@lindsay.at

After seeing the appropriate portion of the Macworld Expo keynote presentation by Steve Jobs, I have some thoughts about the revamped AppleTV.

First off, I'm pretty happy about it. I'm very pleased that the "version 2" is just a software upgrade. It was pretty clear that the original hardware was over-specced for what it did at the beginning, so I bought early with a lot of confidence that the hardware would last. (Subsequent teardown reports that suggested tiny margins on the hardware increased that confidence.)

It's interesting to note that the UK prices haven't changed. At £199 and £269, Apple is treating the UK AppleTV as a niche product. If you know you want it, you've probably already gotten it. As soon as movies are available internationally, then I would expect the price to go down a bit. You gotta have the blades ready to go, if you want to sell cheaper razors...

Looking at the demos available online, it's unclear where the "source" menu has gone. We have a 40GB unit, and when Rosemary or I are feeling in an aimless mood, we'll mount our 500GB iTunes library and browse that for inspiration. I worry somewhat that streaming from arbitrary sources might be compromised in the new software.

The store integration is very impressive, and very inviting. It's what's needed to make rentals work: highly visual, presenting a multitude of choices, and accommodating to impulse buys (or rentals). It looks like a model that all others should follow.

However, the AppleTV now appears to be little more than a portal for the iTunes Store. The menu system puts an extraordinary amount of attention on the Store, and pushes one's own content to the bottom. It seems odd that streaming content over the internet is given such priority after the first version: Apple's view always seemed to be, "Don't trust the internet's quality of service, but you can stream over the LAN." LAN-based content, as far as I can tell, seems to be hidden.

I always viewed Podcasts as a back door for (free) content onto the AppleTV. They are the "other easy way" to get content pushed (automatically) into the living room. Before, entering arbitrary URLs into iTunes (perhaps via a clickable itpc: link) was about equivalent to subscription via Apple's iTunes Podcast directory. Now, via the AppleTV, the iTunes store solidifies its position as an orifice to podcasts. It looks inviting, instantly gratifying, and well done, but it makes Apple more of a gatekeeper to free content.

The fact that high definition finally makes its appearance is exciting to me. It's not how I originally imagined it would be, but everything I've read suggests that SVC scalable video encoding isn't ready for prime time yet. It may make an appearance, once hi-def moves to a purchase model/off the AppleTV exclusively.

There has been some speculation on why hi-def is AppleTV only. Some think it might be due to piracy concerns by the studios, but I think there are technology reasons as well. For 5.1 surround sound, there is no reliable, universal way for Mac or PC users to enjoy content encoded that way. High-Definition video cannot be played out on any of the iPhone/iPod family, either, so simply placing that content into iTunes creates a confusing situation ("this content is not compatible with your iPod") for those much-beloved users. In other words, hi-def is AppleTV-only because the technology isn't ready to accommodate the other devices in the ecosystem. I've outlined the ways it could happen, eventually, but for now, a closed, black box solution is sufficient for content that will not have a lifespan beyond thirty days.

I'm really eager to see the updated software myself, but I do worry that Apple may have made itself too much of a gatekeeper to content in the rush to give people the movie rentals they wanted.

We've had an AppleTV in our house for about nine months now, and it really has changed the way my entire family views television. I am convinced that Apple has the wherewithal to make it a compelling story for a mass market. Much though I want to believe, Apple's big steps in this direction at Macworld this week don't necessarily have to include high definition. What's most important is that people see that the AppleTV is the best-of-breed device for viewing digital content in the living room.

I've bought into the Apple picture whole-heartedly, so I get why things are the way they are (the MPEG-4 video codecs are good, the complexity is well-understood, and they are much more legitimately standards than other video formats found in the wild). Still, people want to be confident they can view content without bothering about the format. The potential consumers are right.

The iPod was helped immeasurably by MP3s that people had on their computer already and by CDs that people own. People expect, by drawing a parallel, that the AppleTV's play is for downloaded DiVX-video and DVDs that they own. Ultimately, the winner in this race will be the player who can make that back-door content work seamlessly for people.

