Google’s chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt was appointed to Apple’s board of directors back in August 2006, raising questions about when and where and what the high-level Apple-Google connection might lead to. Here ’tis.
Prim, proper and tidy Apple will start showing free videos from Google’s wild and wooly YouTube on the wide-screen TV sets of its Apple TV owners starting in mid-June.
The announcement immediately raises questions about Apple’s liability if some of the videos it transmits are copyrighted and posted without the copyright owners’ approval. YouTube, after all, is the defendant in a billion-dollar copyright lawsuit filed by Viacom. Apple dare not upset the relationships with the studios that it’s now so dependent on.
Does that mean Apple will cleanse what gets piped to Apple TVs? That’s something that Google and YouTube have said cannot be done easily. In fact, it’s the basis of Google’s defense in the Viacom suit; it claims that copyright owners must notify it of any unapproved postings.
Apple TV, a Wi-Fi-equipped (802.11b/g/n) box that connects via cables to a TV set, has two ways of showing videos and playing audio files. The files can be streamed from the PC or they can be automatically copied wirelessly from the PC to the Apple TV’s 40GB hard drive or to a newly announced Apple TV model with a 160GB drive. Having video stored on the hard drive reduces any distortion or flicker that wireless streaming might cause.
“This is the first time users can easily browse, find and watch YouTube videos right from their living room couch, and it’s really, really fun,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “YouTube is a worldwide sensation, and Apple TV is bringing it directly from the Internet onto the wide screen TV in your living room.”
The move also allays the fear of many that Apple TV would be a totally walled garden that could only play videos users had purchased from iTunes. It does not necessarily follow that the user will ever be totally in control over what can be played, though.
Apple says that thousands of the most current and popular YouTube videos will be available on Apple TV at launch in mid-June, with YouTube adding thousands more each week until the full catalog is available this fall.
Users can navigate YouTube using its video browsing categories or search for specific videos. YouTube members can also login to their YouTube accounts on Apple TV to view and save their favorite videos.
Apple TV also plays music and shows pictures on the TV set to which it’s connected. If the set is connected to a surround sound (home theater) system, the audio files and the audio from the videos will be heard on the surround sound system.
Viacom, which owns such video-rich operations as MTV, Comedy Central and BET TV, was quoted in Reuters as saying it would welcome the chance to license its content to Apple. “We’re always vigilant about protecting our copyrights. But we would welcome the opportunity to license our content to Apple as we do with all distributors,” a Viacom spokesman said. That, of course, does not include Google or YouTube.
Jobs told the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg at the “All Things Digital” conference that Apple TV is not intended to replace pay-TV companies’ set-top boxes, but is more like a “DVD player for the Internet age” that will serve up lots of downloadable content to a TV set.
Apple TV users can choose from over 500 movies and 350 TV shows in near-DVD quality; over five million songs; 5,000 music videos; 100,000 podcasts and 20,000 audio books from the iTunes Store.
The 40GB Apple TV still goes for $299, and the newly announced 160GB model is $399. Apple estimates the 160GB model will store up to 200 hours of video, 36,000 songs, 25,000 photos or a combination of each.
Apple did not announce any program to upgrade 40GB models to 160GB, but third-party operators such as WeaKnees.com sell 160GB upgrades to the 40GB model for $249. The YouTube feature for Apple TV will be available as a free software update in mid-June.