You really think Apple would make a TV without an HDMI connector? Tim Cook isn't THAT crazy.
You know, there are these devices that wirelessly transmit an HDMI signal. You plug a source box into one via HDMI cable, then put the other by your HDTV and connect it's HDMI out to your HDTV. What if Apple built that second unit
inside of an HDTV and then sold little dongle-like devices to attach to all (previously wires-required) gear. That would allow any devices we have (from ANY video electronics company) to send their HD signals to this television without any wires involved. That would get us a one wire (power cord) television with up to an unlimited number of connectable devices and no physical ports at all.
What if this added rumor about device interoperability would incorporate this as well? In other words, like some device makers building in airplay, what if Apple has decided to push it's HD media wireless standard (or maybe adopt something already somewhat established) so that new equipment to be built in the next few years could build this
inside of their boxes? Thus, for old equipment you need the (HDMI wireless send) dongles but the new stuff could build the dongle-equivalents
inside their electronics?
Part of the marketing spin could be "look, no wires" and I could see them making a few slides about the wired mess so typical of a good A/V setup now. If you've ever thoroughly wired up a bunch of stuff and then wanted to add something or make some changes, it can be a bear even with good organization and labeling. Sticking some dongles in jacks where cables used to plug in would be an appealing proposition for those tired of the wires. Apple could sell the dongles like they sell iDevice accessories and make some fat margins on them. If they can get something proprietary into the mix, anyone who likes the idea would be locked into paying up for these tiny bits (needing very small store stock space) of hardware from Apple.
Every time you buy a new A/V source that doesn't have this standard built in (licensing fee paid to Apple), you would naturally want to immediately buy another one of these dongles to link it into the system. If Monster can make what they make selling us those cables we have to buy with each new bit of A/V gear, Apple would be basically taking the cabling revenues & (often fat) profit margins. It's just a small additional step to think about no HDMI cables, no optical cables, no coax cables, no RCA cables and even no speaker cables. There would still be the issue of how to power it all (the power cable is the hardest one to eliminate), but you get the idea.
Apple has done a good job with selling "thin" as if trimming a few millimeters is some massive benefit. I even see people here quoting how they look forward to a thinner ________. This "no wires" spin could be much like that. Like "thin", once you have the product does it really matter that much if the next one loses a few mm (or does all that wiring hassle matter that much after you've jumped through the hoops of wiring up the A/V stack properly)? But then again, many buy "thin" as if it is a major benefit. I bet many would jump on "no wires". I could even see "no wires" being the "I cracked it" link (at least I think that it is much more likely than some kind of enormous content supply revolution, commercial free, just-what-we-want-to-watch, for only $2X.XX per month... with Apple taking their 30%, this solution flowing through Cable company-owned broadband pipes and somehow the producers can keep producing it all at the same quality with us spending a fraction of what we now spend).
I'm still in the camp that Apple won't build a
whole television so consider the above just speculation about a "just works" concept that could yield a television with no ports that still might work with all of the A/V equipment we have. I don't know how well those wireless HDMI devices work but there are a lot of them and some have good reviews.
TV and seen Apple remove nice features available with "1" in a painful trade for nice features of "3". I'd love them to get it very right with a big update.