I suspect Apple got into the AppleTV to help the MPEG-4-encoded content (read: iPod) ecosystem along. It's been a success already, in converting YouTube to H.264. However, it draws too much attention to its own store as being the odd man out. Even though the iTunes store's content is based on an international standard with a much more open pedigree than Windows Media, it appears to the outsider to be a closed ecosystem: the only convenient way to get video onto the AppleTV appears to be through the iTunes Store.

Although I use the iTunes store a lot, I get video from a lot of other sources, from downloading .flv's and .avi's, to DVDs that I own, to content from my digital camera or mobile phone. VisualHub worked well for many months, but I eagerly embraced the Turbo.264 when it was released (and now that it reliably works on all content I throw at it, the workflow is easier). I do recognise that I've drunk the Kool-Aid: I mention "workflow" when talking about the AppleTV. That's a sign that getting video onto the AppleTV isn't good enough yet. The perception that the iTunes Store is the only convenient way of obtaining video isn't that far from reality.

Apple is sure to introduce a new way or ways to get iTunes Store content onto your AppleTV within fewer than 24 hours of me writing this. I'm a staunch AppleTV defender, but thinking about it, the critics are right: there have to be more and easier ways of getting your content onto the AppleTV.

While the "easiest" way would be to get Perian's Windows-centric codec support onto the AppleTV (and allow iTunes to understand and sync that content as well), I don't think we're going to see that so soon. It's an aphorism that broader choice of content will win over devices that restrict that choice. However, I think that because (1) no one else provides the same compelling device interface, (2) going with bastardised standards (like Xvid) is too distasteful to Apple, (3) it steps outside of the iPhone/iPod ecosystem, which is more important than the AppleTV on its own, and (4) it has to toe the line on piracy with Hollywood, Apple will not make a play for expanded codecs until there is serious competition.

Apple is almost sure to make it easier to buy content directly onto the AppleTV. Is it time to tap the other source of freely available content and enable PVR capabilities on the AppleTV? That has the possibility of working, because there's the possibility of getting reliable metadata into the mix.

Back in 2002, I gave some lectures to students on multimedia metadata, and waved my first generation iPod. "I don't know if you've heard of this device yet," I said, "but it runs on metadata. All of the menus, scanning through by artist, album, or genre, depend on metadata to find your music." The same can be said of the AppleTV, as well. Electronic Programme Guides provide the link between broadcast content and getting content metadata covered. If you want to evaluate the strength of possible methods for adding video to the AppleTV, look to the metadata.

So, what does that mean to me in a couple hours? Rental content, content direct to the AppleTV, and the option of an interface to digital television? Likely. High Definition content amongst the content available on the store? WANT. But it's not as likely as I once thought, sadly.

This is the last time I'll indulge in this sort of iTunes-HD speculation until at least January 2008. I will freely admit that it's colored by wishful thinking, but here are some thoughts about Tuesday's upcoming press conference at the Regent Street that allow me to hope that Apple could possibly advance the state of the art in Hi-Def video delivery.

I'm not denying an iPhone announcement. That would be a fool's bet. I just think there could be something else cooking as well.

1) It's been quiet on the new television season front. While there are a few US shows whose seasons have already started, the big series seem to be starting from Sunday (23 September). Last year, many pre-paid, discounted season passes were trumpeted and pushed on the iTunes store. The distinct impression I get is that the store is waiting for something.

2) As I've pointed out before, if Apple wants to include high-definition televisual content on its store, it is best done at the start of the US TV season. Changing mid-season will confuse and frustrate users. The next opportunity will be September 2008.

3) The BBC has a lot of high-definition content that's just begging to be more widely distributed than it currently is. "Planet Earth" is consistently cited as a best-selling title in both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats. Selling titles like "Hotel Babylon," "Robin Hood," and "Torchwood," for example, might actually benefit from the one-at-a-time taster format of the iTunes store (rather than the outlay required for a whole season on disc).

4) Partnering with content producers like the BBC may well be a way for Apple to soldier forward with its ambitious plans: Hollywood and the major American TV broadcast networks have been digging their heels in response to Apple's increasing power as a digital content distributor.

