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Apple Television Set Prototypes Reportedly 'In the Works'
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I'm doing this with my MBP. Clear QAM cable --> HD Homerun tuner --> MBP EyeTV --> auto-export to iTunes --> Apple TV.
Works great! And all you have to do to make the shows available to any other TV in the house is to add an Apple TV to that TV for $99 ($85 if you get one refurbished from Apple).
For channels I don't get on clear QAM, I jailbroke my ATV2 and use XBMC plus the bluecop Hulu and "FreeCable" add-ons. That gives us Daily Show, Project Runway, and a few others.
Goodbye, satellite/cableTV bill.
Everyone's missing it, and the writing is already on the wall.
They've already got a proven business model with the iPhone.
They're going to do exactly the same thing in the cable/tv market that they did in the mobile market.
High-spec, high-tech, high-ticket device + kick ass UI made "affordable" by keeping the up-front cost low. They'll achieve this by subsidizing via the mandatory monthly service contract. (that will probably be $10-20 more per month than people are used to paying but will include features unavailable without the Apple front end)
And just like the iPhone, that mandatory service contract will likely be exclusive to only one company for the first few years.
This is going to be FAR easier for them to pull off than it was for the first iPhone since they already have proven Joint Venture relationships with companies who are already delivering fiber/cable to millions of homes.
They've already got a proven business model with the iPhone.
They're going to do exactly the same thing in the cable/tv market that they did in the mobile market.
High-spec, high-tech, high-ticket device + kick ass UI made "affordable" by keeping the up-front cost low. They'll achieve this by subsidizing via the mandatory monthly service contract. (that will probably be $10-20 more per month than people are used to paying but will include features unavailable without the Apple front end)
And just like the iPhone, that mandatory service contract will likely be exclusive to only one company for the first few years.
This is going to be FAR easier for them to pull off than it was for the first iPhone since they already have proven Joint Venture relationships with companies who are already delivering fiber/cable to millions of homes.
If Apple's indeed come up with a TV set I hope it is really something that I will have to say. I want it.
My curiosity comes to what can a TV set do differently than a device like AppleTV cannot do?
It seems odd to me Apple jumping into a market with great HDTV sets out there and very thin profit margins. I have a beautiful 60" Pioneer plasma and I wonder if Apple can come up with a better set at a reasonable price. Also if there is an option to snatch a AppleTV box for just $99 with the same capabilities of this Apple Television set why in hell would I change my curent TV set?
I guess I can only wait and see.
For me the biggest hurdle for Apple to overcome is about content. If they can bring lots of it and add a great user experience so users can drop their cable/satellite providers then will be indeed a huge change. All of this can be done with a $99 box though.
My curiosity comes to what can a TV set do differently than a device like AppleTV cannot do?
It seems odd to me Apple jumping into a market with great HDTV sets out there and very thin profit margins. I have a beautiful 60" Pioneer plasma and I wonder if Apple can come up with a better set at a reasonable price. Also if there is an option to snatch a AppleTV box for just $99 with the same capabilities of this Apple Television set why in hell would I change my curent TV set?
I guess I can only wait and see.
For me the biggest hurdle for Apple to overcome is about content. If they can bring lots of it and add a great user experience so users can drop their cable/satellite providers then will be indeed a huge change. All of this can be done with a $99 box though.
Have an Apple Label on it?
This is more like Apple monitors which are pretty badly over priced to what you could get ease where for a lot cheaper. For the extra cost little is even gained. It used to be even worse than it is now as you gained nothing for the huge chunk of extra change for the Apple label.
What could Apple offer than can not be supplied by Apple TV or the other boxes we will still have hooked up to our TV minus the Apple TV.
Netflix can be streamed threw a 360, PS3, and I know multiple DVD players. TVs are quickly getting that little feature built in as well so nothing new there.
You might be able to control it with an iDevice. I will admit that would be kind of nice but not worth that much money.
I use my TV to watch Blu-rays with natural colors. Hence the plasma.
If they produce an LED TV, well fine, I won't buy it just like certain pros don't rush for glossy CinemaDisplays.
Lol, have you been keeping up with Nintendo? They are tanking.
Plus, Apple already has its own gaming industry through its App Stores.
