like it or not, are paranoid. And any relatively informed content provider is going to get cold-feet at the prospect of HD content being transferred un-encrypted over 802.11. And even if Apple can develop some kind of encryption that works between iTV and iTunes and yet still works with run-of-the-mill 802.11 NICs, odds are that content providers are still not really going to like the future. Not many companies in general do, I mean look at how Verizon Wireless locks up the Bluetooth functionality on its phones and forces you to use VCast.
3) The consumers. HDTV's may have been the hot, hot product this holiday season, but if you look at the numbers there are still very few people out there with HDTVs yet, let alone those that can play 1080p. Broadband? (following numbers may be inaccurate, sry) Barely 2/3 of the US has Internet access, and only half of those have any kind of broadband access, which can be as low as 256 Kb/s download. I mean, only in 2006 did the number of households with DVD players pass the number of households with VHS players. And like it or not, considering that this is a new direction that Apple is heading in, Apple needs to bring out the marketing team and put this alongside the TiVos in retail stores, not just Apple retail. If it stays with Apple retail, its gonna take a year or two to take off, just like the iPod. Many people can afford an iPod, entertainment, an HDTV, a computer, appropriate monthly power, TV, ISP bills, or a life, and many people have some combo of those, but very few people can afford all. And considering the fact that the iTV essentially asks people to buy all of those (many people buy an iPod before anything else from Apple), and an additional $300 for the iTV itself may be too much for a lot of people. A lot of people are going to ask themselves first, "What's wrong with the way I'm doing it right now? Why not go to a local Best Buy, pick up a plain DVD which looks just fine to me, and bring it home and watch it?"
Sure, many of those questions Apple's already answered, but many it either needs to answer for the first time or answer again. And that could mar a great product.
Now for the actual rumor
Steve Jobs will announce at MWSF, show off all the features, and then say shipping in February. Simple as that.
