[Fixx]

It should be something more than just atv (the little puck) bolted to a standard tv-display. I have no idea what it would be.

HDD atv is not going to happen. Fortunately current tv sets can play content from USB HDD, albeit format support is often not very good.

[josu]

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We don't even have an HDTV in our house. My wife gave away our old 27" living room TV and its massive armoire. We were about to buy an HDTV during the holiday shopping season, but I advised my wife to hold off because I believe Apple may introduce one soon. I just don't understand why Apple would make the whole enchilada, though. Why wouldn't Apple's contribution be in set-top box form and simply be the brains that drives the rest of the system? Then users would be able to choose almost any panel. Timbo believes Apple's users are smart. I'm usually wrong, but I believe smart users would want to choose their own panels and have Apple's user interface. What do you guys think? Do you believe Apple's future TV product will be the whole set?

This is only my opinion, both. If you got a recent HDTV buy the box, if you are in the market for a new TV set the whole thing. Anyway my gess is that the concept of TV will be different, but if you can get the "taste of the future" with the set top box, good. Given that, well executed, next time you will be tempted for the whole integrated product.

[TheHeeNow]

The entire gigantic scent-marked TV industry needs to be bulldozed into a pile and a match thrown in before Apple can do anything about it.

The FCC itself spends more time scent-marking than regulating.

Even if we had all that we can get we would be both bankrupt and driven insane by the number of boxes, remotes, subscriptions, and wireless/wired interfaces to "have it all".

[quietline]

Recently upgraded from a first generation AppleTV to the newest one. I have to say that the navigation/flow, in general, is definitely worse with the new one. If you want to view content from an iTunes library instead of primarily streaming from the cloud, you are stuck with a lot more clicking. And I still haven't been able to get it to log me into YouTube properly.

Overall, I'm still happy with the upgrade solely due to the ability to watch HD rendered video from EyeTV at better resolution and fps. But, it appears to be blatantly pushing users to the cloud..

[cphoffman42]

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@ingus - buy a first generation TV with the hard drive built-in. Mine still works great!

I loved my first generation Apple TV, but the hard drive eventually failed a few months ago. I thought about trying to replace it, but it's a true PITA, since the need a disk image from a functioning aTV, the partitioning is wacky, etc. Eventually just decided to get the new (1080p) aTV. I'm pretty happy with it, but would love to have that hard drive, which is especially important if you are in a laptops-only household and you have a decent number of movies converted with handbrake rather than bought directly from iTunes. The design of the new unit is vastly superior to the old (e.g., it doesn't run constantly at about 400 degrees), but I would love to be able to plug in an external hard drive.

[jrguk]

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Makes far more sense to make the "brains" as a separate unit with HDMI out... IMHO

agreed. My TV's a 2010 model (bought early 2011) and already the manufacturer isn't supporting all of the latest apps in its online interface (newer APIs, newer, faster hardware).

Am I going to replace a whole TV on a two year schedule? Of course not. But if there were a stand-out product in the small, cheap internet-connected set-top-box space then I'd go for that (I'm just not sure how such a thing can make Apple money by itself. I'm not sure how it can make Roku money, either: apparently it hasn't, so far) knowing that I might need to replace it on a shorter cycle.

I don't think we'll ever see one from Apple with a physical hard drive again though. That way, at least, Apple might sell a Mac to be running iTunes with a video library stored on it (and which, incidentally, can contain more than just iTunes-purchased video.)

[wardoggie]

I'd hate to see Apple make a "smart TV," but I'd love for them to make a huge 60" monitor that functions like a TV, only has one HDMI input and gets its content from an Apple TV. Make the next generation Apple TV a convergence device with a bunch of inputs and only one HDMI output and the required output for audio. Maybe it would have a built-in Blu-Ray/DVD player so you could control everything through whatever interface they dreamed up ("Siri, play Blu-Ray"). And for those who wanted to plug something else in, like a game console, okay, they could do it and the Apple TV would learn what's plugged into which input and work all that stuff out.

I think the combination of Apple dumb TV screen and super-smart Apple TV set top box would hit the simplicity sweet spot.

[CPD_1]

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Yeah, why does it have a USB port in the back, that's good for nothing. Seems like the apple developers are on vacation lately.

It's a servicing port. If you had to take it in to Apple, the can use it for diagnostic purposes and/or updating software.

[k88dad]

I can't imagine why anyone would choose a smart TV over a set top box.

My $50 Roku box does most of what I need it to do. It's almost as good as a dedicated Mac Mini next to the TV. I can stream from a Mac on the home network. I can watch Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. I can scrape web sites, via both Plex and Nowhere TV. I can listen to internet radio, Pandora, Spotify, etc. It requires some tech knowhow for the client-server aspects, but not much. It gets more user friendly every day.