The Daily Goob

Yesterday I made a post outlining the numerous options I would have for a media center setup at our house if any company would implement the functionality I’m looking for (namely, the unique ability to take digital cable without using a cable box and stream it around the house over ethernet). After I published my post last night, I thought about it some more and came up with some good reasons for both why Apple will and won’t do what I said. Now, as would be expected, time to outline these things:

Why Apple Won’t Make the Mac Mini into a Media Center Computer:

1. Part of the iTunes Store is selling TV Shows for $2 each. If Apple let people have an official way to record these shows on their own, it would cut into their sales.
2. Anything recorded by Apple hardware/software is going to end up in an encrypted form (just as Tivos and XP Media Center does). Apple has Fairplay, but the desire to cut out commercials would strengthen the desire to crack the DRM. Since Apple wouldn’t want Fairplay to get cracked, they’d have to devise a new DRM system.
3. Adding in a tuner (and possible CableCARD slot) is going to both drive up the price and possibly make the Mac Mini larger. The computer is designed to be an “entry” level computer to get people to switch to Macs, and neither of these fit the primarytarget demographic of the computer.

Why Apple Will Make the Mac Mini into a Media Center Computer:

1. By making the Mac Mini into the computer that you’d have in your entertainment system, Apple would sell units to both PC and Mac owners. People with iMacs would be able to watch on their existing computers through Front Row, and PC owners would bite at the small form factor and cost (including one or two iTV units) compared to most XP Media Center PCs plus Media Center Extenders.
2. Apple will never get every TV show into the iTunes Store, so by allowing people to record their own shows they would fill this gap. Making them difficult to edit, however, would still keep people tied to purchasing their favorite shows with no commercials (and possible higher resolutions if video downloads went to HD quality).
3. Unless Apple debuts a “Mac” (a non-Pro tower that’s upgradeable), there’s no other computer in their lineup that lends itself to a media center computer. With Vista arriving with the TV recording functionality built into Home Premium (the version most consumers would get), Macs would be seen as being less functional in this regard.

Again, it’s probably never going to happen, but at least there is a solid argument for supporting it. Apple did claim that this was a “sneak peek” at the iTV unit, so maybe they’re already on top of this. Cound we even see a 2G iTV in another year with recording capabilities built in? With Apple, nothing is ever completely impossible…

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