Apple Television Set Prototypes Reportedly 'In the Works'

[KnightWRX]

$1800 is quite competitive w/ high end TVs like the 55" Sony XBR and Samsung 8000 series. Unless something changes in the Cook era, Apple doesn't fish in the low end market.

The question is not whether Apple can be competitive or not, it's whether Apple can operate in this segment at high enough margins and with good enough consumer response.

They can't just be another TV manufacturer on the block for that to happen, they have to bring something. An integrated set top box is not something.

 

[the8thark]

*sigh*

That's because $200 tablets are utter crap. iPads are starting at $500 btw, and ASP is well below $800, so I don't know why you came up with that number.

The big difference is that $1000 TVs are not utter crap, they are pretty damn good.

Wrong.
iPod Touch - $199 and very good. And it's a tablet of sorts.

 

[mingoglia]

I hope doesn't get into the TV hardware business. If they do, I hope it doesn't affect TV, the standalone unit. As many others have said, Apple upgrades hardware all the time. It's much cheaper and easier to swallow to upgrade an ATV than an entire TV. Not to mention much more environmentally friendly. ATV is already tiny and can be hidden just about anywhere. I think I'd much rather buy one of those when the time is right than a TV. The fear I have is that Apple purposely leaves some of the features off the $99 price point Apple TV and only makes them available on their new TV sets... the end user definitely loses if this was to happen. I'm not really passing judgement yet... just throwing out a scenario as none of us really know what the future holds...

 

[arkmannj]

New We need Apple to start their own ISP service, maybe join with Google on an ISP fiber service. Apple could easily start selling individual channels through iTunes and we could all ditch Comcast.

 

[jamesryanbell]

Wrong.
iPod Touch - $199 and very good. And it's a tablet of sorts.

While I do agree with the general point you're trying to make (I really do), go ask people if they consider iPod Touch a tablet, and see how many out of 100 say "yes".

 

[Friscohoya]

The question is not whether Apple can be competitive or not, it's whether Apple can operate in this segment at high enough margins and with good enough consumer response.

They can't just be another TV manufacturer on the block for that to happen, they have to bring something. An integrated set top box is not something.

The something is access to content at much cheaper prices. The TV is just the medium since screen size ultimately does matter. I have to agreee that it seems like it would just be easier to either sell an Appletv box (which they do) or license Airplay to manufacturers.

 

[rockrigo]

While I do agree with the general point you're trying to make (I really do), go ask people if they consider iPod Touch a tablet, and see how many out of 100 say "yes".

if it were 4-4.5" a lot of people here would

 

[diamond.g]

I see you've been voted down, and I can see why, but you have a nugget of truth in there. A great business model is NOT one which minimizes money leaving the customer's wallet bound for the company's bank account.

BUT, you are missing two things:

1. There is a larger market than "your cable company" (which is a monopoly and can charge pretty much whatever it pleases). People with a fixed budget have some amount allocated to "discretionary" entertainment expenses. The cable bill, on the medium timescale, is one of those discretionary expenses, but so are going out to movies, reading books, playing video games, etc. The cable company and indeed TV industry writ large DO have competition for your dollars, and providing visibly substandard value is a major deterrent to consumers spending more on your particular type of entertainment.

2. It isn't "the content providers" who are raking in the big dough here. The major money makers in TV are the cable companies, and then the networks (which are sometimes content providers, but often just aggregators). You can see the relative profitabilities just by looking at the Comcast-NBC merger (where the "NBC" side of the fence includes a lot more than just the network and content funding arms). The content providers would be greatly enriched by a content distribution model which reduces the relative takes of the distribution (cable company) and aggregation (network) layers which currently hold near-monopolistic powers (how many networks can you shop your show around to? if the network which bought your show decides to cancel it on the fourth episode, what can you do about it?).

In this case, "great for consumers" and "great for content producers" both align in favor of a la carte series distribution. That having been said, the layers that reduces (the cable company becomes a dumb pipe instead of a choice curator; the network execs become industry-specific banks and may offer a voluntary curation function instead of having absolute power) are the ones with the big bucks and the power, and any shift of content producers over to a new model will be dealt with in a highly punitive manner by the contract those entrenched interests hold for distributing content to the "other 90%" of the not-tech-savvy populace.