I've had a lot more thoughts on Apple's recent moves since last posting. None is quite enough to post individually, but they seem to make for a decent set of thoughts.

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There has been a wide range of prices thrown around as possibilities for a new pricing structure for television shows on iTunes. Prices from $0.99 to $4.99 have been quoted. I have only seen the prices reported at their face value and only compared to $1.99 for the existing standard definition purchases. Has no one else considered that $0.99 might be for a rental, and higher prices might be for High Definition?

Incidentally, people should not forget that HD television purchases have had an established price for nearly ten months: Xbox Live has offered 720p download purchases for $3.00 since last November.

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Mike Lee's rant on the entitlement people felt on hearing about Apple's iPhone price drop was amazing, and expanded on my initial reaction perfectly. That said, Apple's premeditated response was perfect. I also see it as being a

1. one-time benefit to early adopters of any of Apple's products ("This is life in the technology lane." In other words, "I hope you've learned your lesson."), and
2. the product of a wide-ranged sociological experiment. (Would users take this sort of price drop? No? Okay, we've learned a lesson.)

Perhaps it was enabled by – or even the reason behind – Apple selecting a subscription financial model for the iPhone.

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I am a bit stymied by the specificity of the naming of the "iTunes Wi-Fi music store." At first, I got it: Apple's not going to deal with delivery over the mobile telecom networks, and they're not dealing with video. Fine. It's verbose, but clear.

On second blush, however, I wasn't so sure. Why couldn't this be used for purchases over the AppleTV? The same underlying model (and controller) surely would serve the AppleTV's interface equally well. In fact, the seven major store headings ("New Releases," "What's Hot," "Genres," "Featured," "Top Tens," "Search," and "Downloads") line up fairly well with the YouTube interface headings ("Featured," "Most Viewed," "Most Recent," "Top Rated," "History," "Search," and "Log In").

I would have thought the ITunes Wi-Fi music store was a sure sign that similar functionality was coming to the living room. Perhaps it is, but under a different name: "iTunes AppleTV store." That gets around the music-or-video question as well.

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Last week, I had thought the iPhone's closed API was because of the the mobile carriers. Apple didn't want to come up with a guaranteed API until it had all of its carrier agreements down, and there was no chance of the carriers pushing to have their own applications on the Springboard. Independent reverse-engineering and programming has been allowed because there's little chance of it appealing to institutions. Thanks to Ben Metcalfe, I now think that the iPhone interface may never be "open" in an official way:

Dave Winer has a good observation:

“Scoble wants an SDK so developers can create cool iPhone apps. Of course I do too. But I doubt it’s going to happen anytime soon. Look at all the deals they can do if they don’t. Starbucks wouldn’t need them if there was an SDK. And Tulley’s could do their own, as could Peet’s, and Whole Foods, etc etc. Apple wants all that business, I’m sure. And they want to be able to sell Starbucks an exclusive. They couldn’t if there was an SDK.”

When he announced the iPhone, Steve Jobs said there would be no SDK because you could do everything you needed to in a web-browser/web-development environment. Clearly that’s not the case - the Starbucks’ widget is not something that the rest of us can implement.

It’s bad enough that users will be forced to have Starbucks marketing on their iPhone/iPod Touch screen. It’s a kick in the face to have built that with hidden functionality that goes against the previous ideals that were made about openness of the platform.

Apple may well be trying to be the new "orifice" here, via its Applications and unique partnerships, to displace the mobile carriers' own entrenched positions.

Well, I'm glad I still own some Apple stock.

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I also noticed the iPod TV-out picture suddenly got more complicated. The new iPod nano and the iPod classic will not output video to the television without a (new) cable or accessory including an Apple authentication chip.

Could this be the start of Apple's (public) implementation of a "secure signal path" for the purposes of complying with Digital Rights Management requirements of High-Definition video content providers?

Also recently: iPod classic vs. Flash, Where's the HD?, iPhone vs. iPod touch, and Technical feasibility on HD delivery.

I live in hope.

