I thought at first that Munarriz had stumbled into that same timeline when he talked about Apple Inc. now being known as Apple Entertainment, with widespread success for the iPhone, iPod and a strong presence for Apple as a provider of music entertainment worldwide. But when he describes the Apple TV as a "flop" worthy of "snickers" in 2010 — well, I realized he'd made a 90-degree turn somewhere in the space between dimensions and ended up in the Bizarro World.

Munarriz confirmed my suspicion that he was no longer in our reality when he discussed Apple saving the day by teaming with TiVo in December of 2009 to produce an Apple-branded DVR. Not a chance.

Rick, as much as the CouchGuy likes the company and the idea, even TiVo hasn't found a way to make good money from TiVo. Nor do I think they are likely to do so as long as they continue to charge a monthly fee for the TiVo service while cable companies offer DVRs as part of your cable subscription. Yes, the TiVo technology and service is absolutely better than the rest of the DVR pack — but it isn't enough better to capture a majority of living rooms.

What's more, the DVR will become less and less relevant to the future as more and more video entertainment moves to a downloadable format. TiVo was designed to take content that is piped to you in a broadcast format (sent when They want you to watch it) and put it in a form that allows you to control when and what you view. As more and more content becomes available in downloadable formats from the get-go, who needs a DVR? Your downloaded content is already independent of a time schedule — available from the start to watch when and where you want.

The Average family of December 2009 still have a DVR and it is linked to their Apple-centric media lifestyle built around the Apple TV, but it is a third-party add-on and already they are thinking of dispensing with it in the near future. Apple is unlikely to build their media future around what is, essentially, a bridging technology. DVRs are a way to make the inconvenience of network-bound broadcast TV less inconvenient until both networks and broadcasting fade away. Broadcast networks won't be gone by 2010 — but it is already evident in 2008 that they are no longer the face of the future. There is no longer any need for Apple to hitch its wagon to a DVR. An Apple/TiVo alliance might have made sense in the short term 3 years ago — but not now.

The Apple TV is the first baby step on the road to the real, downloadable future. Giving it up for a DVR-centered video model would be a step backward, and Apple isn't into spending time in reverse gear. What would Apple do with TiVo? Well, it would need to lose the subscription model, extend TiVo's internet connections to bring in more non-broadcast content (a job TiVo itself is already trying to do), and — well, basically make over the TiVo into the exact image of what Apple TV already has become.

I expect Apple to build some better DVR hooks into Apple TV, just for the convenience of today's users who still must draw a lot of high-quality content from time-locked network sources. But they'll do it allied with third-party add-on manufacturers and they won't make it the center of their strategy. They know that the DVR is a stopgap, not the road to the future. Don't go to where the ball is now — go to where the ball is going to be.