This product isn’t, as far as I can tell, aimed at those with big bucks (exhibit a: the recent price drop). It’s aimed at people who will pay a little more money for a lot more convenience (i.e. just about everybody). With an AppleTV, you can now download and watch just about anything (movies, TV shows, etc) with just a few clicks of the remote. It’s even easier than ordering pizza for dinner - not only does somebody bring it to your house for you, they bring it to you immediately, in your chair - you don’t even have to get up to pay for it.

Apple seems to banking on the idea that in general, people still prefer to consume passive content on TVs instead of computers. And I’d say they’re right, given how many households are still purchasing new TVs despite the presence of one or more computers. (I’m a huge geek, for example, yet I have only one computer, but two TVs and two DVD players.)

How does that apply to education, you ask? Well, if given the choice between watching something on a lab computer with headphones on, or in front of a TV, I’d be willing to bet a large number of students will choose the latter. Or put another way: love it or hate it, web 2.0 tools are changing the way students connect with each other and with the outside world. In addition, many LRCs are renovating, or already have renovated, with student collaboration in mind. Why not allow watching textbook videos or SCOLA news broadcasts to also be a collaborative experience? It’s not going to make the content any better but it -may- make them more likely to watch it.

Significant digital rights management issues aside, AppleTVs also make it easier to manage large quantities of digital media. Instead of checking out CD players for students to listen to textbook audio, we’ve digitized all those files and put them on a centralized server. Why not do the same thing for other a/v content?

if so…wouldn’t it be cheaper just to get a DVD player for the TV set up?

What am I missing here?