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Apple Edging Further Into the Living Room by Cooperating with TV Content Providers

I want Apple to come out with a 50" tv, with AppleTV built in.

I don't have Cable tv - have not had it for years. Back in the day, it was all about no advertising. That was the reason for cable, now it's the biggest thing and where most of the revenue comes from.

It would nice to see a $50 monthly fee for advertisement free service, then each channel would be a la carte. Premium channels could be more.
It's all possible, they just need to break it down by ratings and provide a "pick" your own for additional cost.

Would be really nice
 
InfernoShade said:
What are you talking about? You seem to have forgotten history. :)

It's that attitude that would have paying $30 now for an album. Apple, worked with record labels way back when they were afraid to go digital. Apple pushed hard and we all benefited. Price went way down. And then Apple fought about DRM and got it removed. So the compromise was to raise the price a bit for no DRM. But the labels are never happy and want more money.

Apple pushed hard with the iPhone. They broke some of the hold the carriers had. For example it was the carriers that had total control over everything on your phone before Apple came along. Thanks to Apple pushing we've all benefited. Now look at all the cool choices we have from Android to iOS to Windows and so on. And look at all the cool features/apps we have when developers like Google etc have control over the phone.

The cable industry is terrible and needs to be disrupted. We are all paying 100% for something that we only use %5. Not to mention 90% of it is junk. Apple should push hard on this too. But like with music they know you have partner with people. We'd all like to brake some of the hold the cable co/providers have. It can only helps us - hopefully give us choice and better pricing.

This article is biased if it tries to make it seem Apple needs to have everything their way and is uncompromising. Apple always worked with other companies to offer consumers a better experience. Yes, they push hard, but you have to when you want greedy companies to change.
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TL;DR.

In short, we *need* Apple to turn the table around in TV market. They *have* to. Consumers really need to break free from the stranglehold cable corps hold on the market.

I hope there's a game changer that we're not hearing about. I really hope iTV doesn't go the way of iTunes Radio where it really turned out to be nothing special. At all.
 
iMerik said:
I would finally buy an Apple TV is there was a Plex app for it un-jailbroken.
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exactly, I'd snap one up straight away. I've had to compromise and get a WDTV, which does basically everything I want, just quite badly.

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musicianm said:
How is that any different than, say, me ripping all my DVD's on my NAS and adding them into my iTunes account?
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this. You already can play your own content on it, both music and video. Plex would just be an infinitely better way to do so.
 
Technarchy said:
I haven't had cable TV for about 3 years. The value of cable TV, especially premium cable, just isn't there.
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I agree. I haven't turned the cable box on since I got it hooked up. The only thing I use the cable for is because I get the local and some other channels in HD now with the coax connected directly to the back of my tv.
 
basesloaded190 said:
Depends on the show/channel honestly. Something like breaking bad I would be willing to pay $15/month for where as to be able to have ESPN, not as much, but it would be nice to have without having to get a higher end cable package.
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Really?!

$15/month for one show? You can buy 4 episodes for what $2 each which is cheaper. Now imagine you watch 1 show a day that's 7 x 15, that's $105/month. You're pretty much back up to the normal cable cost. And this is without paying for internet access.

One approach is to figure out how much say a season of 5 shows would cost - say $40 x 5 = 200/yr. Then add in $8/m for Netflix = $96/year. Then say it's $50/mo for internet = $600/yr. Now you're at $896/year divided by 12 = about $75/mo. These numbers are rough.

But you see the problems?
 
How about HBO Go on Apple TV for Charter Communications customers would be very nice to have that sometime in the near future.
 
I want a Pandora / iRadio like service for tv. I don't want to have to browse a list to select what episode to watch.

75% of the time I watch TV passively while browsing the net or catching up on email, I want to just turn it on and let it blabber away at something interesting so for the few seconds I turn my eyes up while thinking its something good on. This is why I like nature shows I guess, it's just good background noise.

I want to be able to create a "channel" like by typing in a search like like on Pandora / iRadio. For example, if I type in "home improvement", it will begin playing random episodes of House Hunters and Love It or List it or stuff like that, even other shows on home improvement shows from other channels other than HGTV. This way I can just set what I'm in the mood to watch, and it will show me these things.
 
The content owners need to tell the cable providers to get with the program.

Sky News on AppleTV could put CNN and others out of business. With the Exception of TimeWarner, the cable companies appear uninterested. They and and the content owners that support them are in for a rude awakening.

The rip off bundling and dumb STB days are on notice.
 
Carlanga said:
Lol people have been watching tv shows streams for free on the internet for a good while now. ;)


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This rumor is disappointing; I removed cable more than a year ago and I'm still waiting on new apps for my atv that are not stupid.
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Yeah but not enough to cut into the profits of the broadcasters, they need to reach a critical mass of pirates LOL
 
Technarchy said:
Apple TV is doing good business without much support from cable and tv providers.

