Last week we adopted another member of the Apple family and brought home an Apple TV. If you are able to turn a computer on and know how to get yourself to this blog, I’m sure you’ve heard of the Apple TV and how it’s part of the media revolution that Jobs & Co. are currently instigating.

After playing around with the menus and options for a couple of hours I was able to get a good handle on how this relatively cheap piece of hardware can be used in a bunch of different way for our church – and maybe yours, too. This isn’t a step-by-step guide tutorial on how to run your Apple TV or how to make any of these ideas happen but the beauty of the simplicity of options with Apple TV is that you really shouldn’t have to work too hard to figure these out.

(And of course there are a bunch of “Yeah but what about…” points that could be made with each of these. Take the ideas as inspiration and run with it!)

So here you go.. after a few hours of playing around and getting things setup, here are five really evident ways that I think Apple TV could be used in a church setting:

1. Lots of churches have monitors setup in their foyer to display announcements. Connect the monitors to Apple TV and push a series of photos and videos through a Flickr account to create a dynamically updated series of announcements and info screens. Need to change the announcements or the info? Make the changes to the slide image and upload to Flickr. Apple TV will automatically include the change as it is scrolling through the photos.
2. Looking for a pre-service playlist or a set of songs you want to play as background music for an event? Create a playlist in iTunes, make sure Home Sharing is turned on at both ends and fire away. Your Apple TV could be connected to speakers (or the speakers on the displays in your foyer) which will play the songs you want to hear.
3. I’m going out on a limb on this one but I’m thinking it should work. Using an HDMI-to-DVI adapter, connect the Apple TV to your video switcher. Use your iPhone/iTouch/iPad to push video content or visuals using AirPlay to the Apple TV which could then be projected on your screens. Pastors could run their own sermon slides or have illustration videos run at just the right time.
4. This is another one that’s a bit out there but I don’t see why it couldn’t work. Imagine a live event where you wanted to show photos on the screen of the event as it’s happening. Maybe it’s a dads & sons games night or a couples coffee house or a kids craft show – let your imagination go on this one a little bit. What if you had people roaming through the crowd at your event taking photos with EyeFi cards in their cameras? Those photos would be sent to a folder where they could be filtered before being dropped in a second folder or uploaded to Flickr for the Apple TV to grab and display on the big screens.
5. Right now third-party apps aren’t available on the Apple TV without a hack but what if Apple allowed that and you could subscribe to RSS feeds of news updates or photos that could be shown on a display? What if there was a Facebook app that would pull in updates, comments and photos from your church’s Facebook page’s wall? What about a Twitter app that brought in @replies or #hashtag comments based on some settings and filters you gave it? Let your mind wander a bit with the possibilities of what the technology can accomplish and I’m sure you’ll come up with some great ideas.

So can all of what I’m thinking about be done right now with Apple TV? You’ll have to get creative with making it happen but that’s the beauty of working with technology – let the hardware and the software be a tool that helps you facilitate your tasks. Just because Steve Jobs says that Apple TV is a hobby doesn’t mean that you aren’t allowed to take it seriously as a major component of your tech arsenal.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6mKtcOy8Ps

Okay – I’m sure you’ve tried other ideas and I want to hear them. How are you using Apple TV at your church?

UPDATE #1: I was reminded by someone on twitter about AirFlick – a brand new third party app that lets you send any media directly from your Mac to your Apple TV. Heads up on this: “AirFlick Serve files and URLs to Apple TV. This is prerelease software. All rights reserved. Use at your own risk. No technical support is (or ever will be) provided for this product.”

UPDATE #2: I came across something today called BRUCE. Very intriguing! “It’s not just about creating smarter screen savers (which is, basically, what the weather report option is all about) but also about thinking how to publish compelling information snippets to what is, otherwise, a passive, public display. It’s all about pushing information to the Apple TV from the computer, rather than pulling requests by the Apple TV user. This is not an unexplored arena by any means but for just $99 for the Apple TV, it’s a newly affordable and hackable one.” Tada! Looks to be right up the alley of what we’re trying to do with this whole project.