They have the Internet on computers now?

Apple’s iTunes Store hits another milestone next month: A critically acclaimed indie filmmaker has chosen the store as the first stop for his latest feature, rather than releasing it to theaters. The move by Ed Burns is a , when companies such as MovieFlix, CinemaNow and Movielink opened the online equivalent of a video store. Plenty of films go straight to DVD, particularly sequels, kids’ fare and genre flicks. And short films are thriving online. So it was just a matter of time before an established filmmaker took a full-length film straight to download, as Burns is doing with “Purple Violets.”

But like its predecessors in the online film biz, iTunes faces a non-trivial hurdle: how to let its customers watch the movies they download on a TV set, as they’ve done for years with VHS tapes and DVDs. As is common in the downloadable movie market, Apple doesn’t let customers burn the movies they buy onto a disc that will work in a conventional DVD player. The company’s solution is a set-top box called the Apple TV, which sells for $299 to $399. But the box won’t play most other services’ downloadable movies, which use electronic locks that are incompatible with Apple’s anti-piracy technology. Nor can the device tap into many of websites that let you stream TV shows and video clips for free.

The same is true for most other set-tops that act as a bridge between the Internet and the TV. They present only a portion of what’s available online, or even what’s on your computer.

This is the problem that Quartics, a chip manufacturer in Irvine, is trying to solve. Its chips let set-top boxes and, potentially, TV sets themselves do everything online that a computer can.

Let’s face it, the most straightforward way to bring Internet video to your TV is to connect your set directly to your computer. A PC or Mac can handle multiple types of electronic locks and video formats, and if it encounters a file it doesn’t know how to open, the missing software can easily be installed. Best of all, its browsers can take you anywhere online that you might want to go — even those places you don’t know yet.

Despite the best efforts of companies such as Gateway, Dell and Microsoft, however, mainstream consumers just haven’t warmed to the idea of wedging a computer into the entertainment center between the VCR and the stereo. For starters, it’s expensive. Specialized PCs can cost almost $5,000, and even a basic Mac Mini with a wireless keyboard is nearly $700. So manufacturers have tried, with modestly better results, to sell set-top boxes that can access the Net either directly or through a computer on the network. Hindered by limited processing power and memory, these devices have to make compromises that a computer doesn’t. Foremost among these is the choice of file formats to support. For example, the Apple TV will display video encoded in H.264, but not in .AVI, which is a widely used format introduced by Microsoft. And few set-tops can fully support Adobe’s Flash format, which is popular among websites that stream video.

Quartics tries to circumvent such limits by relying on your computer to do all the decoding and decrypting of video from the Web. Its software then packs the video into a compact, secure format developed by Quartics to be transmitted wirelessly to a set-top box. While the computer may have to deal with a shifting array of encryption and compression techniques, the set-top only has to know how to interpret Quartics’ format. The same technique is used to bring Web-based applications, such as instant messaging, to the TV screen, adding a layer of interactivity to the programming. And next year, Quartics Chief Executive Safi Qureshey said, the company’s technology will start popping up in other kinds of devices, such as DVD players, game consoles and TV sets.

So far, the only announced product using Quartics’ PC2TV chip is Addlogix InternetVue 2100, which sells for upwards of $185. But Qureshey says the broadcast TV networks’ rush to make shows available for free online will spur the market for this kind of device. Networks and other content creators are at a disadvantage online, relative to the pirated versions of their shows and movies that proliferate online. The bootlegs tend to be downloadable in formats that can be burned onto discs and played in a DVD player, which means they’re easy to move from the Net to the living room. The networks’ streamed shows, like legally downloadable Hollywood movies, need help to make that jump.

Jon Healey is a Times editorial writer; he runs the BitPlayer blog.

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