This IS NOT speculation on what we’ll see on Sept. 5th. This weekend I was thinking about the NBC vs. Apple thing, after explaining it to relatives, and a thought occurred to me…

There has been long standing rumor and speculation that Apple would turn the AppleTV into a DVR. At the time, that never made sense to me…it would do nothing but infuriate the networks that Apple is hoping to keep appeased.

However, with Universal’s continued antagonism towards Apple and vice versa, it’s not going to be long before SOMEONE has to give. Steve Jobs has never been very good at that.

If NBC does jump ship, I think it’s safe to say that sales of other shows will be affected as well, because once people get used to going to Bittorrent (and I do firmly believe that people will be driven to Bittorrent before they are driven to hulu.com or any other asinine service NBC can dream up), they’re going to keep using it. I don’t think everyone will abandon iTunes by any means, but I think Apple can expect a huge sales loss in the video department of the iTunes store without NBC.

If that happens, the other networks are likely to get upset. If they do…what solution does Apple have to keep content on their iPods? Well…they could always go the DVR route…last time I checked DVRs weren’t illegal, and Dish Network and (I believe) others have set ups where you can download that content to other devices…so why couldn’t Apple do this?

Now, I don’t know the ins and outs of the DMCA, so this may very well be a moot point – and if it is, somebody please point me to the parts of the DMCA that says they can’t do this…but if you can record onto a tape with a VCR, I don’t see why Apple couldn’t just record the programming off your local cable (including a cable card in a new AppleTV model for those digital channels), and encode it in an iPod friendly format that could shoot itself right back to iTunes an onto your iPod?

It seems like that would be a perfect way to keep the content coming for the iPods, and it’s not like the networks didn’t get a chance to play nice…if they ultimately choose not too (and of course, I ‘m not saying all of them will act like NBC, but you never know)…wouldn’t this be a perfect solution?

I mean, $300 for an Apple TV is cheaper than buying 3 seasons worth of any NBC show at the $4.99 they wanted to charge per episode this fall…right?



While this is, again, NOT speculation about what we’ll see at the Apple Special Event on Sept. 5th, you can join us for live blogging of the event by bookmarking our Live Area. Or feel free to subscribe to our RSS Feed.