March 28th, 2007
YouTube On Apple TV?
By Kyle Reasons
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Rumors and speculation over the Apple TV have recently made the switch to hacks and mods. As soon as you thought the speculation was over, here I come with yet more!
The Apple TV is an awesome product. You can stream all of your digital content whether it be music, TV shows, movies, pictures or podcasts from your computer to your television set. As cool as it may be, many see this as only the tip of the ice berg. The possibility of having the ability to rent movies over the Apple TV (on iTunes) doesn’t seem that far fetched. The Apple TV is great is at stands but has alot of potential and options for expandability.
One feature that I believe we will see built into the Apple TV in the future is the ability to view YouTube/Google Videos on the Apple TV. There are a few reasons why I think this may happen:
- Apple and Google are buddies
- Google’s CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt is a member of Apples Board of Directors
- “Like Apple, Google is very focused on innovation and we think Eric’s insights and experience will be very valuable in helping to guide Apple in the years ahead.”-Steve Jobs
- “ Apple is one of the companies in the world that I most admire. I’m really looking forward to working with Steve and Apple’s board to help with all of the amazing things Apple is doing.”-Eric Schmidt
- Apple is working with Google on a modified version of Google Maps for the iPhone
- Google.com/mac (they made the Google logo all pretty for Apple, how sweet)
- Apple TV is a great step towards making IPTV mainstream. Apple dominates the podcasting front thanks to iTunes. Apple dominates in the distribution of Television shows online. Saturation of all of this online media is only making Apple stronger and stronger in regards of IPTV. All of these things are baby steps of course, YouTube would be yet another step.
- Not that YouTube isn’t already mainstream, but I can’t see Google complaining about having the ability to bring YouTube off the computer and into the living room.
Whether this is made possible by a hack or made possible by Apple, I think this would be awesome. Who can resist watching somebody get kicked in the nuts from the comfort of their sofa?
Busto963 says:
A good first try, but…
Lots of usability issues (e.g. screen resolution), slow download speed for movies (our broadband infrastructure sucks in the USA), and with only a 10/100 ethernet connection, it certainly is not going to move movies around the home network very quickly either.
March 28th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Leo says:
And if I read correctly it’s limited to stereo sound. Booooo! How can they have not included Dolby Digital output on this thing, to me that makes this thing absolutely worthless in a home theater setup. Frankly, the Xbox360 does everything the AppleTV does, but better and more.
March 28th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Phatlip12 says:
The problem with the Xbox360 is the fact that it’s a gaming console. It a nice bonus however I can’t see the IPTV abilities built into the 360 being a very strong selling point. Perhaps if Microsoft was to make a box soley for IPTV as Apple did with the Apple TV. THEN things would get REALLY interesting!
Again though, these are all baby steps. As Busto said “good first try”
Kyle Reasons
March 28th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Shane says:
I think this would be a GREAT addition to the Apple TV. I’m looking forward to expanded usability.http://www.applehdtv.net
March 28th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Bill Youngs says:
Apple TV is already a lot more versitile than these comments indicate: for example, copy the URL of a YouTube movie you like, paste it into a program called TubeSock, in YouSock choose “Video for Apple TV” and “Add to iTunes,” and kachung, a short time later it is in iTunes in your computer and also synched onto your Apple TV.
Bill Youngs
Department of History
Eastern Washington University
March 28th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Dave says:
Nice article!
I have to comment and say that I was recently contacted by a marketing person in regards to my Apple TV purchase.
This rep asked a question of what I watch/download to it, and mentioned YouTube. Confused for a second, I figured it was a feature I didn’t know about. But maybe this rep spilled some beans she shouldn’t have? Or mentioned it to create some buzz. Either way, I can’t wait for this!!! w00t!!!!
April 5th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
steveking says:
YouTubeRobot.com today announces YouTube Robot 2.0, a tool that enables you to download video from YouTube.com onto your PC, convert it to various formats to watch it when you are on the road on mobile devices like mobile phone, iPod, iPhone, Pocket PC, PSP, or Zune.
YouTube Robot allows you to search for videos using keywords or browse video by category, author, channel, language, tags, etc. When you find something noteworthy, you can preview the video right in YouTube Robot and then download it onto the hard disk drive. The speed, at which you will be downloading, is very high: up to 5 times faster than other software when you download a single file and up to 4 times faster when you download multiple files at a time.
Manual download is not the only option with YouTube Robot. You may as well schedule the download and conversion tasks to be executed automatically, even when you are not around. Downloading is followed by conversion to the format of your choice and uploading videos to a mobile device (if needed). For example, you can plug in iPod, select the video, go to bed, and when you wake up next morning, your iPod will be ready to play new YouTube videos.
Product page: ww w.youtuberobot.com
Direct download link: ww w.youtuberobot.com/download/utuberobot.exe
Company web-site: ww w.youtuberobot.com
E-mail: support@youtuberobot.com
June 19th, 2008 at 11:18 pm