For as long as cable/cable internet is treated as a local municipal monopoly (or duopoly) we probably won't see a great decrease in price due to competition. What incentive does Comcast have to make their service better if they have defacto monopoly over the lines that run to your house? We need the FCC to call those lines a dumb pipe that anyone can offer service over (or maybe the local municipals can do that).

I have great hopes that Apple can provide something that would make it worth wile to drop my cable service that I have now, and incur the increased price of internet access.

 

[jmnikricket]

Yeah right, they'll give up speaker systems and Playstations just because they love Apple so much.

Airplay HDMI hub accessory to ease the transition? You're right that home theater and gaming consoles are too common these days for Apple to ignore, even if their target demographic is people looking for simplified access to content.

 

[Yr Blues]

imagine plugging your xbox into the apple tv. apple's going to have some branding issues if they don't come out with a joystick to play their own hardcore game apps.

imagine a joystick designed by jony ives

 

[nagromme]

I just don’t see it.... but then, I’m not the one who cracked it! I’ll be interested to see what emerges. Hopefully it sees the light of day—not every Apple experiment does.

I’m also not much of a TV person anyway, so don’t ask me. I WANT my TV to be my computer (with projector attached). No giant slab cluttering my home. That’s so 2008.

imagine a joystick designed by jony ives

That would be cool! As long he takes the MacBook-Air-and-iPhone pill that day, and not the hockey-puck-mouse pill!

 

[*LTD*]

What user experience?

It usually takes Apple to show us. That's how it tends to work.

If this is indeed what they are planning, then just sit back and wait. Rein in your preconceived notions.

There was a time when the notion of them making a phone (much less having it change the face of consumer tech) was almost inconceivable.

 

[Yr Blues]

I just don’t see it.... but then, I’m not the one who cracked it! I’ll be interested to see what emerges. Hopefully it sees the light of day—not every Apple experiment does.

I’m also not much of a TV person anyway, so don’t ask me. I WANT my TV to be my computer (with projector attached). No giant slab cluttering my home. That’s so 2008.

side by side quality projector vs plasma or led. the projector loses every time.

projectors are still cool though, but there are too many factors that will go wrong. optimal viewing surface. projection distance and angle. bulb luminescence. heat. cooling noise.

 

[diamond.g]

It usually takes Apple to show us. That's how it tends to work.

If this is indeed what they are planning, then just sit back and wait. Rein in your preconceived notions.

There was a time when the notion of them making a phone (much less having it change the face of consumer tech) was almost inconceivable.

Sadly, Apple still hasn't removed the grip from the carriers (like we were all hoping they would do with the original iPhone).

 

[Lennholm]

This still seem very unlikely/stupid. Who is going to replace their multi-source display panel (the TV) with an Apple branded TV that is dedicated to Apple distributed content exclusively?
Even if the Apple branded TV is multi-source like regular TV's, what could it possibly do that the current Apple TV hooked to a regular TV can't? A TV is just a dumb display panel when connected to the Apple TV anyway.

Sadly, Apple still hasn't removed the grip from the carriers (like we were all hoping they would do with the original iPhone).

What are you saying here? We were all hoping that Apple would release their control over the carriers so that the carriers were free to add their own stickers and bloatware to the iPhone?

 

[KnightWRX]

The something is access to content at much cheaper prices.

That's not it. A set top box for 99$ can do that.

The TV is just the medium since screen size ultimately does matter. I have to agreee that it seems like it would just be easier to either sell an Appletv box (which they do) or license Airplay to manufacturers.

Exactly. It is easier. If Apple is going to do a TV, it just won't be "screen size matters", it's going to be "TV couldn't do this before, now they can". Any TV can receive signal from a set top box. An integrated set top box isn't really anything new.

 

[SockRolid]

Sorry. No TiVo functionality.

I also wonder if Apple can out-TiVo TiVo. I have gotten used to the TiVo recording suggestions [...]

Sorry, but it's doubtful that Apple has any interest in letting us record our own copies of anything. Apple wants us to rent or buy content from the iTunes Store, and that shouldn't change after they ship a TV set of their own.

So how will we watch live events like sports and news? How will we watch the latest episode of a show while it "airs"? By watching live streams from Apple's servers. The same way we watch live streams of Apple keynotes. Been there, done that.

What about pause / rewind / slow-mo of live events? Easy. The Apple television could buffer some or all of whatever you're watching. If you rewind, you're just skipping back in your own local copy. And if you tune into a show in the middle and want to start from the beginning, Apple could reset your stream to start from the beginning from their remote copy.