Apple's announcement yesterday was about music. I had hoped that it would fill in the picture for high-definition video delivery to the home. I still think the pre-holiday season is the ideal time to deliver this, for Apple.

So, because it's my nature, I'm continuing to speculate on Apple's hi-def delivery possibilities until it does happen. I think if it happens this year, it'll have to happen soon, like, by 18 or 19 September by the latest. Why? The major US networks' television season starts in earnest on Sunday 23 September, and that will be a well-established, rich stream for ready high-definition content. The movie releases will probably be a trickle, but seeing downloadable television in hi-def will get consumers used to seeing it on their big-screen, flat TVs, and demanding it in greater quantities.

Since I'm engaged in reckless speculation, I may as well add that I believe that that sort of deadline is what led to Apple's particular urgency in the negotiations with NBC, and the public spat that followed. I think the $4.99 price point that has been the focus of the dispute, and has since baffled commentators, was the price that NBC was pulling for with HD downloads. Why, if NBC is doubling the wholesale price, would the end-consumer's price go up by 150%? Only if Apple's costs were increased. I'm guessing they would triple from where they are.

I imagine that Apple was pulling for a slight wholesale premium for high-definition television downloads. Maybe they were pulling for a $2.99 price, more likely they were willing to go up to $3.99. NBC may well have said, "If you're charging double, we want to charge you twice the price." The bandwidth costs, however, would eat into Apple's margins, and they reached an impasse, made particularly painful because Heroes in hi-def would be the ideal flagship launch title. Apple's response was to pull NBC's new season launches, to eliminate confusion about standard-definition downloads, living in hope that the NBC-hi-def picture would resolve before year- (or season-) end. (If a program is upgraded to HD mid-season, what happens to the existing downloads? A solution is technically possible, but it will cost money, and create a logistical nightmare for billing of – and communications with – customers.)

I want to believe that Apple had planned HD for yesterday's event (and had ABC, CBS, FOX, and the CW lined up), but pulled it in hopes that two weeks' more negotiation would make the difference with NBC. For once, I think that Apple does not hold all the cards at the negotiating table. They scored an early win in public opinion, but NBC's move to Amazon's Unbox service was a clever counter, confusing people with regards to Apple's stated prices. Ultimately, these public moves won't count for much during negotiations.

Me, I really am hoping to see Heroes in hi-def, offered on the iTunes store. I would pay a reasonable price for the season. So long as Apple negotiates the right price for the bundled package, I don't care so much what the individual episodes cost.

I, like Blackfriars, am holding on to my hope that next week's iPod announcement will offer the beginnings of Apple's high-definition strategy. Blackfriars asks, "High-definition video putting the special in next week's Apple Special Event?":

Speaking of the Internet bringing the end of TV as we know it, everyone seems to be expecting new music and iPod offerings at the Apple Special Event in Moscone Center on September 5. But what has gone more or less unnoticed is the fact that Akamai, Apple's long-time Internet content partner, has announced that it is adding high-definition video to its Internet distribution offerings.

A coincidence? Perhaps. But add the fact that Apple TV, a product whose revenue is being recognized as a 24-month subscription model like the iPhone, sports high-definition outputs, yet has no high-definition iTunes content yet, and you've got a high-definition shoe ready to drop sometime; the only question is when.

Well, I've been wondering the same thing. Back in April, I outlined that it's certainly technically feasible: There's a new extension to H.264 that allows an additional video stream to enhance the basic stream that's there. iPods and iPhones would only need to sync with the basic 640×360 pixel stream that the iTunes store already delivers. An AppleTV, Intel-based Mac, or G5 Mac would be able to read both video streams at once, combine them, and show 720p high definition.

I could once again be blinded by the possible and the (personally) desirable over "likely." Apple could well excite people enough with the new iPods. The movie studios may well be holding out for rentals (though Blackfriars has some thoughts on that, as well) before handing Apple the keys to the HD castle as well. The combination of the Beatles, new iPods, and Hi-Def may well be too much for such an event: Hi-Def may not materialise this year.

But I'm hoping.

(Via The Macalope.)