Don't sell me a TV, I already have one. Sell me an Apple TV with all of the existing functionality plus the ability to stream specific channels that I subscribe to, on a channel-by-channel basis. For bonus points, add PVR functionality to this enhanced Apple TV. I'd pay monthly for the ability to get only the channels I intend to watch.
In 3 or 4 years, I can already see the complaints. Only 1 GB of memory on-board, only a dual core and not a quad core cpu, [Apple] TV is the same form factor as the original [Apple] TV, not good for content creation but only media consumption, new [Apple] TV doesn't play Adobe Flash. Plus the usual threads like 42 inch Air HD vs 50 inch ultra widescreen HD+.
We will see complaints you just don't see with today's TVs.
We will see complaints you just don't see with today's TVs.
Unless the TV is extremely competitive, I'd much rather see an updated version of aTV that's much more powerful and advanced (and can access much more content) and BMOS (bring my own screen). Any "dumb" TV left on the input the aTV is connected to would be just as easy to use as an all in one TV from Apple.
You need to hook your TV into your non Apple television set. And that is the point I think. Apple want to integrate everything under the Apple umbrella. So the entire setup had the logo on it.
Like with the phones now. You can take photos, upload to your Mac/the internet etc etc all with using only products. Now the only part of the system that you need a non product is your internet modem. The Airport boxes are still only router/wireless boxes. They don't have an adsl or cable modem inside.
But apart from that it's slowly looking like one day every tech gadget in your house could be from the store if you so wish it to be.
I think we're far beyond channel a la carte. Cable balked at that and the world moved on. Lost revenue for cable; people just started canceling cable altogether instead of having the paring-down option to get just the channels with their most-loved shows.
Series a la carte should be the norm now, with episode a la carte an option. Why pay for all the other dreck that a network throws on the air just so you can watch the two shows you care about?
I wouldn't buy a "Sony record label" or "Epic record label" subscription. Why would I buy an "NBC channel" and an "FX Channel" subscription?
Of course, we're already pretty close to the ideal a la carte model with AppleTV and iTunes today. Missing:
1. A good and transparent "rent this season" option. There is "season pass" which tends to offer some level of discount relative to buying episodes individually, but Apple offers no information at all about what you are actually buying (how many episodes, when they will be available) when you purchase that. So, for current-season shows you either buy the pass on faith or you just rent a show at a time.
2. A good single-show / check-it-out to love-the-show / buy-the-season transition. There is no "Complete My Album". If you want to check a show out, you have to buy one episode at a time. If you want to get the rest of the season, you continue to buy an ep at a time or you rebuy everything you already bought to get the season pass. A "Complete My Album" approach (whatever you spent is applied towards the season pass; once you've bought 22 of the 24 episodes in a season, you just get the season pass and the remaining eps free), but a pro-rated approach (if you bought 30% of the episodes already the season pass is 30% cheaper) would also work.
3. A good buy-the-season to this-show-jumped-the-shark transition. Today: too bad, your check has already been cashed. Enjoy the schlock!
4. A good "new show discovery" model which doesn't involve tripping over something in a global search. A "people who watched this also enjoyed that" advisory, unobtrusively offered, would go a long way. Yes, I know you already see that when you buy something from iTunes; I'm talking about after you've watched what you've bought. That's when I'd be interested in hearing about something else, not when I've just paid for something I haven't watched yet!
You'l notice that all these are really around the service and software, not the hardware. I'm a BIG fan of the set-top box as opposed to integrated electronics. We run our television sets for decades in my house, although somewhat dismayingly the 7-year-old set just crapped out a few weeks ago with a motherboard failure of some sort. I wouldn't want to be stuck with a gen-1 AppleTV and the only way to update was to buy a $2k new display set right now, and that's not even halfway through the expected life of the display!
Also, I'd note that Amazon's streaming service is far ahead of Apple's in all respects above, although they lack critically in one area: a well-designed, reliable set-top-box. If Amazon had something which worked as well as an AppleTV for $99 and which integrated seamlessly with my (Mac) computers and iTunes-based music/movie library (or had a better iTunes than iTunes with which it integrated), I'd buy it. A Roku doesn't fit that bill. Only AppleTV works like I expect it to. But, if a new AppleTV meant buying a whole new television set? Roku is pretty damned appealing, and Roku doesn't even think of interacting with the iTunes TV Rental store.
