Cringley suggests that the iTV’s USB port is ripe with possibilities. He’s thinking it could be used to connect an iSight so people can have a video phone in the living room. His argument is that talking in front of the computer iChat style is uncomfortable for many, but picture-chat in front of the TV would be way more appealing to mainstream consumers. Possibly, but I think there may be some other possibilities:

1. iPod connection. This is a no-brainer. People have tons of music, photos, and videos on their iPods. If an iTV hooked up to an iPod, you could now go to a friend’s house, hook your iPod up to their iTV and use Front Row to navigate through your iPod’s media, displaying it all on the TV screen or listening to your music via their stereo. This would be much nicer than using the iPod video cables.

2. Printer. This is a function on many routers, so it would be easy to have option for the iTV. Basically, it could allow for network printing if the iTV is used as a base station. An attached printer could also come in handy for printing photos. It might be fun to be doing a slide show using the remote, and if someone says “I like that one!” you can mark it for printing and later, hand them a hard copy.

3. Game controllers. There’s some though that the iTV might make a cool game console. There might be an opportunity for Apple to offer games to the lower end of the market, avoiding direct competition with the current and next generation game consoles. Such games would be family games or card games, old arcade titles, or new ones similar to all the Flash web-based games in large supply.