Now we know why they made the new iMac so thin - it will be built in to that plus bigger size too! Maybe that's why the iMac delay.
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U.S. Cable Companies Reportedly Assessing Potential Infrastructure Impact of 'Imminent' Apple TV Product
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Google DVR and SlingBox. As far as pricing is concerned... did you notice what happened with e-book pricing when Apple got their way? Prices jumped up.
In general, iTunes is the most expensive place to get content. Why do you expect anything different from their TV?
This....is wrong. Those shows get made because we are forced to pay for those numerous channels we don't watch (ESPN get $9 a month from the provider, History get $1.25, etc, etc.). WE are subsudizing the rest of the crap. If they weren't bundled with other channels we do watch, they would go away. That would be welcome in my book.
As for production quality going down, I for one don't care about special effects that drive up the costs. Good, well-written, shows can be cheaply made. Case in point, JourneyQuest on Youtube.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
That's the only way the "new model" we want happens. For the "new model" to replace the existing one, the production companies and the existing middlemen who also pretty much own the broadband pipes through which a new Apple solution would have to flow must be shown how THEY are going to make MORE money... not less.
Currently, you could think of things as 3 players: production companies that make the shows, cable/satt that distribute the shows to us and us consumers. In the new model, there are still production companies that make the shows, Apple replaces the distributors and us consumers. However, Apple's solution depends on broadband pipes probably owned by existing distributors. Why will those distributors just roll over and let Apple have all of that revenue?
But beyond that, if the quality of the productions are to remain as high as they are now (which I know is subjective in and of itself), it's still a problem of showing the production companies how they are going to make MORE money than they make now. If the "new model" is just those production companies + Apple + us, who is going to cough up the money to make up the difference of what's lost in the transition? It would only be Apple and us in the new model?
Is Apple going to spend it's war chest to subsidize the costs of productions so that the Studios make more money while we pay only a "few dollars per month"? I think not. Who's left then? Either we will have to pay a handsome premium over what we pay now OR the production companies have to take the hit so we can pay our desired "few dollars a month". So either the quality and diversity of programming gets cut in a big way or we have to cough up the difference.
Many of us dreamers think the "new model" might yield a new bill of something like $10 or $20/month "for just the channels or shows that I want to watch". But if you refer back to my previous post, just the commercials subsidy alone is $54/month per household. If the "new model" kills off the commercials (including all those we don't see and all those that run on those "hundreds of channels I never watch"), someone has to make up for that revenue or the quality of production it pays for must come down.
Yes, there's plenty of junk on television that "I" never watch. By my "junk" is someone else's favorite show. And the junk that the vast majority of us never watch on those hundreds of channels we never watch is still generating subsidies via the commercials that run on those channels that goes into a pool that helps pay for the great(?) stuff that "I" do like to watch.
In short, a "new model" and us paying "about 10% of what I pay now" are incompatible concepts. Either we consumers pay up big or something more like the existing model wins. Thinking Apple can somehow pull it off is- IMO- extraordinarily wishful thinking.
Meh,
Until Apple can break the local sports monopoly Verizcast will have me by the balls. I hate paying $90+ a month to watch baseball, but there is no legal alternative.
Until Apple can break the local sports monopoly Verizcast will have me by the balls. I hate paying $90+ a month to watch baseball, but there is no legal alternative.
That's nothing but a pipe dream. Content creators would need you to subsidize the cost of lost affiliate revenue through your monthly subscription. You'd be looking closer to $15-20 for most "channels. It's a rough estimate that could go higher, due to the loss of advertising dollars each channel would suffer due to the potential loss in viewership.
Then you get into the cost of digitally archiving a 24/7 network and streaming it to viewers. Who pays for this cost? If it's the content provider, they're likely going to need to upgrade their infrastructure to support it. Keep in mind the need to serve up digital ads, which is a discussion in and of itself.
Maybe Apple could scale their infrastructure and do this at a lower cost, but then you'd have issues with content providers giving up the control of their content and letting apple serve it. Seems like a great idea, but then who is seeing the ad revenue? Providers won't give that up without some serious concessions from Apple.
