Let's get something straight from the get-go: This is not a column bashing Apple. This is a column bashing anybody who gets sucked in and reprogrammed by the Apple hype machine, which is, admittedly, a powerful force that can indeed be hard to resist. Oh, and while I'm busy not bashing Apple, I might inadvertently bash Sony and Microsoft a bit, but it's for their own good, because it gets a little boring watching Apple repeatedly pummel them in the digital media arena, which includes--in case you needed a more precise definition--music and video.
I've come here to tell you I already have iTV. No, I'm not an Apple beta tester nor a personal friend of Steve's--though I did grow up not far from where he now lives. And no, the device I have isn't really called iTV. But it is a mass consumer product that's been spit out of a hype machine of its own.
It's called the Xbox 360.
In case you didn't know, the Xbox 360 also doubles as a "media extender" for those who own a Windows Media Center PC. You can actually stream some media content--music and photos--to your Xbox 360 using just a garden-variety Windows XP computer, but to really lock into more of an iTV-like experience, you'll want to go with a Media Center PC, which I happen to have. Most Media Center PCs have TV tuner cards, so you can record TV shows and movies from your cable or satellite feed, then stream them to another room so long as your home network, whether it be wired or wireless, has the requisite bandwidth. You can also stream live TV, though only at standard-definition resolution.
Xbox 360: It streams music, movies, TV, and photos to your living room--if you have a Media Center PC.
Microsoft has done a pretty good job of making it reasonably easy to convert the Xbox 360 into a media extender. You run through a wizard on the Xbox 360, install a free software program on your PC, and in less than 10 minutes, you can link your Xbox 360 to your PC and access media files stored on your computer's hard drive.
In theory, Apple may be able to make its iTV interface and the setup process even more elegantly simple--the onscreen interface demoed by Steve Jobs was undeniably slick--but with the Xbox 360, Microsoft has shown it can put together a polished, user-friendly interface and tie it to an impressive online service, Xbox Live, which has benefited from several upgrades. As anybody who's downloaded a high-def movie trailer from Xbox Live can attest, Microsoft has also shown that it can do a good job with video compression technologies. Its high-def VC-1 codec offers some distinct advantages over MPEG-2--for instance, its compression of deep colors (red in particular) has much less of a tendency to introduce blockiness. I think it looks good, and more importantly, so do our resident videophiles--Senior Editor David Katzmaier and frequent contributor Kevin Miller.
Of course, the one big drag on Microsoft's current media-extender strategy is the relative dearth of people who own Media Center PCs and actually use their Xbox 360s for that purpose. That will change early next year when Microsoft's Vista operating system finally arrives. Two of the five Vista versions--Home Premium and Ultimate--will essentially have the next iteration of Media Center functionality built in.
Ultimately, what it all boils down to is that Apple's iTV is hardly the new, revolutionary concept that many in the general media and some tech pundits have made it out to be. Microsoft has been wading in this territory for a while, as have several smaller companies with hardware (Akimbo, Moviebeam, and TiVo, to name three) and services (including Amazon's new Unbox). And Sony is certainly trying to put something together with its PlayStation 3 and what it hopes--or I should say, prays--is a revitalized Connect service. (The new, improved Connect, which is supposed to rival iTunes, was due out months ago but got mired in delays.)
Apple's "iTV": the future of digital media delivery?
If it could get its service act together, Sony's one big video trump card has always been its library of content. There are its movie studios, but lest we forget, it also has the rights to all those Seinfeld episodes, which could certainly become instant top downloads on any service. Personally, I think that, from a technology standpoint, Microsoft is currently in the strongest position vis-à-vis downloadable video, but if it doesn't act aggressively to expand its Xbox Live service to include downloads of more TV shows--something more than a Battlestar Galactica highlight reel--and full-length movies, the Apple juggernaut will get rolling and be hard to stop. Video is much more challenging than audio--read John Falcone's comprehensive blog entry to get an idea of some of the pitfalls Apple and consumers face with both iTunes video and iTV--but when a company masters such a difficult road first, it becomes that much more difficult for its competitors to get any traction in the marketplace.
Which media player would you prefer: Apple's iTV or Microsoft's Xbox 360?
In my ideal Xbox 360 scenario, the PC, rather the Xbox 360, would be the media extender. One of the key steps for Microsoft will be to sell higher-capacity hard drives (100GB to 200GB, rather the 20GB drive that comes with the current Xbox 360) for reasonable prices so you can store a lot more content right on your 360. It also needs to go to a subscription-based, all-you-can eat service that allows you to download whatever movies and TV episodes it has available in its library for $19.95 a month. I'm willing to download copy-protected content that plays back only on my Xbox 360 and, say, the upcoming Microsoft Zune portable media player, but there's no way I'm paying $10 to download a single movie or $2 for a TV episode--especially when Apple expects me to repurchase it a few months later just because they've boosted the resolution. While they're at it, a Rhapsody-style music subscription option would be a great idea, too.
Of course, the chances of Microsoft--or Sony--executing on a truly compelling music-and-video plan is probably pretty slim. I have a bad feeling that sometime next year I'll be buying an iTV--or whatever name Steve finally settles on--and getting in line with the rest of Apple herd. You tell me: is it inevitable?
Which media player would you prefer: Apple's iTV or Microsoft's Xbox 360?
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