When Apple's iTunes Music Store introduced video at 320×240 resolution back in October 2005, it raised a number of questions: how would it scale up? How could they manage movies at that paltry resolution? The iPod's video hardware is so limited, how could it even scale up to 640×480? All of the anxiety about complex solutions were laid to rest after Apple introduced the movies and a firmware upgrade that got a lot more performance out of existing hardware. I argue that similar things will happen in the transition to High-Def video for the Apple TV.

In answer to the above questions, a lot of theories were thrown around in the buildup to the much-rumoured and much-anticipated introduction of movies to the iTunes Store. Theories included having to deliver video at two different sizes and/or bitrates at once, or supporting preferences favouring mobile or high quality. All of them added unnecessary complexity to the simplicity of the iTunes store experience, and felt like a "kludge."

Apple's solution was simple: all videos would be delivered at a high-quality 640×480 maximum resolution, encoded with the H.264 video codec. The firmware on the fifth generation iPod was updated, and impressively so (from 900 macroblocks in MPEG-4 to 1200 with H.264 encoding), so no dual delivery formats were needed. Simplicity is maintained.

With the introduction of the Apple TV, and the accompanying hand-wringing about the relatively poor quality of 640×360 pixel movies shown on HDTVs, attention is turning to how Apple plans to deliver High Definition content to the Apple TV. I don't think the current iPods can be made to understand a high definition stream. While some may imagine a multiple format delivery scenario as predicted before the introduction of movies, I think Apple has another potential trick up its sleeve.

The technology is an extension to H.264, Scalable Video Coding (SVC), and it was scheduled to reach the Final Draft Amendment stage last week. Normally¹, that stage means that the standard is all but finalised; nothing but editorial changes are allowed. An aggressive company often can feel confident in releasing a product based on it if, say, they controlled the whole ecosystem around the product....

The idea around SVC is that you have a normal H.264 base layer, and you can add enhancement layers on top of it, whether they be spatial, temporal, or SNR enhancements. That means that you can improve the resolution, frame rate, and/or picture quality by adding additional streams to the base layer. Consider that the 640×360 standard 16:9 videos have half the pixels in each dimension from 720p videos with 1280×720. This is perhaps the most basic application of spatial scalability, but it's also very relevant. I find it very easy to imagine an additional "track" in QuickTime that fills in three additional pixels out of every four. If a computer (say, my G4 PowerBook) is incapable of handling the full high-def combined stream, it can conveniently fall back to the base layer.

So, in the context of the iTunes ecosystem, these multiple streams and the increased file size need not be delivered to the iPod: with iTunes as the designated hub, the enhancement stream could quite feasibly be stripped when syncing with the iPod. One download, both standard and high definition are there for the appropriate device.

The only thing I'm not sure of is how the audio scenario is going to play out. Encoding and delivering the AC3 (Dolby Digital) stream (as an alternative soundtrack) that most home theatres expect seems very inefficient. AC3 and AAC are kissing cousins, so one could hypothesize a bitstream-to-bitstream transcoding from 5.1 AAC to 5.1 Dolby digital to pump through the optical out, but it also seems unnecessarily computationally expensive.

So the how of High Def seems to have a fair shape. It's the "when" that isn't yet clear. In the punditry vacuum where product development is instant and QA is not a factor, it's feasible to push out updates right away. Strategically, it seems like "as soon as possible" is the answer, as well: a lot of people feel that the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format wars aren't close to a resolution, and there's a window of opportunity for HD video downloads to become the preferred delivery medium.

On the other hand, Apple will want to do it right the first time. It's a radical enough change to necessitate a new version (perhaps version 8.0) of QuickTime, and a new version of iTunes as well. Would it accompany an announcement of movie downloads in Europe? Would it accompany the "true" widescreen Video iPod? Would it wait for the end-of-year Christmas cycle, when the Apple TV suddenly becomes the must-have accessory that is even more important than the iPod?

I don't know, but I'm keen to find out. I hope for "soon," but I suspect it'll closer to the end of the year.

