Depending on who you listen to US broadband has an average speed of 1.9Mbps to 4.8Mbps. The 720p videos on Technology Evangelist are encoded between 1Mbps and 2Mbps which means that many US households should be able to view our videos in real-time or faster. The problem is that our videos are very highly compressed with only 2 channels of very highly compressed audio. For our content this is OK as we're way, way, way better than the typical YouTube video. Movies are a completely different story.

Hollywood movies would need to be compressed at a higher bitrate to get better quality, something closer to DVD or BluRay as that is what we are used to. These videos will probably be encoded at or around 4Mbps which is nearing the cap of what the Apple TV can do. Even at 4Mbps the video won't be nearly as high of quality as a BluRay disc, but as long as it's easier to get the content on Apple TV and the quality is close enough we're still OK. It's that easier part that we start to get hung up on when looking at broadband speeds.

Assuming 90 minutes at 4Mbps we're looking at a 2.5GB file. Can you imagine moving 2.5GB down your current broadband connection and not pulling out your hair? I can't. The servers on Apple's side (Akamai I assume) need to be able to take a great deal of load if the service gets popular with little to no slowdowns on their side. My local ISP has to be able to take the traffic and not slow down at all (which is doubtful since I have a feeling that my local Comcast over subscribed their network). There are a lot of pieces controlled by a lot of people that have to fall in to place just to get a video that will start quickly and not stutter if it's in a progressive download mode. And even then we're looking at a much lower quality video than what I can get on BluRay.

I own a 1080p HDTV and the best Apple TV can output is 720p (for those who argue 1080i is better please see here). I accept that in favor of not having to drive in the -40 degree weather here in Minnesota. You know, the kind of cold that seeps through windows, causes cars to not start and is deadly if you're out in it to long. I want to be able to download movies, podcasts and television shows right then and there in the comfort of my 72 degree home. Why do I need a round shiny disc to play video? That's so 90's! The answer may be as simple and bandwidth. If I don't have enough bandwidth for a smooth experience, I'll end right back up on discs.

We won't know for sure how Apple TV Take 2 performs until Apple releases the software update in the wild. I hope it works well with quick access to video start times, easy skipping around the media and decent file management. I also hope that telcos start realizing that investing in their Internet infrastructure will help them in the long run, not hurt them. Bandwidth rich applications push people to order more bandwidth, not QoS enabled bandwidth. Maybe someday they will understand this. Maybe the Apple TV will work as expected. Maybe it will all miserably fail. The future of Apple TV is, unfortunately, in the hands of the ISPs. I eagerly await my Apple TV update and hope that in it I see the death of BluRay.