Apple's video cloud: A first step toward a new direction?
Apple is reportedly preparing a service called iTunes Replay, which would allow users to store and stream their iTunes video purchases from Apple's servers to any Web-enabled device.
The service, first reported by the Appleinsider blog and confirmed by CNET, would free up the hard drive space of iTunes customers who buy and store large video files such as movies and TV shows. It would also allow easier access to those flles on devices that are authorized to play them, such as an AppleTV device.
CNET is correct to point out that such a service would likely need to secure licenses from Hollywood studios and come up with a compensation plan. If it were just a storage issue, that may not seem worth the trouble. But we're talking about streaming now - and that could fall in line with the predictions being made about AppleTV's future.
On a conference call with analysts last month, the company said AppleTV is still a hobby but that it would continue to invest in it. During the quarter, the company saw AppleTV growth almost triple over the year-ago quarter and said that customers increasingly want to try out the movie rental service. “We believe there’s still something fundamentally there for the future,” COO Tim Cook said.
Separately, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said last week that he predicts that Apple will sell 6.6 million AppleTV units this year, which could increase the company’s earnings-per-share up by more than 18 cents for the year. He also expects to see new AppleTV hardware with live TV signal input for DVR functionality this year.
In the same report, Munster talks about an Apple-connected television set - think iTunes built directly into a Web-connected screen - on the horizon in the coming years.
Seeing how these devices are Web-connected - and the idea behind the TV set itself is to eliminate set-top boxes attached to it - it would only make sense that the content would need to be stored somewhere in the cloud.
There were no details about whether iTunes Replay would be a free or premium service.