I have been looking for a real HDTV tuner for the mac, finding just two possibilites Elgato HD HomeRun and Hauppauge!, but I will end up having too much devices connected to my 24″ Imac, why not a single solution from Apple:

AppleTV has been out for a short period of time, but it main feature is to bridge your ipod content to TV set wirelessly and what we need is a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) that let you watch, pause, replay and record your tv shows and convert them to the Ipod. The big problem here is that Apple is selling TV shows in Itunes and doesn’t want to compete with itself.

I added some features to the actual AppleTV to make it more appealing and gave it a new name: AppleTV Extreme.

Here are the specs:

HDTV Tuner
500 GB+ of hard disk
2 GB+ of ram (to watch more than 1 stream of video simultaneously)
A full feature remote control (more keys for more features, naturally)
On the fly Ipod and Iphone video conversion.
Wifi or Lan broadcast, watch tv on your home network.
More than 1 stream of video simultaneously
TV listing provided by Itunes
Live TV Chat (recommend or review programs)
Automatic Season Record
A good price

How can Apple achieve it? Apple will brings Elgato to home for its hardware and applications, then merge Elgato solutions with Itunes or Frontrow and you will have a winning combination.