Just released the Elgato H.264 hardware encoder.

Make Apple TV ready content from Elgato recorded HD Free to Air TV in a flash. No more waiting for video to re-encode as 720p for iTunes playback.

This makes the AppleTV a much more useful device for managing Free To Air TV on your widescreen TV.

Read the article from PhotoGeek.tv

It comes at a time users are coming to terms with the process of automating playback from various sources including HD TV onto TV screens through hardware such as the AppleTV unit.
What this means is that Free to air TV can be recorded, re encoded, then added to iTunes at break-neck speed so that the content will show up on your TV screen as content available for immediate playback.