Hulu Had It

I've recently gotten into Boxee. I've been aware of it for quite some time, but I always thought it required far more mucking to install than it actually does. Boxee is only useful to me on Apple TV. It's interface is decent, but not great. I see no reason to use it while I'm sitting at my computers. While sitting in bed in from of my TV, that's another story.

Hooking your MacBook up to the TV to watch Hulu is doable, but it really isn't a good solution. It requires a bunch of temporary cables. Requires you adjust your power management (or wiggle the mouse every few minutes). Worst of all, it owns your notebook while you are watching TV. You can't DO ANYTHING on your computer while it is attached to the TV.

Boxee on Apple TV is great because it brings you Hulu, CBS, and others in a usable format. Nothing new to hook up. It just works. Control it with a remote instead of a keyboard and mouse. The full Hulu experience is there. You see all of the commercials, you see the branding. It's all there.

So then Hulu's partners go and gets stupid. It isn't Hulu, but rather the content providers. You'd think Hulu, who has built the number one destination video site for legal, full, television episodes wouldn't be dumb enough to slap its users in the face, even when the content providers tell them to. As @peterrojas says, Boxee is no different than a web browser. I say Boxee is actually *better* than a web browser for the content provider. Boxee, especially on Apple TV, is running full screen. Users are likely focused on the TV experience, and aren't jumping into a spreadsheet during the commercials. They're watching them.

Hulu also has the unique ability to know who I am. I'm logged into Boxee. They could work with Boxee to make me logged into Hulu. They'd know who I am. They'd know what I watched. They'd know what commercials they've shown me. This has to have value. This has to be better than forcing me to either not watch their content at all, or go get it from a gray/black market source.

Shutting down Hulu on Boxee will NOT send me back to cable. The sooner Hulu and the content providers learn that, the better.

Leopard Loves Content Only

Web clips weren't even a feature I was excited about in Leopard. I gave it a try and it is now a must have feature. Too many web sites, especially sports websites, drown the content in ads and other junk on their pages. One example of this is the nba.com TV schedule.

First of all, I'm thankful to the NBA for even having such a page. I haven't found a page that makes it easy to see what NFL games are on TV. I still don't like all of the junk on that page. I just want a quick look to see who's playing in the next few days and on what network.

I now have a clipped version of this schedule in my dashboard. It auto-updates and gives me just the content I want. Thanks Apple.

*BTW, I'm aware that I didn't need leopard to do this, but I rather like not having to seek out the functionality and remember to install it on all of my computers.

iTunes and Content Production

iTunes has always been about the music. Well, it was until the podcasts, and then the TV shows, and then the movies. Ohh, and the audiobooks have been there too, and you can get digital booklets with albums....iTunes has always been about the content. We've got that established, but iTunes has mostly been about selling other peoples content.

Plenty of folks are calling for iTunes to be the savior of independent content everywhere. Skip the label and publish directly on iTunes. We've seen a little of that with services like CD Baby and we're starting to see things happen with video too. These things are great, and I hope they continue, but I want to connect the dots a little differently. It almost seems like things are shaping up for Apple themselves to be the content producers.

I pull together 3 nuggets of info to suggest that Apple might want to dive deeper into the content production business.

For starters, they've settled with Apple Records and can now produce music if they really wanted to.

Second, Apple appears to be having some success in their partnership with Nike selling exercise influenced mixes. I own two of them (Crystal Method and Aesop Rock ) and I love them. As of this writing, there are 15 such mixes available for purchase. I don't know who is actually financing these productions, but Apple is pushing them and they are iTunes exclusive.

Finally, we have the impending release of the Apple TV. Mine is on order and I expect to spend about $60 on content as soon as it arrives. I'll be more than happy to spend the money as I've cancelled my cable and I'm saving $60 a month already. Apple will want more reasons for people to buy Apple TVs. One of those reasons could be exclusive content. Just like HBO got a nice boost from The Sopranos and how Howard Stern sold buckets of Sirus subscriptions, Apple could snag customers with some exclusive content of their own and they could pay the production costs to make that happen.

Apple has historically had a creative base. How cool would it be for them to start employing some of their users to create content for them? Think about what would happen if the next Lost were an iTunes exclusive. That would seriously shake up the TV world, but it would also piss off the networks they've already signed deals with. Maybe the networks had wording in their contracts that said Apple couldn't produce television shows :)

iTV for me?

I'm sitting on an airplane waiting for them to fix it, so this is as good a time as any to get my thoughts about the iTV down.


For starters, what took so long? I think the iTV is going to be an essential accessory for any iLife using Mac owner. Not only will this be the bridge that brings video content to you TV, but it will bring the rest of your iLife content with it.

