Apple TV has been flying under the radar perhaps ever since it was first released. I can’t remember myself seeing an Apple TV on any of those large billboards Apple is using to spread it’s culture. This is not, however, because the product is a flop. Not at all.

What really made me write this article was a post by Blackfriars’ Marketing. It’s a great blog run by talented and clever Apple fans. What they are saying is basically that the Apple TV is a work in progress; a project that has not yet reached it’s full potential. In fact, it’s not even planned to reach it’s full potential yet and it’s got a long road ahead of itself.

Apple knows what sells and what doesn’t. The people over at Apple never expected this product to be a big hit, because it’s not a big hit in terms of features and usability. It’s a great product that takes the Apple integration a step forward, but when have they ever been satisfied with just being great?

When we look at Apple TV, we need to look forward at see what it can, and probably will, be. What is the real purpose of this device? Right now, it may be seen as just a connection between your computer and your TV. But in the future, when all the pieces of the puzzle come together, I think we’ll see a somewhat revolutionizing product in terms of integration and content providing.

First of all, we’re going to see movie rentals. From in front of your TV, you’ll be able to rent videos that will be downloaded or streamed directly from the internet; just a few clicks away. Blackfriars’ says Apple is planning to offer 30-day movie rentals for $2.99. Now we’re talking.

Then we have high-definition content. It’s very obvious that Apple will offer high-definition movies and it’s a natural way to go for the iTunes Store; it’s just a matter of time. But there is also an obvious problem: distributing such large files. Not only do the users need good internet connections, but the content provider also needs some pretty heavy capacity to be able to distribute to those users.

Blackfriars’ then added another great point, which is encrypted peer-to-peer internet distribution. They believe that Apple will have a BitTorrent like distribution system built into their upcoming Leopard operating system. This could solve the afore mentioned distribution problems by letting users re-distribute to each other, taking some strain off of the content provider. This will be interesting to see, though Apple may choose to hide the feature until later on.

What I’m trying to say is, the Apple TV is a product for the future. Apple know what they’re doing. They got it out on the market early, creating awareness so that the product is ready to go. This is the right thing to do since it will save them a lot of time and marketing effort when the time comes. They’re already out there, and they’re waiting.

“Blackfriars projects that that hobby will pull in more than $1.8 billion in fiscal 2009. And that would make me call that hobby a business — a big business.”