As a consumer, it'd be awesome to get everything for next to nothing. As a realist, someone has to pay the cost for good content somewhere.
Although I mostly agree with the viewpoint that it seems unlikely that apple would be able to enter the TV market and be successful while probably maintaining high price points and few model options... the same could easily be said for when they entered the Cell Phone market. Back then, there were hundreds of various phone models, at prices staggered from free to $300, or more even. Then apple sold boat loads of their non-subsidized $500 phone and proved everyone wrong.
I'm skeptical, but I'd love to see it happen. GO
!!
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Look it up yourself. Commercial revenues are very important to the whole model. And having hundreds f channels that we never watch is hundreds of places for commercials we'll never be bothered with seeing generating OPM to help subsidize some of the stuff we do like on the channels we do watch. Believe whatever you wish but a new dirt-cheap, commercial-free, al-a-carte model will be a bear to actually pull off... especially with Apple as a new middleman dependent on broadband pipes entirely controlled by the cable companies we want them to overthrow.
If we currently pay $100 for a bunch of channels we never watch and $50 for broadband and this "new model" overthrows the television subscription part so that we can pay- say $20 per month for television, I expect our broadband bills to spike right up to $130+ per month. The spin will be for "high bandwidth users" (like video streamers). Doesn't this sound familiar to anyone?
Perhaps but you can also argue that current model supports crap filler television that would disappear if people realized how much it would cost them to support it. IE Many channels that exist now would simply not exist any more.
You would thus get to your cheaper price by reducing the quantity and not quality of programing.
Internet access without a cable subscription is already higher for most providers.
Most if not all of channel adds go directly to the channel - not the cable company (Can't find any reference to back this up but I think it's right). A typical channel makes half of their money from Ads and the other half from fees paid for by the cable channel. Link
While in some cases the revenue would go back to the cable provider (IE Comast owns NBC) - I'm sure whatever Apple produces will still have commercials. On top of paying a monthly access - I'm sure channels and cable providers will still make plenty of money.
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Just give me my Apple DVR box. Since I'm stuck with time warner for another 10 years because of my association.
I work in a cable channel and dealing with cable operators is so hard.
We have an Spanish movie channel but in order for you to watch it you will need to ask for the Spanish package and IF is available in your area.
On the other hand, in my house my cable provider does not distribute my channel, but I have about 30 channels that I just do not care, I do not care about sports channels at all!
With the Apple TV, in theory, if you saw the latest James Bond movie and you liked the villain Javier Barden, you could do a search for that actor and have all the movies he has played before and we have right now 2 movies with him, so you would be able to watch them, capish?
We have an Spanish movie channel but in order for you to watch it you will need to ask for the Spanish package and IF is available in your area.
On the other hand, in my house my cable provider does not distribute my channel, but I have about 30 channels that I just do not care, I do not care about sports channels at all!
With the Apple TV, in theory, if you saw the latest James Bond movie and you liked the villain Javier Barden, you could do a search for that actor and have all the movies he has played before and we have right now 2 movies with him, so you would be able to watch them, capish?
The a la carte is the key... customization is what the user is looking for & Apple has known this for quite some time about TV/cable. I just don't know how Apple breaks into this industry without some huge negotiation talks, the cable co's have such a stronghold on your cable service in your/a particular area that Apple is just caught in a bully-market to begin with.
I truly think before we will ever actually hear about or see the actual device, the talks about contracts will be pushed to the media, and we will here of the contracts & negotiations getting slipped to the press. I unfortunately do not think we will see an iTV for a couple years still. Hope I'm wrong, but the cable co's make me believe I am right.
An Apple iTV could destroy the cable co's... I mean destroy. The TV advertisement business model would change even more so quickly than the current pace is trending.
The other item I want to add is - the TV from Apple is the key, not a cable box like some suggest, and the only feasible way the market for this is started, is simply due to data speeds increasing.
I see a market for an iTV in a couple years, and I wouldn't doubt Apple is trying to find out how they can curtail the cable co's. As the internet speeds become universally faster, there is more & more of a market for the so-called iTV...
