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Apple TV is all about content, not hardware. This might not be so clear in the UK as it is in the US, where the iTunes Store is bursting with movies and the Apple TV itself passes through the accounts in a very different way to standalone products like MacBooks and iMacs.

But over here, there are no real movies, and until a couple of weeks back we could only buy music videos, Pixar shorts and US TV shows. That's all changed now that the BBC is onboard.

There are inevitably detractors grumbling about the £1.89 fee to download shows they believe they already own after 'funding' them through the licence fee, but that argument falls flat when you apply it to the high street. If that were true, you'd have every right to walk out of HMV with a Life on Mars box set stuffed under your arm and bypass the tills entirely. See what I'm getting at?

The £1.89 is a fair price for

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TV. It means you can download an hour of carefully-scripted big-budget drama for the same price as a three-minute music video shot without a tripod or set on a grimy suburban wasteland. In half an hour. With no crew. Or catering.

It seems inevitable that the UK's remaining terrestrial broadcasters will follow suit. ITV and Channel 4 already have experience of selling their content online, for which they're used to making a charge. Pairing up with Apple would give them a clear path onto the world's best-selling portable media device, the iPod, which is shut off from their in-house download services, and which is a far stronger draw than Apple TV to anyone with a broadcast licence.

History has already shown that broadcasters can't afford to be stubborn, as the audience will force their hand. In the earliest days of Freeview, or OnDigital as it was called back then, it was ITV and not the BBC in the driving seat. The commercial broadcaster was determined to make a go of it, and held back its terrestrial channels from appearing on Sky. It sounded like a decent strategy, but it didn't pay off. OnDigital, as we all now know, closed down, and the BBC took over the frequencies, along with BSkyB and Crown Castle International.

Can ITV afford a repeat? No. And neither can anyone else. By my reckoning we'll be iTuning Heartbeat, Kingdom and Grand Designs this side of Christmas. By then Apple TV will be a fully-fledged set-top box, albeit without the tuner.