New AppleTV Ships (Thanks, but no thanks)

I'm actually surprised at the small number of folks bragging and tweeting about their AppleTV's arriving late this week.

It has started shipping and folks have started unwrapping them, but the most exciting news seems to be that you can backup the Apple SHSH with TinyUmbrella (the tool that allows you to revert back to an older iOS firmware after Apple stops officially allowing you to do so).  This probably means the device will eventually be jailbroken, and at that point, it may have some interesting and useful purpose to me.

Why "Thanks, but no thanks"?  For starters, the closed ecosystem of the device.  You can stream your local content to it, however, the only other source of content is Netflix and the iTunes store (for $0.99 per show or $3.99 per movie).

Sure, $99 is cheap, but it I had to pay a buck every time my kids watched a SpongeBob episode I'd be broke!  Why would I do that, when the content I want to stream is already available for free (as advertiser supported content) over at Hulu and other similar sites.  No streaming of NHL GameCenter Live + no MBL.com + no Hulu = no thanks (for me).

Maybe as a jailbroken device it will have a better justification for a place in my entertainment system.

Let us know what you think:

Can AppleTV do anything that we can't already do?
Does it do any of it better?

NHL GameCenter App Coming to the iPad!

I recently wrote an article about how you can get NHL, Hulu, and many other video sources on your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (plus your XBox360, PS3, and Wii) using PlayOn.  

Now, it looks like the NHL GameCenter folks have big plans of their own.  Many have noticed and asked about the "New: Connected Devices" feature shown on the NHL GameCenter sign-up screen.  While the NHL folks have been silent on this issue, I recently learned first-hand from the good folks at NHL GameCenter that they are in fact planning GameCenter Live support for the following "Connected Devices":

Playstation 3, iPad, Boxee, Roku, and Sony Bravia web-enabled HDTVs and Blu-Ray players.