When I bought my PS3 early last year there where no compatible UPnP solutions for the Mac to stream music, pictures or video to Sony’s console. I was disappointed but since the PS3 didn’t support many popular media types at the time I quickly realized that even if such a solution had been available I probably wouldn’t have used it very frequently. That totally changed last December when Sony released version 2.10 of the PS3 firmware with support for DivX and WMV.
When I tested EyeConnect 1.0.1 in February 2007 I had little success, the console could see the files stored on my Mac but was unable to display my media files. Fortunately, version 1.5.1 which was released later in the year offered much better support for the PS3, using a familiar Mac interface. However, some glitches remained. For starters, EyeConnect does not stream album art or previews of your pictures which is quite annoying. More troubling though is the fact that the PS3 reports frequent (non-fatal) network problems. I have no doubt that ElGato will eventually fix these problems, but at US$49.95 EyeConnect will remain an expensive solution for most console owners.
Yesterday Nullriver announced a new solution called Medialink. This is the same company that produces Connect360, the software Mac owners use to stream media to their XBox 360. The good news is that Medialink works perfectly. During my initial tests yesterday I ran into absolutely no problems. Unlike EyeConnect, MediaLink supports album art and media preview. Pricing is attractive too, at US$20 nobody should hesitate to buy this product since it instantly converts your game console into a gorgeous 1080p media centre.
There has been much talk recently about an upgraded AppleTV with a built-in Blu-Ray drive (and presumably support for 1080p, up from the current 720p). I am quite skeptical that such a product would be very competitive. Even if Apple was able to maintain the price of the enhanced device at US$299, that is just US$120 less than a PS3, including Medialink for your Mac and a Blu-Ray movie. Sure, movie rentals are not available yet on any console, but that is probably not a real differentiator for most customers in the U.S., let alone for those of us who live in countries with no iTunes store.
I am sure that everyone at Apple understands the situation. That is why I am very interested to see what Apple is planning to offer next week at MacWorld. My gut feeling is that Apple will not add Blu-Ray support (maybe 1080p support) and will instead try to make the device more attractive by dropping its price and add more new features beyond the widely expected movie rentals. Welcomed additions could be a web browser that syncs bookmarks with Safari and an RSS reader. DivX support would be nice too, but we all know that with Steve Jobs at the helm of Apple that is extremely unlikely.
Will that be enough to save the Apple TV? It will all depend on price. If Apple is willing to make no money on the hardware in order to increase movie sales and rentals it may work. That would be a major change for Apple though as they have until now consistently followed the opposite strategy, making money on the hardware while working with razor thin margins on the software. However, in order to compete effectively against Sony, a company that is used to lose money on the hardware (at least on their game consoles), they have to adopt the same strategy. With hardware margins hovering around 30% at Apple, a US$199.95 40GB Apple TV seems achievable. Will Steve Jobs announce that next week? Who knows, but it is much more likely than a Blu-Ray equipped AppleTV.