In wrote last week that “Apple TV is a product for the future.” It now seems that this future is closer than we thought. CrunchGear writes that an update will come later this month that will bring back Apple TV from “the teetering edge of extinction”. It sounded like just another Apple rumor to me. That is, until they told us that Apple is stocking up on quite a few Apple TVs for this coming update.

As I wrote in the above mentioned post, the update will bring support for movie rentals and high-definition video formats. Think it’s too soon? The thought has crossed my mind but considering the speed at which Apple is moving right now, almost nothing is impossible. We already know that the Apple TV will support these things sooner or later, and it looks like Apple will go with sooner.

Blackfriars’ Marketing is talking about a bittorrent like distribution system built into the upcoming Mac OS X Leopard that would open the door to HD movie distribution. As you know, Leopard is scheduled to be released later this month and the unofficial date is the 26th. It would be nice to see an Apple TV update during the same announcement, or at least near it.

But then we have to ask ourselves; does it make sense? I mean, wouldn’t Apple first want to give users some time to get their hands on, and adapt to, this new operating system? The distribution system probably wouldn’t be of much use if the majority of users are still running Mac OS 10.4. But then again, what do I know. Maybe everyone will camp out at their nearest Apple Store to buy Leopard as soon as it’s announced.

Unlike Microsoft, Apple will probably ship a very stable release of their new OS. Sure, there will be bugs that thousands of beta testers may not have noticed but millions of end-users will. But bugs and performance issues won’t be the reason keeping Apple TV locked up in the development basement. If anything, a restricted distribution channel will be the problem.

I’m very curious to hear more about this new bittorrent like solution, if it even exists. How will it be designed into the Leopard and Apple TV? Will people really use their internet connection to distribute high-definition movies? I mean, if you’re paying for a movie, you don’t want to to waste upstream bandwidth on it. How about firewalls, wouldn’t most of them block this feature by default?

The questions are many but if this system really exists, we’ll have our answers. Soon, if you want to believe CrunchGear. Oh, and about the rumors of a Mac nano for $249; no way. The “Mac nano” part sounds okay but unfortunately, the “$249″ takes wishful thinking to the extreme.