Apple TV is not a Set Top Box
It is not surprising that the world's engineers have been busy opening the lid of the new Apple TV. After all, it has much of the hardware of a full Mac, but at a fraction of the price. Now Engadget reports that Apple are not intending to fight back against these hacks. Users are free to modify their Apple TVs to view content from any source, with or without Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, although this may invalidate the warranty. This is the only reasonable position for Apple to take, given that consumers have shelled out $300 per box (priced 50% higher in the U.K., as usual for Apple stuff)
Apple's approach is very different from the approach of a satellite or cable pay TV operator. They are masters of their own Set Top Box hardware, and fight back strongly against modifications. For example, NDS, a leading provider of set top box software, waged a long war against pirated cards in the 1990s, which included triggering 'Electronic Countermeasures' that destroyed counterfeit cards.
Can Apple really maintain DRM on video as they plan to, when do not have the same control over consumer hardware that has been vital for Pay TV operators?
(Thanks to Eyal for passing the NDS link to me a few weeks back)
Posted at 15:14 BST, 6th April 2007.
Last changed at 15:18 BST, 6th April 2007.
3 Comments
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A fair test of Apple's willingness on that front will be how they behave if people make it straightforward to:
There's technical grunge to making that seamless and shiny, but it's quite possible – and we're seeing it from some of the open media centre software already.
If Apple are clever, they'll be helping people publishing HD video netcasts ("podcasts", if you must) use swarm downloading. I'm not sure they'll want that to be very seriously democratised, since people are already publishing very competitive feeds of existing content, and I can't see having many places to get content from fitting well with Apple's current one-big-storefront model.
The question is whether it's a case of hardware first with retail in support, or they have a dual focus of building hardware and retail businesses.
I believe the latter, and therefore that we'll get each of the open features you mention just when Apple are starting to look behind the times.
This seems to have been the case with music: they did all they could initially to make iTunes store the main place to get new content, and added podcasting only when it would damage their reputation to wait longer. By the time they needed to make major moves to open things up (with DRM-free music) they'd already got a nice retail market share.
Maybe I'm overly cynical. Many also believe that Steve Jobs really just wants to sell hardware, and that their move away from DRM on music is a case of sacrificing iTunes store to sell more iPods.
I had missed (till the weekend) that people have it booting from an external USB drive.
The freedom to tinker without screwing the existing installation will mean many people can play with this stuff, rather than just those with over-active screwdrivers.
I'd say this looks promising from Apple, although I doubt they'll do very much to support the homebrew folk. Releasing a small USB disk image that would work to bootstrap would really help people play with this. I'll be quite impressed if they go that far, though. I'm still half-expecting them to shift the goal-posts around a bit to break these things.