[disclaimer: This blog entry is merely informed speculation. Although I have some old ties to MPEG, none of this is gleaned from privileged information. The only research I did of this was on public sites. If you follow this blog and past predictions I have made about Apple's products, you will already know not to lend me too much credence.]

[1] My experience with MPEG standards can attest to the fact that this isn't always true: I'll only say that things got complicated in the final stage of standardisation of the MPEG-7 Systems standard, and I personally pissed off a lot of people during one late Friday night's plenary.

If you've stumbled upon my Twitter feed, then you probably already know that the arrival and installation of my much-anticipated Apple TV was less than trivially easy. Our old television wanted nothing to do with the component output from the device (sound, no picture), so plans to obtain a new HDTV were moved up.

We ended up going to Costco for a 32-inch Samsung LCD, which has been a real pleasure so far. Once the AppleTV was hooked up, however, a new problem emerged. The network really was unkind to the AppleTV, and frequently dropped the connection between it and iTunes. No synchronisation was possible, and both iTunes and the AppleTV frequently got confused.

After some examination of the Apple discussion boards, it quickly became clear that the problem was my old Linksys wireless router. It limps along enough to provide ADSL connectivity and wireless access at home, but the ethernet ports on it are fried, and both ADSL and wireless have their bad days. The solution (reached after far too many trips between the ground floor and the attic) was to pull out an unused Airport Express, use the Mac mini as a bridge from the wireless connection to the router to its ethernet port, and set up the Airport Express as another wireless network to which the AppleTV connects. Ahem. So, put another way:
AppleTV --wlan-> Airport Express --e'net-> Mac mini --wlan-> Linksys --adsl-> Internet

I hope this is just a temporary measure, but it seems to have solved the problem for now. I now have a working AppleTV.

I've been watching Fake Steve Jobs for a while now, and now I'm realising that, true to his growing reputation as the Suck 2.0, writing in character and adopting a persona really can free one up, not only for iconoclastic pronouncements, but for making real insights. I was bowled over when I saw NBC and News Corp., sitting in a tree:

What we're doing today with things like Apple TV or TiVo is just applying Band-Aids to patch up a frigtarded system (linear TV programming) that made sense in the 1950s when bandwidth was limited. Our Apple TV only sidesteps the problem. It still forces you to download to your computer, then beam through a router to our TV box and then up into your TV. So great. Now you've got more pipes coming into your TV but this new pipe is kind of unreliable (wifi routers) and slow and clumsy.

The real fix is gonna happen when someone figures out the back end, aggregating good content (ie Seinfeld and I Love Lucy rather than Ask a Ninja) and then finds a way to get that straight into your TV without all these clumsy connections and multiple hops. But it's a battle. The linear model, as stupid as it is, still clings to life. Inertia is a powerful thing. But ultimately we'll win. Give us ten years. And yeah, this is why Apple is presenting itself to the Hollywood studios as a friend and ally, not a competitor. It's also why we didn't buy YouTube.

It's not necessarily the future, or the future as imagined by Apple, but it's definitely a (plausible) future...

So, Ars Technica's post on the brains of the iTV has got me speculating even further: is this a "thin" version of Mac OS X, or a custom bit of software? The idea that it might be an x86 chip, plus, say, Intel integrated graphics, makes me lean a lot towards a stripped-down Mac OS X.

How small a memory footprint can you fit into with just, say, Darwin, plus Core Foundation, plus QuickTime and Core Animation? The full QuickTime API (i.e., editing) need not be exposed to developers, right? And Core Audio/Image/Video seem implicit in the above choices. Quartz Composer? If we were to be greedy, what about WebKit? On the plus side it could enable a Widget ecosystem on the TV. On the minus side, it's browsing on the TV: not always the right place for the job. On the plus side, if Apple could nail the user experience, then it could be amazing, and perhaps the killer app for an iTV.

Three more points to consider: my Nokia S60 Browser demonstrates how small WebKit could be made to be, and that web browsing is possible with a four-way remote plus select and back buttons. The Surfin' Safari blog also had a series of entries about high DPI web sites, which might equally be applied in the opposite direction for standard definition televisions.