I think they are starting to realize that it might be in their interest to get onboard before Apple does something really disruptive that wrecks their core business model.
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I think Netflix and Amazon are more focused on disrupting their model by luring Emmy nominated original content without commercials. A few more shows and you now have an Internet network playing new shows, old shows, and movies.
 
Bah, whatever. Stop with the features that require me to pay for cable TV. The whole reason we have Apple TVs is because we cut the cord.
 
Tiger8 said:
Just curious, How much will you be willing to pay for the shows that you want to watch?
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Tiger8 said:
Just curious, How much will you be willing to pay for the shows that you want to watch?
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I currently pay 154 per month for internet and TV. (Cox Communications) The internet is horrible, (I average about 8 Mbps down but I pay for 15) but I really have no other choice. (DSL at 1.5 Mbps is my other option) If you figure the internet costs me about 50 that means I am paying 104 for the TV.

I do not have any premium channels. (HBO, Showtime, ETC) I do have every other channel they offer. In reality I only watch about 30 of the 250 or so I have. So it is fair to say I pay about $3.40 per channel per month. I would switch in an instant and maybe even pay more if the TV experience was better. I mean it 2013, why are a third of the channels I watch still not available in HD? Why do I have to surf past ESPN Deportes, and Telemundo on my way to the Science channel?
 
mslide said:
Bah, whatever. Stop with the features that require me to pay for cable TV. The whole reason we have Apple TVs is because we cut the cord.
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Exactly right. No point in simply moving from cable to Apple TV if both are really just cable at their core.

People want more.
 
HiVolt said:
Yeah right, like Apple would ever let you play your own content on it, instead of their online store...
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What? Another person who either forgets or chooses to forget. :)

We could always put our own content on our Apple devices. I had tons of my non-apple store movies, tv shows, and music on my old iPod. Obviously, you can do the same on your iPhone/iPad. Actually I can do more now - I can add my own non-apple ebooks and graphic novels/comics. You can choose to view them in Apple specific apps or third party apps. Also you can load any web app you like on to your iPhone.

Why do people pretend this is not the case? It's so misleading. Have you even used an iPhone? Or and iPod? :)
 
basesloaded190 said:
I dont' want to pay for cable anymore. When I can watch the shows I want to watch without having to pay extra for the channels I don't, then you will have my interest.
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This is exactly my stance as well -- I have cable, but I only watch maybe 10 channels regularly and that's an overestimate. Effectively, I'm paying $130 a month (TV + internet) for the few channels I do want. Hopefully the TV market somehow comes to this idea of paying for the channels you want, but I don't see that happening any time soon unfortunately.
 
basesloaded190 said:
I dont' want to pay for cable anymore. When I can watch the shows I want to watch without having to pay extra for the channels I don't, then you will have my interest.
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I won't pay for cable, it's just a waste of money. I have Hulu+ and Netflix along with OTA programming and online streaming from other channels, it is very rare that there is something that I want to watch that I can't and in those rare cases, I can usually buy from iTunes or Amazon.
 
InfernoShade said:
What? Another person who either forgets or chooses to forget. :)

We could always put our own content on our Apple devices. I had tons of my non-apple store movies, tv shows, and music on my old iPod. Obviously, you can do the same on your iPhone/iPad. Actually I can do more now - I can add my own non-apple ebooks and graphic novels/comics. You can choose to view them in Apple specific apps or third party apps. Also you can load any web app you like on to your iPhone.

Why do people pretend this is not the case? It's so misleading. Have you even used an iPhone? Or and iPod? :)
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I am still waiting for those "Plex" people to explain why/how it is better.
 
I've recently cut the cord after my Apple TV purchase & couldn't be happier. Very excited to see how this pans out
 
Tiger8 said:
Just curious, How much will you be willing to pay for the shows that you want to watch?
Click to expand...

I think there's a huge divide between what some of us are paying for cable (I pay ~145 euros per month for my cable TV, fast broadband and phone package. I also pay about 7 euros per month for Netflix - whose selection in Ireland is more limited than in the US.

There's a MASSIVE gap in the middle there for a "super Netflix" service - personally I'd be willing to pay 50 euros or so per month for a service with a much larger library of content than Netflix; at that point I could ditch the cable TV so I'd be replacing channel TV with on-demand TV for no additional cost.

Live sports would be the only thing I'd miss. Then again, I wonder how On Demand vs normal broadcast TV compare when it comes to live sporting events (like the Superbowl, World Cups etc.) which have a huge number of simultaneous viewers. Would an On Demand system result in a huge increase in traffic/congestion?

There is the option of iTunes rentals and my cable provider also has an in-built on-demand service, but at 6 euros per HD rental it's a horribly unappealing service, IMO.
 
If Apple can make it where you can buy say HBO for 2.99 a month or NBC without commercials for 1.99 a month I think they could be on to something with cancel anytime subscription.

People need freedom of choice but with the current bundling that the networks require will eventually drive their customers away.
 
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