The revamped Apple TV will become a home ticket vendor. Check out Apple's long-term plan for your television.
If you buy DLNA-equipped digital home gear, you need no extra box in your living room to seamlessly connect your Nokia Nseries, Droid X or Galaxy S (to name a few) smartphone. Soon, the Galaxy Tab will hit store shelves with the same functionality, and we assume Motorola's upcoming tablet will follow suit.
So, what's up with the new Apple TV then? Nothing, until you realize that it enables you to buy tickets for on-demand entertainment to be delivered on your own television. While Steve Jobs yesterday pitched the new Apple TV as a box that'll make it easy for you to get what you really want on a television today, it's also an early entry into a potential digital home future, where in only a few years, it may turn out that the Apple TV 2010 had a long-term plan.
Steve Jobs introduced the new Apple TV as "one more hobby" yesterday, but wasn't able to hold back the fact that he really wanted to see as many media producers as possible pick up their hobby so Apple could turn it into the ubiquitous home ticket vendor. At $99 and the fact that the new Apple TV will probably be the easiest way to get your iOS gear up to speed as far as living room interaction is concerned, it looks like Apple will start throwing bones to the iOS community in a few weeks.
If every household with active iOS users eventually get the Apple TV, it'll be a lot easier for Apple to convince media producers of supporting their home ticket vendor. And if selling home tickets alone aren't sufficient, there's always Apple's new iAd platform, which would suit large media producers a lot better than 99% of the iOS developers out there. There's naturally also the "game console potential" of such a concept, a path that perhaps is more inevitable than anything else.
Only time will tell exactly how successful the Apple TV will be in terms of changing the traditional media landscape though, but one thing is for sure: Right now, you as an iOS user hold the key to where Apple will take you next.
Apple TV 2010
 With all that said, let's find out what the Apple TV will offer when hitting store shelves in a few weeks. The short version is that it's a small, silent and under-powered box, offering a very narrow selection of what people consume through their television today, or like Steve Jobs puts it:
"The new Apple TV, paired with the largest selection of online HD movie and TV show rentals, lets users watch Hollywood content on their HD TV whenever they want. This tiny, silent box costing just $99 lets users watch thousands of HD movies and TV shows, and makes all of their music, photos and videos effortlessly available on their home entertainment system."
The Samsung Galaxy Tab will soon hit store shelves with support for 1080p HD playback, and the HP Mini 210 netbook is already available with the same capability. Why doesn't the new Apple TV support 1080p HD playback?
That's because the Apple TV is all about streaming rented media content via your Internet connection at home, plus the ability to let you easily watch the 720p videos you've captured with your iPhone 4 or new iPod touch on your television. As such, the Apple TV is powered by the A4 chip, which is optimized for 720p HD content. Of course, there's nothing preventing Apple from coming up with the "A8 chip" optimized for 1080p video playback at some point, but for now, the A4 is what matters in Apple's world.
As far as requirements are concerned, the Apple TV will need you to have a Wi-Fi 801.22b/g/n (Wireless-N) network or Ethernet network, a broadband Internet connection and 720p HD capable television. The latter is connected through a HDMI port (HDMI capable sold separately). The Apple TV will ship with a seven-button aluminum Apple Remote.
When it comes to content, Apple TV streams video and photo content from Netflix, YouTube, Flickr and MobileMe, as well as music, photos and videos from PCs and Macs to your HDTV. Apple TV users can also rent commercial free HD TV episodes on iTunes for $0.99, with up to 30 days to start watching and then 48 hours to finish - or watch multiple times. HD TV show episodes are provided by ABC, ABC Family, Fox, Disney Channel and BBC America. Users can also rent over 7,000 movies with over 3,400 available in HD, with most new releases available at the same day they are released on DVD. First run movies cost $4.99.
So, that's basically where the new Apple TV will stand when released in late September 2010. If Apple's world is your world, you should consider getting it. It can be pre-ordered through Apple's online store now.
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