Reading this rumor about the next Apple TV including Blu-Ray got me thinking about what I’d add to the next-generation Apple TV to make it great.
I’d love to see it have:
- A Blu-Ray/DVD/CD drive
- A TV tuner and DVR functionality
- Safari — now that the iPhone Remote app can display a keyboard for the Apple TV’s text interfaces, and could easily support pointer control, there’s no real impediment to a full-blown web browser — preferably including Flash, so sites like Hulu and Vimeo would function
- An app store — why not? The Apple TV is really just a computer with TV-optimized ports, drivers, and UI. (Similar to how the iPhone is really just a computer with mobile-optimized hardware and software.) Once the iPhone Remote app enabled a keyboard and pointer anywhere, it’d be pretty great to be able to browse and install third-party apps, just as on the iPhone. Apple already has the infrastructure for this; releasing an Apple TV SDK would be no sweat.
- Dashboard widget support. TVs and widgets will go together as naturally as peanut butter and jelly.
- An easy way to copy music and video to the device without having to use iTunes
- Broader media format support — it should support divx, mkv, vorbis, theora, flac, etc.
- The ability to plug in a memory card — preferably to the built-in SD-card reader — and display a slide show of the photos and videos on the card, or copy them to the ATV
- User-upgradeable hard drive. Don’t get me started on this.
- A true sleep mode which uses nearly zero energy
- The ability to display the photos and videos on my phone, via wifi, without copying them first
I see all these things as easily attainable. I’d buy it!