Apple TV 2.0, as it stands now, uses essentially the same circuit board as iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. It's cheap, small, and it would be trivial to put it in an HDTV enclosure.

The real key to innovative disruption in the TV industry is controlling it all. How will we control the Apple TV? How will Apple make TV compelling, easy, and cool? With Siri.

You: "Siri, show me all the scoring in this year's Superbowl game."
Siri: "There were seven touchdowns and two field goals. And one two-point conversion. Here's the first touchdown..."


You: "Siri, find any episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation featuring Ashley Judd."
Siri: "Ashley Judd appeared in these two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Do you want me to play one of them now?"


You: "Siri, who was that French movie director in Close Encounters?"
Siri: "Francois Truffaut. Would you like to see the movies he directed?"


See how easy things could be? No channel numbers to punch in, no 50-key remotes. No need to record anything. And Siri would make extremely easy to find content. And Siri would make it nearly impossible for anyone else to imitate the Apple TV set. Think about it.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

The question is not whether Apple can be competitive or not, it's whether Apple can operate in this segment at high enough margins and with good enough consumer response.

They can't just be another TV manufacturer on the block for that to happen, they have to bring something. An integrated set top box is not something.

Well, that really has zero to do with what I was responding to. The poster noted that $1800, the price mentioned in the article, was too much for a TV. I was just noting that both Sony and Samsung sell similar sized top end TVs at higher price points.

But to your points:

If Tim Cook mimic's Steve Job's mindset then Apple will absolutely not introduce a TV in which it cannot make its usual 30%+ margins. That is quite high in the TV world, and I'm positive Apple management is aware of that and is not going to enter the market just to get in it. That's not Apple's style.

Apple never enters a new market just to be "another" choice. They get in to be "the" choice. That means a product that sets itself apart from others or is a completely unique product. So your concern is not justified based on Apple's past history unless Cook really goes off the rails, and we've yet to see evidence that he is going to manage Apple much differently than Jobs.

 

[diamond.g]

Sorry, but it's doubtful that Apple has any interest in letting us record our own copies of anything. Apple wants us to rent or buy content from the iTunes Store, and that shouldn't change after they ship a TV set of their own.

So how will we watch live events like sports and news? How will we watch the latest episode of a show while it "airs"? By watching live streams from Apple's servers. The same way we watch live streams of Apple keynotes. Been there, done that.

What about pause / rewind / slow-mo of live events? Easy. The Apple television could buffer some or all of whatever you're watching. If you rewind, you're just skipping back in your own local copy. And if you tune into a show in the middle and want to start from the beginning, Apple could reset your stream to start from the beginning from their remote copy.

Apple TV 2.0, as it stands now, uses essentially the same circuit board as iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. It's cheap, small, and it would be trivial to put it in an HDTV enclosure.

The real key to innovative disruption in the TV industry is controlling it all. How will we control the Apple TV? How will Apple make TV compelling, easy, and cool? With Siri.

You: "Siri, show me all the scoring in this year's Superbowl game."
Siri: "There were seven touchdowns and two field goals. And one two-point conversion. Here's the first touchdown..."


You: "Siri, find any episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation featuring Ashley Judd."
Siri: "Ashley Judd appeared in these two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Do you want me to play one of them now?"


You: "Siri, who was that French movie director in Close Encounters?"
Siri: "Francois Truffaut. Would you like to see the movies he directed?"


See how easy things could be? No channel numbers to punch in, no 50-key remotes. No need to record anything. And Siri would make extremely easy to find content. And Siri would make it nearly impossible for anyone else to imitate the Apple TV set. Think about it.

That still doesn't show me content that I could be interested in based on other things that I watch. I also doubt Apple will want to stream local channels (like local news and weather), shoot the satellite providers had to have a law made to force them to do it.

 

[KnightWRX]

Apple never enters a new market just to be "another" choice. They get it to be "the" choice. That means a product that sets itself apart from others or is a completely unique product. So your concern is not justified

Uh, you're saying the same thing I am. An AppleTV set that is just a 1800$ TV set with an AppleTV integrated in it is just another "choice". Apple wouldn't do that. For them to justify making a whole TV set, it's going to be something more than just that, otherwise they'd stick to making set top boxes like they've been doing.

 

[jayducharme]

Wait. This is about TVs, not home theater.

