ODoyleRules said:
Apple's core strength seems to be in well-designed user interfaces and product design and I think they really kick butt in these areas. Unfortunately, TiVo also had this same strength and they seemed to fail at media convergence. Many would say that Windows Media Center is a very good all-in-one incorporation of video, music, etc. and it's struggling too. Not to say Apple can't do it (and it would be nice to use an Ipad or Itouch as remote device), but many have already tried in this arena and failed.
TiVO is still trying. Hence the TiVO Premiere. I think most failures have been because they have worked from the TV-Side box out. You have to work from the cloud in, with the attractive and seamless interface on the mobile device.

Yep. Make no mistake, with the LaLa.com acquisition, the critical mass of iTunes, and their relationship with the content providers, Apple is in the best shape of anyone to pull this off. But it's still a couple of steps down the road. They didn't mention "iTunes in the cloud" yesterday, so they're probably still busy digesting LaLa and making the experience as seamless as possible. Or maybe they're working on adding streaming video to LaLa, which was an audio-only service before the acquisition, so they can do a "big splash" launch. The next chance for an announcement like this will probably be the next iPhone hardware release, probably late May or so. But I do have to say that AppleTV as it exists today is a pretty badly orphaned product by Apple standards. When a perfectionist/marketer/micromanager like Jobs publicly calls one of his own products a "hobby", you know he is quite ashamed of it. They will need a new revision of the set-top box (Apple TV HD?) and its OS to pull off their mediacenter strategy. The Shark Move would be to make it run the iPhone OS and mix in the ability to run Itunes apps, and give it the social gaming hooks they announced yesterday. Allow the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone to wirelessly display content on the TV via the Apple TV box. Make your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad the *controller* for games when they are projected on the big screen.This would minimize code forking and cross-pollinate the audience for all these devices, which is pretty much the "Apple Way".