Apple TV and the Future of Television

There's been a lot of mainstream media chatter lately about how a growing number of determined home hacksters have severed their cable connection and are relying entirely on internet derived video content that they're managing to display on their flat screen TVs. This is generally being accomplished by connecting a computer to their TV using a VGA-type cable and either streaming NetFlix Instant films or as in the case of the article linked above, hooking up their Mac Mini and running video streaming sites like Hulu or Boxee. Apple TV was dismissed as not being versatile enough.

There is however, an active Apple TV (ATV) hacking community that started messing with the innards of the sleek gadget a few years ago and it was at that point, seeing its potential, I took the plunge. I've been tinkering with it for over a year now and I have to say its pretty damn awesome! I think if others new how easy it is to get it together, it would be a proud piece of many more media cabinets. Ours in fact sits proudly on top of our cabinet while all the other ugly stuff resides inside.

There are plenty of lengthy tutorials on optimizing ATV which you could read if you were really keen. Everything you need though, can be accomplished by following this path to ATV liberalization:

1) Buy an Apple TV for $229;
2) Purchase ATV Flash from FireCore for $49. Consider extending the period within which you can receive free software updates. Three years instead of one will add $20 to your bill;
3) After purchasing ATV Flash follow instruction to install on a USB Flash Drive and update your ATV;
4) There's more functionality enabled in this one step than I care to go into, suffice to say that a number of codecs are installed on the ATV enabling it to play non-Apple encoded video files, and after running a couple of "smart installs" on the ATV the USB port on the back is enabled for USB storage;
5) On your computer, go to Boxee.tv and create an account. Install Boxee on ATV;
6) Buy a USB Drive for storing your media (movies, music and photos);
7) Add your new drive as a device in Boxee by selecting the "Browse" menu, "Add Source", and then "Manually Add Source" and then type "yourdrivename" in the Source Name field and "/Volumes/yourdrivename/" in the Source Location field.

You're good to go! Boxee will read your movies, TV shows, music files and photos from the USB drive you've connected to the ATV and if you've saved your files using their naming convention (movie.title.(2009).avi), will access IMDB metadata and create an on-screen browsing menu with synopsis, key art (movie poster) and other info. Next up, explore the on-board applications. Hulu is unbelivable! Last night I watched WKRP, The Fall Guy and a bunch of The Daily Show Episodes.

This is probably an overly technical introduction to the real point of this post. Which is to say we are absolutely at the jump off point where traditional television is rendered obsolete and all our content is derived online–what you want when you want it. Broadcasters are scrambling, being bought by cable operators and the battle is on for who will be the new gate keepers of digital content delivery.

What's exciting for me is that at last the barriers to entry are really starting to fall away and the promise of democratization of content creation–and more importantly–distribution are being realized. 14 million views for a bike stunt video? Damn straight! Danny MacAskill is a magician on his bike, the video has heart, a great sound track, terrific pace and leaves you looking for more. And, as you can read from the NY Time article about the video sensation, has created an wellspring of opportunity for the intrepid Scot.

Today in the Film Producing class I teach at the New York Film Academy we had a terrific discussion about opportunities for producers who are keen to be part of a new paradigm of filmed content creation and monetization. I wrote "Long Tail", "Free" and "Mobile" on the white board and the better part of 90 minutes flew by as we explored these buzz phrases for the present technologically driven media business.

King Curtis Live at the Filmore West just came on Pandora (being served up by Boxee on my ATV). It's free, it's what I want when I want and I'm one click away from buying. Free is good business!