I think it is. It's about connectivity. A TV doesn't exist on its own; it's just a dumb monitor. You need to connect things to it, whether a simple antenna or a satellite system. I think that's where Apple could bring innovation: streamlining the experience of using a TV.

 

[ArcaneDevice]

It says a lot about the users on this forum when all everyone is concerned about are the number of apps and AppleTV integration and nobody has mentioned the display technology or image quality. Will it be a full-array LED or just another edge-lit with crappy uniformity? If they make a full-array 50+ inch that has excellent image quality then they could easily price it at $4K and it would be perfectly acceptable. I paid $5K for my screen four years ago.

But there is no chance that Apple could make a television that also works with subscription cable without requiring an external box. No chance at all. CableCARD is dead weight to all cable operators, Tru2Way is non-existent, if you live in an SDV area you need a box that doesn't work a lot of the time, most technicians have no clue how to deal with anything other than cable-issued boxes, cablecos all use different software, firmware and APIs that need constant updating to be compliant with their systems ... and even ClearQAM is problematic when providers keep changing the channels.

But to say that television is difficult to use now is idiocy. The only thing that makes a television difficult to use is the complexity and number of devices you have plugged in but on their own you change the channel and volume. A lot of people don't even bother changing the picture settings from supernova store level.

And new models are not lacking for online content either. Every manufacturer now has online streaming and Web apps built in, and they are not hard to use either. No more so than anything on an Apple device.

If Apple made an iOS TV it would benefit Apple junkies but in the US where for the majority digital TV means a box or nothing, the only way they could sell it to the masses is by doing what everyone else does. And that means a cable box or putting up an antenna, because no matter what you may have heard the are plenty of people left who want to watch television using cable or OTA.

Unless Apple has some fantastic streaming option allowing all the major OTA networks for free and then improves the crappy state of US broadband before it becomes more expensive than gold, any television they create has to perform the same tasks as all the others or it's just a big monitor with built-in AppleTV.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

The question is not whether Apple can be competitive or not, it's whether Apple can operate in this segment at high enough margins and with good enough consumer response.

They can't just be another TV manufacturer on the block for that to happen, they have to bring something. An integrated set top box is not something.

Uh, you're saying the same thing I am. An AppleTV set that is just a 1800$ TV set with an AppleTV integrated in it is just another "choice". Apple wouldn't do that. For them to justify making a whole TV set, it's going to be something more than just that, otherwise they'd stick to making set top boxes like they've been doing.

OK. Then I'm not sure why you commented on my original post rather than someone who thinks anything with an Apple logo stamped on it is an ordained best-seller.

 

[jettredmont]

It appears that many are purchasing an iPad for $800 when you can get a tablet fo less than $200. People don't purchase Apple products for the logo, they buy them because of the benefits provided. They all integrate well with minimal effort. That's all well worth the extra money. If it wasn't, Apple wouldn't have $81B sitting in the bank.

The question is: what room is there for Apple to improve the experience, which they don't/can't offer with the AppleTV set top box?

I just don't see an upside. Wiring an HDMI cable from the AppleTV to your own TV, setting your own TV to the only live input if it doesn't do it already ... this doesn't seem like a process in need of $1k worth of streamlining. Hell, hire someone to come to the house to do that for you for $100 if you absolutely have to!

I agree that *IF* Apple comes out with an $1800 TV it will have something there to justify it. I just don't see anything imaginable to justify it, and so challenge the premise that they will try marketing an $1800 TV. I may be wrong on the first count (ie, perhaps there is some astounding feature which can only be offered on a fully-integrated TV set), but only time will tell.

 

[Icaras]

Nice, time to start replacing my home AV brand televisions in the house with more Apple

It would be very cool if Apple can also design a sleek AV receiver to go with their TV set. I can only imagine their design would just put what we've been used to in a traditional AV receiver to shame. A fraction of the size, lower power consumption, and that signature Johnny Ives Apple look

Or better yet, if Apple is poised to marry an Apple TV inside a display, I wonder if they can go one step further and build the electronics of an integrated AV set right inside as well? Just get rid of the set top box and AV set altogether. Can we say All-in-one smart TV? Even add a side slot-loading DVD drive if they were so inclined. I doubt blu-ray support though.

I would just LOVE this if they could design something like this. As much as I love our home AV setup, I'd rather see something simpler than having several components sitting on the rack and a ton of spaghetti wires wreaking havoc.