Back in the olden days, Apple tried, just like most companies, to make a set-up box. Using Motorola chips and plenty of crazy ports, the iTV was the precursor to something like WebTV and used a Macintosh Quadra 605/LC475 processor and a crazy OS. It wasn’t a really DVR or video player, per se, but it had a method to grab and send data to the TV.
Anyway, one of these just sold for $46 on eBay with free shipping!
Who knows where he got it – maybe someone lost it in a bar? – but it sure is nice to see it among the living. These things are classic Apple design, just at the precipice between the hard lines of the early Power Macs and the curvy lines of the iMac.
The following information is from theapplemuseum.com. “In cooperation with British Telecom (later renamed BT), Apple started developing an interactive TV set top box in 1993. Initial prototypes were tested internally only, but in 1994, Apple and BT launched a ITV trial in Britain with approximately 2,500 households participating. The media server technology was provided by Oracle. Later, the trail was expanded to Belgium where Apple was cooperating with Belgacom. A six-state US trial phase was announced in May 1995 featuring an educational programming by The Lightspan Partnership, Inc. The final version of the Interactive Television Box featured a 68040 processor, 4 MB RAM, a 2 MB ROM and a MPEG-1 decoder. The boot-OS was a subset of the MacOS with QuickDraw and QuickTime software. It was equipped with stereo audio RCA jacks, one Mac serial port, one S-Video, RF in, RF out, one RJ-45 Ethernet, one ADB port and a HDI-30 SCSI port and dual SCART connectors. Furthermore, it also featured a proprietary expansion slot, one additional DIMM socket and a floppy drive connector (earlier models still featured a floppy drive and had to be booted from floppy disks). A PAL and a NTSC version were produced in very limited quantities. The project was canceled in late 1995 when it became obvious that ITV wasn’t going to become commercially successful anytime soon.”
Has anyone seen these working?