An iMac launch event discussion at Apple’s auditorium brought about a small news nugget for Apple TV fans. Steve Jobs said his company would “have some news” for the media hub soon but that a Mac-focused event was not the place for discussion.

Apple Fanboys quickly began speculating the news may be software related. If it’s software related, we would love it to mean more openness in the software that will allow us to watch streaming video from sites like Joost or aggregators like VeohTV or Miro, which would truly make Apple TV a set-top box worth using.

But could it be that the next-gen Apple TV’s will not require a live computer to be working at the time of use? We would love it if Apple TV became a computer-free box like TiVo, Digeo’s new line of Moxies or the (now-vaporware Vudu).

Another improvement many have asked for is a DVD slot. Sometimes we don’t want to have the computer turned on and just want to use a disk we have rented from the neighborhood store, or gotten from a friend or received in the mail from Netflix. Or even listen to a CD we have lying around (or our kids do when we have the laptop at work).

Why make us use another machine, Steve? Gather it all in Apple TV (After all, if Apple TV is really the “Mac Nano V.0.9,” then adding a CD/DVD slot should be a simple thing, no?

Whatever it is, we hope it will enhance a product with more potential than substance at this time.

Oh, yes, what about kicking up the picture quality to true HD? We’ve seen a lot of complaints about AppleTV’s poor picture quality, and the product has not been getting the best reviews.