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In beautiful form, my visit to the local Apple store today resulted in an ironic flashback to Apple’s flagship 1984 television ad, in which Apple clashes with Big Brother to release freedom upon the masses. I say my flashback was ironic because the Apple salesman who approached me graciously offered a form of doublespeak when I told him that though I wanted an AppleTV, I was holding off until its poor programming via iTunes improved. Admitting that iTunes didn’t offer all the TV shows people watched, including some pretty major shows on networks (that, strangely, have an iTunes presence), the salesman chimed in:

But there’s a loophole. If you have access to the show you want to see via other means, you can convert the videos so they can be shown on the AppleTV.

This isn’t a loophole, Sherlock, it’s a totally different means of obtaining the video. A loophole would be finangling with iTunes or AppleTV to somehow get it/them to interface with another video distribution source already H.264 compliant. I want the simplicity of downloading the shows I want via iTunes, so I don’t have to deal with pirating them and having to spend hours converting the formats to something AppleTV compliant. If I was fine with the latter, I’d hook an old PC up to my TV and run a copy of Azureus on it, with a web browser open all the time to stay connected to The Pirate Bay.

I’m well aware that AppleTV can play pirated shows and movies, which iTunes is supposed to prevent, but clearly Apple isn’t doing with television and film what they were able to accomplish with music. Otherwise, their own employees wouldn’t need to suggest piracy in order to get common, popular shows downloaded from the iTunes store.

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