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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5349273" data-attributes="member: 8835">On the topic of Web Browser on TV, there's 2 useful usage patterns:a) so I can check things I need to check quickly (I can boot my PS3 and check my bank balance faster than I can boot my PC to do the same).  Personal surfing, is as Eric says, not for spectators.b) so I can browse to Hulu or nbc.com, or abc.com to watch a TV show from the last week or so that my DVR missed.  itunes would charge me a rental for that.  Or I'd need to be able to plug my laptop into my TV (not everybody has the right stuff for that)I think B is a compelling enough reason.  However, I also think that NetFlix's Instant stuff is getting closer to solving it, without specific hardware.  NBC is already partnering with them to license all their TV shows.That's sort of the product purpose flaw of the AppleTV.  If you have a PS3 or 360, you can do all that stuff now.Both of my systems will stream music and videos off a PC (just enable it in Media Player, or run a 3rd party app).  They will also stream it off of modern NAS's like my DLink 3-2-1 NAS via the DNA standard.  My NAS will even act as an iTunes server, though I disabled that.  It was really easy to setup, as both consoles scanned my network for devices and found my NAS by name.Other than buying something from iTunes on your TV and then playing it, I can pretty much do the same thing from my PC, to enable viewing it.I can also use NetFlix on both game consoles, so as Netflix expands its catalog (i.e. more recent shows) I'm good to go.So it still comes down to, what is the Apple TV good for?  Sure, it's $100.  But whats the probability that somebody who would buy it wouldn't already have a 360 or PS3?  because the demographic is pretty similar.Personally, I think people need help consolidating their media.  Most households end up with 1 iTunes library per PC, and end up getting confused about optimizing it all so they can share purchases.  Apple's made some in-roads on that, but it's still confusing.People also don't really know how to backup their stuff.  it ultimately comes down to once you get a huge media library, its too big to burn to CD.  It would be more practical if they had a truly cheap RAID 1 NAS that pretty much kept it running all the time.The problem is, most folks don't know how to manage their home IT infrastructure.  So they don't know to buy any of this stuff, let alone set it up, and migrate all their iTunes libraries to it.I think this is where cloud computing is trying to build its niche.  Basically by not putting your crap on your PC, you get the protection of being managed by somebody else.  if the Media Vault thing takes off, then you're looking at people's computers only caching copies of the media they recently used, but otherwise, their registered stuff is stored in a central cloud.then AppleTV may have some use.  But then the PS3 and 360 will get a firmware update and do the same thing.  the world is not like it used to be.  What features you get today are a subset of the features that same box will have next year.</blockquote>

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