The cable co's are doing everything to not let the iTV debut... it's the 100% truth, the will lose in many avenues, and they don't want to ever see Apple breakthrough with a TV, never.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Although I mostly agree with the viewpoint that it seems unlikely that apple would be able to enter the TV market and be successful while probably maintaining high price points and few model options... the same could easily be said for when they entered the Cell Phone market. Back then, there were hundreds of various phone models, at prices staggered from free to $300, or more even. Then apple sold boat loads of their non-subsidized $500 phone and proved everyone wrong.
I'm skeptical, but I'd love to see it happen. GO
Apple did sell lots of unsubsidized phones at first but then they had to quickly flip to the subsidized model. The issue here is not could Apple sell boatloads of high-priced televisions- they probably could. The issue is very much lined up with the cost of cell phone service. Did Apple's entry into the cell phone business result in cell phone SERVICE rates plunging to 10%-15% of what they used to be? Then why do we think we'll somehow get our television subscription service for 10-15% of what we pay now?
The al-a-carte calculation is not what we pay now divided by the number of channels we get now times the number of channels we would actually like to get. That's the mistake that many make. If we ever get to an al-a-carte model, I believe that most of the available "junk" channels will be killed off. And I also think that each of the "good" channels that remain would be priced around $15-$30/month each. Net result: currently we get 200 channels for $100/month. In this dream, we get 10 or 20 channels for $100/month. In no scenario, do we go from $100/month to $15/month just as we didn't see huge cuts to cell phone service subscription costs when Apple innovated the iPhone.
Comcast ended a cap about 3 months ago . There is currently no bandwidth cap with Comcast .
Interesting coincidence eh ?
Cost????
Apple TV subscription
Cable connection ....highend
HD - channels
Movies
Live events...etc...
This is starting to sound expensive.
Apple TV subscription
Cable connection ....highend
HD - channels
Movies
Live events...etc...
This is starting to sound expensive.
We haven't heard anything from Apple about the pricing structure of a future TV subscription or anything like that.
It's not Apple who knows that it's time to break these stupid bundle packages - it's the customers. Customers don't want 100000000 channels they'll never watch bundled with the handful that they do.
Europe is a million years ahead of the US when it comes to television.
American TV is all about tacky commercialism - the obscene numbers of channels (again, where most of them don't really deserve their own channel), the incredible number and duration of advertisements, not to mention direct marketing of prescription drugs to consumers (I was absolutely shocked by this when I first visited). There are occasionally some good series that come on the major networks, with some impressive computer graphics, but in a package of 999 channels or more, that's a tiny fraction of what you're paying for.
On the other hand, the BBC produces approximately one hundred thousand times better quality shows at a fraction of the cost. With no ads, and without any of the blatant media bias you get in the US (two great examples: the way Top Gear can afford to slate anybody they like because they have no commercial sponsors; and the investigative work they did on uncovering some of the administrative failings of upper BBC management in dealing with a certain child abuser. No US network would have the balls to do either of those things).
The best part is that it's absolutely free to watch online. The BBC are funded by a license to watch programmes as they're broadcast, but shows from the last 30 days on iPlayer are absolutely free.
By the way: I don't mean to trash America per se, just the tight grip of the media companies there who stifle innovation. The demand for an "a la carte" model of TV shows that American consumers won't be fooled, and that's good. I hope they'll be able to bring about some change. And get rid of Fox News (it's embarrassing).
Will cell phone service, we pay in relation to how much data/texting/voice service we consume. Somewhat level rates across the board.
For television, if someone only consumes sports channels as their "service", they would reasonably expect to pay less or it wouldn't be worth it.
Granted, INDIVIDUALLY, the content would likely end up costing more (had you divided the cost of all 300+ channels), but if someone only cares about sports, cartoons, etc. it may be worth it to spend $10 on the particular item you want rather than $100 for everything in the store you don't really care about.
Forgive me if I'm oversimplifying or misrepresenting what you were saying.
I seen an Article on Bloomberg the other day about how Hitachi got out of the TV business. The parts in the article reference Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung as currently losing money manufacturing TV's.
Not sure that a TV set is in store. Set top boxes work well and have the markup. Need to implement more in the software.