• iPhoto albums


• Show off your GarageBand tracks


• Play your iTunes with fantasic cover art and visuals

None of this is new. I've had my ReplayTV loaded with photos for half a decade. Any time the unit is paused or idle, I get to relive my latest vacation or family photos. You've been able to load you self-made music on to your iPod and play it back on your stereo since the very first one. You can stream your iTunes with an Airport Express to your hi-fi, granted without the cover art and visuals.

The thing that is new is the tight integration. I'm sick of seeing the photos loaded on my ReplayTV. I'm sick of them because it's a pain in the ass to load new ones. It's a pain to change the album that gets displays. Even worse, I have to make copies of the photos, burning disk space on the ReplayTV, to enable the feature. I can push and pull video content off of the ReplayTV using the incredible DVarchive, but I still can't just display the pictures sitting on my networked computer. There are countless better solutions available. Elgato makes many of them. Still, I haven't bit because of the seemingly minor inconveniences that prevent a product from getting sustained use.

For example, I bought my parents a photo viewer for Christmas one year. It could read every format on the planet and even came with a remote. My Mom shoots family photos like she's the papparazi and we're Bradgelina. She was excited at first, but I doubt she's used the viewer in the past year. Why? Because it's too hard. You have to pull the card from the camera. You have to have the photos you want to see on the card. You have to use the crappy remote that came with it. You don't get to use your hard work from the desktop side, tagging and sorting in to albums. That work is tremendously valuable, but not when it's locked up in your computer and your friends are in the living room wanting to see pictures of your trip to Alaska.

My hope is that iTV will fix this. Photos will just be available. Music will just be available. Movies will just be available. No additional fuss, just enjoyment. Think how amazing cover flow would look on your 60" plasma. The cover art will be the size of a record sleeve, yummy. The ultimate will be when your TV sits idle, the screensaver fires up, and you see fresh pictures from your subscribed photocasts. Grandparents will flip when they see photos of the grandkids crawling without having to do a gosh-darn-thing. No emails, no printing, no websites. It just shows up.

One last discussion point on content before I move to the hardware.
TV.
It's in the codename, it's not in the stated features. Steve Jobs better get on that stage at Macworld and pull a Ron Popeil.

But wait, there's more! If you call right now, you not only get the iTV that shows pictures, movies, and videos from the iTunes store, but we'll also include, at no additional cost to you, this fresh release of IdiotBox (not the real product name). IdiotBox is your TV, your way.

Just like TiVo and ReplayTV, IdiotBox will be a top of the line PVR app, Apple style. It will run on your Mac and work with a $49 tuner that you buy separately. This would be the missing functionality that would allow me to replace my aging ReplayTV and laugh that $800 Series 3 TiVo right out of Best Buy.


The Hardware

First, the positives.

• Size - At one time I would have moaned that it isn't home theater component width. Screw that. I'm done with that form factor. If the box doesn't need to be that wide, let's not make it that wide. I haven't seen it stated for
  sure, but it appears this is the exact footprint of a Mac Mini. If it isn't, it should be. Stack a Mac mini on
  the iTV and you have your complete content solution, even if you don't have any other computers in the house.


• No DVD player - Good! We don't need that hardware in this box. Rip your DVDs to your hard drive. At the worst,
  shouldn't you be able to play it from the optical drive in your computer? Leave the cost out. I'm ok with no optical drive. I'm funny like that. I want to own the physical DVD, CD, 12" for the visuals, smells, and feel. However, I don't need that experience every time and I certainly don't want to handle it when I want
  to enjoy the content.


• Component and DVI outs - Thank you. If Apple left it at composite and s-vid, like many of the products this will compete with, they would have been instantly hammered with the "I can buy poo-poo-junk.super.play on eBay for $30".


• No wall wart - I will pay a premium for features like this. I hope the world is paying attention.

The negatives

• TV tuner - make it happen


• No Bluetooth remote? Apple, get on it! Someone needs to kick this off. If you put Bluetooth in the iTV, you
  instantly enable it to be hidden away and not require line of sight. You instantly enable it to work with whatever controller we can dream up. You instantly enable two-way remote conversations. Album art, smart menus, searching. If folks don't like your minimum remote, that's ok. They can build their own out of any Bluetooth enabled PDA, or dare I say, iPod! If they add Bluetooth, they could also make this thing an A2DP sink. A2DP is suspiciously missing from Apple's product lineup. I refuse to believe they've ignored it completely or decided that they just won't support it. They support system audio out crappy headset connections. They have to be cooking an A2DP solution.


• Cost - $299 is an ok price point, but not for what I've seen so far. Will an HDMI cable be an extra $79? If you give me PVR capabilities, $299 is a steal. If you don't, I'm going to have to buy poo-poo-junk.super.play off of eBay.

So will I buy an iTV, even at $299? Probably. I'd still like it to come with Bluetooth, and PVR software :)