The Apple rumor-mongers at Think Secret
unveiled a doozy today: that Apple is poised to launch a radical new IP video distribution system next month.
The site, which last week mentioned
Kaleidoscope, the code-name for Apple's upcoming "TiVO-killer", now has the details on the missing piece of the puzzle: namely, how do you get (presumably HD) feature-length content into the hands of all those growing number of Apple customers?
The key is that it's all virtually stored:
In an effort to appease media companies wary of the security of digital rights management technology, Apple's new technology will deliver content such that it never actually resides on the user's hard drive. Content purchased will be automatically made available on a user's iDisk, which Front Row 2.0 will tap into. When the user wishes to play the content, robust caching technology Apple previously received a patent for will serve it to the users computer as fast as their Internet connection can handle. The system will also likely support downloading the video content to supported iPods but at no time will it ever actually be stored on a computer's hard drive.
This method, which will be every bit as simple and straightforward for consumers as the iTunes Music Store is now, poses a number of advantages over Apple's current pay-once-download-once system, including saving users' hard drive space and essentially providing a secure back-up of everything purchased. iTunes Music Store customers at present are charged 99 cents every time they download a song, regardless of whether they already bought it, and must back-up purchases themselves. A customer who experiences data loss and loses purchased songs is effectively out of luck as far as Apple is concerned.
Some questions remain about the particulars of the system that sources have been unable to clarify, including how customers without a .Mac account will be handled and how Apple will market the system to laptop-toting road warriors. It also remains to be seen whether the iDisk tie-in will only apply to some content. Apple's current video offerings are downloaded directly to a computer's hard drive, for example. Additionally, it's unknown whether the content system will be marketed as a Mac mini-only feature, which is unlikely but possible if it is dependent upon technologies in that system, or whether it will be available to Mac and Windows users as a whole.
...
One source explained that when Apple rolled out its video-capable iPod in October, limited content -- five TV shows, a few shorts, and music videos -- was seen by executives as an acceptable amount to offer customers and watchers alike a glimpse of what was to come. WIth the roll-out of the new Mac mini, which sources continue to maintain will be bigger than anyone can imagine, Apple will blow the doors off legal video content delivery.
...
"I'm sure Apple doesn't want to do another version of the Windows Media Center PC," Chira said. "They want to one-up it, or ten-up it, as the case may be."
The question remains: how long until we can watch
1080p files, the likes of which Apple is
already distributing?
What with CES 'round the corner, we got all sorts of obscure electronics companies coming out of the woodwork. Case in point: "Proton Electronic Industrial."
