FlipFriddle - 03 November 2009 11:58 AM

I’m really hoping that Apple TV will eventually become the ONE box you have in your living room that serves content; audio to stereo and video to your TV. So I’d like it to act as my cablebox, DVR (but TiVo already Steve!), iPhoto library, and iTunes library. Basically if it involves media of any kind it is served up by the AppleTV. Then I could get rid of all of the cable spaghetti, power hogs, and space that I have now ...

I’m waiting for the day too.

I am with The Irish Guy from Switzerland. What was the numbers for Europe again, in the last earnings report? 45% or thereabouts? Not a small market for Apple then, so I should say it would matter somewhat to the sales of Apple TV if they could give us a reason to buy it. We don´t have TV-shows or films to rent in iTunes in Norway, either. Neither do they have it in Germany, in Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Finland or in any other European country where they have the iTMS, except for UK, I think.
Apple TV for me is not so interesting without that possibility and I guess that goes for lots of others as well. Here in Norway, there is no other possibility to rent movies on a Mac, either. Everyting is WMP. Backward country although they like to brag of being the first to embrace new tech. Haha.

I have 2 aTV’s and I’m very happy with them. Big hit with my kids for watching the 100+ movies and 80+ TV shows. We love being able to display our 14,000+ photos and play our 4000+ songs. Watching YouTube videos on the big screen is a scream, and as we listen to music: seeing our collection of photos floating by in random order reminds us of times past that we literally would never look for is pure genius. With my in-wall/ceiling speakers throughout my house and deck connected via an Airport Express with Airtunes and as the aTV’s also serve Airtunes, it’s really cool to be able to push our music throughout the house from either of our aTV’s or iTunes. An added bonus is the ability to control all of this with my iPhone. And when not doing any of that it’s nice to chill out when the kids go to bed and rent a high quality HD movie and begin watching within one minute.

My point is that the aTV for the price is not to be sniffed at. Sure, there’s room for improvements and extensions, but for the price it delivers a lot of value today.

If your ISP or home network is not delivering your HD movies fast enough, know that it is not generally the fault of Apple Servers. If your aTV is connected via WiFi, try using an ethernet cable to see if that makes a difference. If you’re using an ethernet cable and transfer rates are still low, try getting a gigabit switch/router. Also, not all cables are the same, make sure you’re using CAT/5, CAT/5E, or CAT6 (5E is best standard, 6 is best but I don’t think it’s an accepted standard yet).
Also, test you download/upload rates to ensure you’re getting what you’re paying your ISP for. Try services like speedtest.net to test your xfer rates.

So what would I like to see in the future?
- Broader content for sure. I noticed that iTunes Movie content is not permanent. I went to watch the Changeling one evening after seeing it in the “Top Movies” and “Top Rentals” section for a while to find that it was no longer available. I was stunned to see that content comes and goes. I’ve since noticed this is the same with Verizon FiOS (and so probably other Cable providers also).
- Integrated BluRay player -OR- Disc Sharing so I can pop a DVD on my Mac and play it on aTV (Macbook Air feature)
- Subscription based Movies (NetFlix-like) -OR- integrated NetFlix
- Subscription based TV shows (cable-like)
- DVR: I read a while back that Apple submitted a patent application for a DVR
- Better control for categorizing My Music, Movies, TV Shows
- Assign specific music to photo slideshows. This is available on iTunes, it would be nice if this information could be synched between aTV’s and iTunes.
- External HDD support

Here’s my list:

*Better support for large iTunes libraries. ATV pigs out in a really bad way on my 4000+ track library, even after copying a large chunk of it to the ATVs drive. Boxee and XBMC work just fine accessing the tracks directly. Apple probably just needs to optimize something. It’s horrible that it shipped this way.

*Remove the delay between when movies are available to buy and when they are available to rent. I realize this may be out of their control, but because of the way this works I almost never rent movies from iTunes.

*Support for networked media: I don’t want to have to sync everything through iTunes. Boxee and XBMC have features where you can set up SMB shares that I’ve found very useful. Its really handy to be able to simply throw a file in a directory and be able to watch/listen to it on the ATV rather than needing to sync it through a central iTunes db.

*I’d like a better remote also. There’s a lot you could do with the iPhone/iPod Touch interface… but I think Apple should create a dedicated remote that has a scroll-wheel. Its a drag trying to navigate long lists with the existing remote. A scroll wheel could also be used for some nice shuttle features.

Other obvious stuff:
*Open dev kit for creating plug-ins for internet content.
*Netflix watch-instantly
*DVR done the Apple way (not likely, since they’d need to add a tuner/video in)
*Blu-ray/DVD playback (would add cost, but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do all this with a single box?!)