Hoping for AppleTV update at Apple's notebook event

The clock is ticking toward the big Apple event - you know, the one where the company is expected to announce the sub-$1,000 notebook and/or a new design to the MacBook line and/or the move into Nvidia's graphics chipset and/or something altogether different. (Dontcha just love the Apple rumor mill?)

Anyway, I'll spare you any speculative details about what we might or might not hear at the event. I'll be blogging from there so when I know, you'll know. Instead, I'd like to pause for a moment and chime in on another Apple rumor that I'd be pleasantly surprised to hear more about: Apple HDTV.

The idea of an Apple HDTV is not really that crazy of an idea when you consider what's at work here:

• Apple already sells some very high-quality screens like the 30-inch Apple HD Cinema display. But that $1,800 price tag would have to adjust to compete with the HD sets being sold for less than half of that. Apple has already shown, via the iPhone, that it's not afraid of big price cuts.
• The Apple TV functionality works well with an iTunes household (and even better with a Mac house.) It connects well with the WiFi network, which opens the door to downloading movies, TV shows and music and accessing YouTube and Flickr. It definitely has made watching iPhoto slide shows easier for the whole family. And, like the iPod, it has a simple and clean user interface.
• Apps for the iPhone have proven to be a big seller - and could potentially grow even bigger if extended to the living room. Yahoo recently announced plans for TV Widgets, a Web-based program built directly into the TV set that would allow users to customize an on-screen, widget sidebar featuring things like headlines, sports scores, weather updates or even movie rentals. Apple could jump ahead by extending something that's already in place - the apps store - to a location where Apple really doesn't have a presence - the living room.
• Movies and TV shows -which are for sale or rent on iTunes - are still better viewed in the living room. And, games - which Apple has already provided a taste for on the iPhone - could also extend into the living room without another set-top box to add to the clutter.

It's no secret to anyone who regularly reads this blog that I'm a Mac guy - so you might expect me to be bullish on a new Apple product. But the truth is that I haven't been overwhelmingly happy with Apple TV. The biggest beef from my 10-year-old son Zack, for example, is that the device itself has no control buttons on it (this from a kid who had to dig $20 out of his piggy bank to replace the remote control he lost.) I'd like to see streaming radio built into the offerings. And I hate that you only get 24 hours to watch a rented movie (though that seems to be pretty much the norm among movie download sites). After all, you get to keep a DVD from Blockbuster for five days.

I am bullish on it because I recognize the potential of what AppleTV could be if it was marketed as software instead of hardware - or marketed at all, for that matter.  TV is already becoming interactive and the programming is coming in from a number of new sources, including the Web. And there's little difference between TV sets and what were once computer monitors (call them displays, now.)

The theme for Tuesday's event is "The spotlight turns to notebooks" so I won't be disappointed if the HDTV rumor is one of those that's way off-base. But I will keep looking for Apple HDTV. Macworld, maybe?