Out of the Box

Recent Apple patents showing a flip-design iPhone and a DVR that might be able to exchange guide data with an iPhone (as well as give talk show hosts really bad haircuts) remind us that, while Apple has shared technology (operating systems, video and graphics support, iTunes support) among its entrants in each of the “three-screen” products — Mac, iPhone/iPod, and Apple TV, there really hasn’t been that much active collaboration among them at this point outside of being able to start a TV show or movie on one device and finish it on another (a cool feature, to be sure).

It’s fine for Apple to move slowly here. Consumers don’t buy “synergy”, they buy products. But just as I’ve credited the Apple store with providing an environment for letting consumers experience the iPod and expose the iPhone (particularly during the holiday season), Apple’s retail presence could make some of these difficult home networking concepts more palatable. The living room is definitely the weakest link and while the DVR market has been an extremely tough not to crack, Apple TV remains Apple’s weakest link in the chain.

Share This

For a while, it looked like TiVo was going to have some direct retail contribution this year for the first time since the demise of the Replay Networks’ retail DVRs. Digeo had planned to bring its Moxi Media Center and satellite unit, the Mixo Mate, from its Charter Cable deployment into home theater specialists. Apparently, though, the transition hasn’t been as smooth as Digeo would have liked and the company is delaying the debut until next year to optimize the retail customer experience.

In addition, there’s no sign of the screenless DVR Archos discussed at the launch of its 5th Generation platform on Archos’ Web site.

Share This