Dear Apple, This Is What I Want For My Birthday
Dear Apple,
With all this talk about PVR's lately and the mythical Apple Media Center I've been doing some thinking and this is what I want for my birthday this year. I want a device that will reconcile my living room dilemma. I want something that will simplify my media situation that is easy to use and doesn't cost more than $300 and the following is what I want it to be.
As you can see by the above illustration my current living room does not exactly lend itself to logic. I have an audio cable that runs the entire length of the room connecting my Mac to the stereo. This is so I can listen to my music in iTunes via real speakers, rather than the tinny can sound that comes from the G5. I also could, if I got the cable, connect my Mac to my TV and have the ability to watch videos on the TV from the comfort of my IKEA sofa rather than sitting on a chair in front of my monitor. The video quality would be less than great and once again this would involve a cable spanning the entire length of the room.
Now, I could get rid of the stereo cable, to some degree, by getting an Airport Express. However this would still involve a cable connecting that to my stereo, and the closest outlet is a good 15 feet away. To connect my Mac to the TV involves a DVI - Video adapter and even more cable.
The first issue here is that I have no simple way of controlling my media other than being in front of my Mac and using the keyboard and mouse. Which entirely defeats the idea of having a centralized digital living room. The ideal way of doing this would be using a remote pointed at something that would bring up a menu on the TV, which is in the center of the room.
One easy solution to this would be to get a remote for the Mac itself, there are a number of them available. However, this would involve having to point the remote behind me to skip a song or control a video. And what about an interface? I don't have Front Row, so I would have to use MediaCentral which lacks a number of features that Front Row has, or attempt to navigate OSX across the room from the TV. Even iTunes is near impossible to read from that distance. So, ideally, I want Front Row on my TV. It is the most logical and intuitive answer to controlling my media from the IKEA sofa.
Right, now I have the way in which I want to control my stuff. How about getting rid of all these cables. Well, one way to do this is to create a wireless connection between my Mac and something else. This something else doesn't exist. Yet. But, if it did exist, this is what it would be. I'm going to call it the Apple Receiver for now. The Apple Receiver would be the media hub that bridges the gap between your Mac and your stereo and TV. It can communicate using wireless technology and output your music and videos to the appropriate device. Audio Out cables on the back run to your stereo system, Video Out cables run to your television. Simple as that. When it is turned on it brings up Front Row on your TV which you control using an Apple Remote pointed at the Apple Receiver which is placed centrally and in the vicinity of your entertainment system.
Now, ideally this device would also have a hard drive for storing media files. Why? Because, those of us who have a lot of music and videos are having to buy external hard drives anyway. Especially people who use a laptop as their primary computer. This would also be good for backing up your files, and for playing back large video files directly from the machine rather than streaming them wirelessly.
How do you get the files onto the Apple Receiver? Simply create an FTP style program that uses drag and drop. One side of the window being the Apple Receiver the other being your Mac. Drag from one side to the other and the file is transferred. This can be done using a USB cable connecting the machines, the Apple Receiver would be small and portable so you could easily bring it to your Mac for transferring large amounts of media. Alternatively you could use the wireless connection between the devices to transfer smaller files.
The Apple Receiver should also have an internet connection so that it can utilize the movie trailers section of Front Row, play internet radio stations, etc.
It would also include a disc drive for CD's and DVD's.
That's it. That's what I want, basically a Mac Mini without the Mac. Not an eyeHome. And this is what it looks like:
Click to enlarge.
Yours,
K. Panda
PS - You have 7 weeks from today.
