My Own iTV Experiment...

Yesterday, I hooked up our new MacBook to the second HDMI input on the plasma (I knew I needed a second digital input!) for the first time.

I just watched the Illinois-Louisville Final Four game, which I had downloaded from IlliniTorrent and transcoded to H.264 MPEG-4. The video was streamed from my G5 PowerMac to my MacBook in 480p over my Airport network. It was just a test, to see how well this all works.

Bottom Line: If the iTV is even close to my little experiment in quality and experience as the experiment, it's going to be a success.

There was more than enough bandwidth to FF/REW without buffer lag and I was able to watch the whole thing without any sort of clunkiness. This is over a 801.11g network. Imagine if Apple installs 801.11n hardware into the thing (which is probably why Apple is delaying the thing anyway). You're looking at 720p (or better) movies that you own, streamed over a home network to a STB attached to your projector or TV.

:drool