I've now spent a few days looking at the alternatives to appleTV now. Well, I say alternatives... I mean MythTV, as the idea of buying into the Windows ecosystem via WIndows Media Centre didn't even come close to crossing my mind.

But I've looked at quite a few possible configurations for a MythTV system, and I'm beginning to see the rationale for appleTV. The appleTV system is essentially:

Backend Media Server

Intended to be the house's main Mac with the big hard drive. This is the one that hosts the account that buys content from the iTunes Store, holds ripped music etc.

Frontend Client, with a local cache

This is the appleTV device. It's chiefly there to provide a UI to the backend server. But because the default use case of WiFi networking isn't deemed to be robust enough to simply stream from the backend server (particularly for HD content), it needs a local hard drive. And drives are so cheap these days, might as well make it big enough for a few items so you have some local choice without hanging around fot it.

And all this integrates with not only iTunes for music and (iTMS-sourced) video, but also iPhoto. If you stop thinking of it as the only digital media component, but just the front end to what you've already got on your Mac, it makes sense, and it'll pull people into the iApps ecosystem, which is the idea.

But to make it actually effective, it needs to be able to access video content not derived from the iTunes store. It needs to be able to show:

1. Home Movies (you think iMovie's going to get left out..?)
2. Digitally recorded TV content
3. Content ripped from legitimately bought DVDs

Now elgato have already managed to get eyeTV as a content source under Apple's Mac-based media client - Front Row by exporting to iTunes in iPod-friendly format, so they must be able to do the same to the appleTV. In fact, a little searching on their site shows that elgato are confident that eyeTV recordings will be usable by appleTV.

If indeed all that's needed to add a new source to the appleTV's backend server is output in H.264 or MPEG-4 and a wee bit of API smarts, then it can only be a matter of time until someone produces a DVD-ripper and transcoder that'll slot in nicely. The basics are already done:

So the basis of a pretty reasonable backend setup is starting to come together, looking like a Mac Mini, with large-ish external storage and an eyeTV Hybrid as PVR capture. Adding this up, it's probably comparable to the price of a similarly specc'd MythTV homebrew, but with much less setup required.

MythTV alternatives

The Full Myth

Meaty MythTV linux server for the backend. Low-end mythTV Linux machine for the front end. If I can't build one cheaper and quieter, then the front end machine will be the beautifully quiet and affordable Mac Mini, with OSX cleared off and replaced with Ubuntu.

The Half Myth

Watching the Keynote, the appleTV can suck content from up to 5 Macs on the LAN. Now, I'm sure someone very smart is going to find a way to get a MythTV server to appear in the list... In which case, the appleTV at £200 looks very attractive indeed as the silent front end server...