OK, so here’s the story. My wife and I have been without cable or sat television since I cancelled Charter cable when we moved out of our place in Pasadena in July. Just recently, during mid-season break (damn), we got DirecTV (a post in and of itself). However, we have a lot of catching up to do.

It seems that the show of the season, over Lost, etc is Heroes. It captures all the geek-gasm’s that exist in this planet in one hour long format. Fantastic. FANTASTIC. The inner geek in Amy has even been exposed when she visibly gasped during one scene (the first “flight” in Vegas).

Side Note: Nothing in this world is as heart-warming as your wife giggling like a little girl at a Japanese man named Hiro and then saying, “That was so awesome… lets watch Serenity again!”

OK, she didn’t want to watch Serenity again, but she does like the movie.

Back to this evening: last night we watched three episodes on NBC’s site, and it was OK, save for the commercials. Tonight I decided: we are watching on our plasma. As regular readers know, I have a MacMini in the living room usually hooked to a touch-screen for the lighting and home automation system. Tonight I hooked the DVI output to the HDMI input on our receiver, and downloaded three episodes of Heroes.

A few cables, a hookup to the receiver for audio and pressing Menu on the Apple Remote and that nice “zing” noise ushered in Front Row. I went to Videos, Shared Videos and selected Amy’s account (its nice that since we have two accounts on the iMac, that both iTunes libraries show up as independent computers). I selected Heroes, pressed play and hoped for the best.

Fantastic.

It looks about the same quality as the SD feed from DirecTV, except maybe a bit softer. However, it worked flawlessly, sounded great and even Dolby 5.1 was supported. We managed to watch three episodes on the plasma, and forgot we were even pumping data out of the small box on the subwoofer. Considering that this computer was pulling data from an iMac upstairs after relaying through two other Airports, this was impressive. The level of transparency the whole process had was inspiring to me, someone who has long longed for the ability to have seamless experiences with my devices.

The ultimate test was playing an AVI rip of Inconvenient Truth w/ the AC3 track. Flawless. HD version of a Sigur Ros video? Flawless. Beyond flawless actually.

Microsoft might have a head-start with the Media Center PC’s. They might have an X-Box 360 with HD download. However, if the iTV is what I think it can (and will) be… Apple won by the shear fact that I don’t even have to think about why.

The beauty of the most flawless technological products and innovation is determined by the degree to which the technology, product and innovation are subjugated beneath the sheer joy of experience.