AppleInsider quotes ThinkEquity analyst Jonathan Hoopes:
Apple TV can, in our opinion, be easily turned into a DVR with little or no hardware modification and a software upgrade
If we define a DVR as a device that time shifts broadcast content (I do), the current Apple TV will never be a digital video recorder. A DVR needs to get video from somewhere… As far as I can tell, Apple has not hidden a tuner or any video inputs in the box. I suppose it is possible they could team with AT&T (Xbox 360, anyone?) and make this into an IPTV platform (with DVR capabilities) of some sort, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
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Exactly. Apple TV is essentially a VOD offering sans regular TV broadcasts. Competes with Netflix, but will have a hard time competing anything that plugs into a cable to telco video network.
It apparently does have a 40GB hard disk. So some have asked what its for. The obvious answer is that its for the VOD content. Even if at first you have to purchase video using your Mac/PC and then stream to the Apple TV, they'll eventually let you buy stuff directly off iTunes via the Apple TV directly. Cringely thinks they'll even preposition content and use peer to peer to keep the load on their servers livable. Not sure about that one.
I had that story emailed to me by a couple of Mac-fanboy co-workers. I can't believe what people are saying about Apple TV -- it's such a massive Kool Aid campaign. There's nothing revolutionary about the product at all.