SleepyEgg

When Apple first showed off the Apple TV to the world in January of 2007—then nicknamed the "iTV" and introduced alongside the original iPhone—its functionality was quite limited compared to the Apple TV we have today. The set-top box came with a built-in hard drive and the ability to purchase video content from iTunes and… well, that's pretty much it. Over the years, Apple has continued to iterate on its "hobby" device by adding and subtracting various features; the company eventually removed the hard drive, opting to make it possible to stream iTunes purchases directly from Apple's servers, and added numerous other on-demand streaming services like Netflix, MLB, NBA, Wall Street Journal TV, and more.

But this week, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple a patent (hat tip to Patently Apple) that appears to address the possibility of the Apple TV gaining DVR capabilities. This would mean, in a DVR user's fantasy world, that the Apple TV would gain the ability to look up TV listings and allow the user to choose which shows to record that are coming over broadcast or cable. The specific patent in question is more related to the organization of episodic TV shows, but it does describe menu items that would "correspond to television shows that have either been recorded from a broadcast or purchased from a content provider."

It's that line that has spurred Apple watchers to speculate that Apple may, in fact, add DVR capabilities to the Apple TV sometime in the near future. But aside from the fact that many concepts patented by Apple never see the light of day, we wondered: does it even make sense at this point in time to consider adding this feature?