Then how are folks supposed to connect ancillary devices (Wii, DVD Player, etc)?
Ok, there's a part of me that (if I get past the stupid 'selling TV sets' part) could make sense here.
What could work would be a sensible interface, geared towards discovering and getting to cable/OTA content that you really want. Its the piece that's begging for improvement for 50 years and could be accomplished as a skin on top of existing feeds.
With a stand-alone set, users probably still have to plug their cable box into the set... I don't see how you get around that. But from that point, you never have to look at a cable/FIOS company interface. Apple pulls up the local schedule, provides a superior, consistent experience, probably even talks back to the cable box if necessary to schedule DVR, but accesses that for you as well.
If an actual TV gets complete technophobes involved, great. Offer a couple of sizes (42 and 60?). But there's no reason this same functionality couldn't be provided by an AppleTV box as well. Sure, its another item in the daisy chain, but I really don't see many people dumping an existing $1-2K set when a box in the chain will do the same thing.
I think the TV monitor piece is a distraction here, and might just be candy to have an integrated solution to demo.
What could work would be a sensible interface, geared towards discovering and getting to cable/OTA content that you really want. Its the piece that's begging for improvement for 50 years and could be accomplished as a skin on top of existing feeds.
With a stand-alone set, users probably still have to plug their cable box into the set... I don't see how you get around that. But from that point, you never have to look at a cable/FIOS company interface. Apple pulls up the local schedule, provides a superior, consistent experience, probably even talks back to the cable box if necessary to schedule DVR, but accesses that for you as well.
If an actual TV gets complete technophobes involved, great. Offer a couple of sizes (42 and 60?). But there's no reason this same functionality couldn't be provided by an AppleTV box as well. Sure, its another item in the daisy chain, but I really don't see many people dumping an existing $1-2K set when a box in the chain will do the same thing.
I think the TV monitor piece is a distraction here, and might just be candy to have an integrated solution to demo.
The big "advance" for TVs would be if I could essentially pay for what I watch. Rather than $50 a month for stuff I mostly don't watch. I could drop cable TV, and simply buy what shows I wanted to see - when I wanted to see them - live for events like the Super Bowl or World Series.
The live streaming to 1,000,000 viewer would be the thing that cable TV does better than you could ever do over the internet. But this could all be handled via a set-top box - you don't need an actual TV set for it.
How does it benefit Apple to get into the TV set business?
The live streaming to 1,000,000 viewer would be the thing that cable TV does better than you could ever do over the internet. But this could all be handled via a set-top box - you don't need an actual TV set for it.
How does it benefit Apple to get into the TV set business?
There will be no need to. They all will just be content providers for the Apple hardware. I know that is Apple's plan. Yes the others will fight it. But I believe this is Apple's plan.
So you're saying people won't want to connect their Xbox or PS4, or hell - even their computer. You base this on?
yep.
The only reason I see people craving a TV with Apple logo on it IF there is such hardware feature we cannot live without it. By my guess is that any feature they come up will be more software/content relate that any AppleTV box can do.
I'd have to agree, really you can get a 42 Inch Tv for about $700, sometimes under in some places, I love apple products, but I would not pay $2000-3000 for a tv because thats ridiculous, I think the only way an apple Tv would be sellable, is if they sold it for slightly under, or even a little over $1000, Otherwise I'll just stick with a HDTV and an apple tv device for $100.
I still believe this will be a mistake for many reasons.
First, TVs aren't a high velocity product. Most buy a TV and then have it around for 5-10 years.
Second, profitability in the TV biz is just crap. Sure, Apple has done well with these things before, but still.
Third, TV content will be a mess world wide. The broadcasters will never be able to make an agreement with apple for world-wide coverage and historically, the most profit has come from outside the US.
I think they should keep on focusing on the apple tv, since its less of a financial gamble, still works with all current TVs and higher velocity.
First, TVs aren't a high velocity product. Most buy a TV and then have it around for 5-10 years.
Second, profitability in the TV biz is just crap. Sure, Apple has done well with these things before, but still.
Third, TV content will be a mess world wide. The broadcasters will never be able to make an agreement with apple for world-wide coverage and historically, the most profit has come from outside the US.
I think they should keep on focusing on the apple tv, since its less of a financial gamble, still works with all current TVs and higher velocity.