Pixelthing.

It’s starting to become a recurring theme – hoping that each Apple announcement will mean a “proper” media centre.

The Apple TV is a clever, cheap to produce appliance that does it’s one job very well. The trouble is, for a “convergence device” it doesn’t really converge enough things, it leaves black boxes under the TV for PVR and DVD duties that mean it’s just one of many remote controls for people to lose.

I’ve tried to sort out the TV and hard drive video recorder/DVD player for my parents – twice. The first attempt was with a Sony PVR and Sony TV both advertised as having a “Bravia” connection. Did that perchance mean that you could control both devices with one remote? Er no. Or that the interface would be linked up and so you could hit “record” from the TV EPG? Er no. Instead of simplifying it, it was doubly annoying with two remotes, two UIs and two EPGs that were close enough to confuse, but different enough to not do what you expect.

The second attempt (because the original Sony TV was a lemon and the shop took it back) was with a Pioneer TV and a Panasonic box. I guess the fact that these things were never supposed to talk to each other made me less critical, but I could at least explain in simple terms to my mum how she could choose a program to tape to HDD, watch it later, and even copy it onto DVD.

But everything about it is still arcane. The remotes with their millions of buttons, many of which do the same thing in different ways. The multiple user interfaces and menu systems – one button on the TV remote brings up the EPG in badly up-sampled 640×480 while another brings up the set-up menus in sharp (but tiny) pixel for pixel graphical menus. Why do I need to explain to my mother that the PVR is showing no recorded programs because we’ve put a DVD in and it has switched mode from HDD to DVD? Why does she need to know that the inserted DVD requires formatting, especially when it takes four “OK” dialogues to format it, by which time we’ve lost interest in what we where doing?

I found it frustrating and I’m a computer and AV geek. I’m still disgusted that such badly designed equipment is allowed to pass as “consumer grade”. I feel my Mac Mini/frontrow/eyeTV system is “geeky” but – bar the bugginess that comes from a few minor hacks – it’s one hundred times easier to use to the limit of it’s abilities.

And so we come back to the upcoming, and final, MacWorld Expo. The Macbooks are fine. iMacs just need a spec update. The iPhone still feels new and shiny. iPods are refreshed, locked and loaded. That only leaves the keynote speech to talk about software and just maybe the AppleTV (unless Steve is really going to let Phil Schiller take the photo call for a brand new product category… ha!).

I’m still hoping that uncle Phil will give us FrontRow 3.0, pre-installed on a device that merges the AppleTV and Mac Mini line. It would free us from the tyranny of “good enough” user interfaces dreamt up by Japanese button-o-philes with a bad engrish manual. All we ask is that it broadens from the iTunes eco-system, includes Hulu, Netflix and ABC (in the states), and BBC iPlayer or Project Kangaroo (here in the UK), has a plug-in SDK so that a developer could add a consistent looking UI for their PVR software (eg EyeTV/The Tube). And enough graphics horsepower to play 1080P while encoding a recording in the background. And a DVD slot – maybe even a Blu-Ray for a wedge of extra cash. Oh – and one last thing – an HDMI socket.

Everyone seems to have had a go and failed. We want to take the multiple black boxes under the TV (or the geeky hacked mac mini in my case), and replace them with one simple box with a menu system and remote control that won’t baffle my mother… What we’re actually asking for is a Playstation 3, without the games part, but with the iTunes eco-system and Apple interface lickability.

Is it really that much to ask?