Doubts Cast on Revived Rumors of Subscription TV Packages from Apple

[MacRumors]

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal briefly reported that Apple is working on "new technology" for pushing video content to televisions, apparently linking that work with revived rumors of a subscription TV service. Rumors of such of a service first surfaced in late 2009, but by the iPad launch in March 2010, Apple had been said to have put the plans on hold in the face of opposition from media companies.

But despite The Wall Street Journal's revival of the rumors yesterday, CNET insists that such an offering will not be coming in the near future, if ever, pointing back to a report earlier this month shooting down rumors of an imminent "iTunes Replay" streaming service for movies. The report also cites today's removal of TV show rentals from iTunes as evidence that Apple is moving backwards on the streaming TV front rather than making progress on any subscription deals.

Now does this sound like the studios are willing to back a new subscription service from Apple or for anyone else for that matter? No. Don't put any stock in the rumors that began circulating today. My sources at the studios said three weeks ago that an Apple subscription service is not coming anytime soon, if ever.

The report goes on to note that while Apple has over the course of negotiations with media companies suggested a number of potential business models, the company has yet to seriously push forward on any subscription TV proposals. The company instead seems to be focused more on basic cloud services that would allow users to download or stream purchased content from Apple's servers as needed.

Article Link: Doubts Cast on Revived Rumors of Subscription TV Packages from Apple

 

[Worf]

Even with all it's influence, I can't see convincing the TV studios for a subscription model, they're still arguing over Hulu. Then again, crazier things have happened in the Tech World.

 

[MetalMoon]

It would be cool if it did happen, but I will buy the tv episodes or watch them on youtube or hulu, both ways still work pretty well.

 

[Peace]

Dumb question.

What's the difference between a subscription and a season pass ?

 

[Comeagain?]

Dumb question.

What's the difference between a subscription and a season pass ?

From The Free Dictianary.com

a. A purchase made by signed order, as for a periodical for a specified period of time or for a series of performances.
b. An agreement to receive or be given access to electronic texts or services, especially over the Internet.

A season pass would imply for a period of time, possibly a specific time of year. I don't think there really is a difference.

 

[Storto]

Well....

Just imagine..... competing with the cable companies, you could "stream" cable channels right to your TV. Think about it, in the future, the bandwidth that will be available would make this pretty easy. All you need is agreements from HBO, Showtime, Comedy Central, etc. or maybe you just subscribe to the channels you want. No more packages and bundles of stuff you don't want.

I'd rather pay Apple $40-50 bucks a month, than pay the cable company $100+. The added bonus, all my other media is available on every TV (with an apple box or what-ever), and iCloud.

Cool apps that run on the TV; home control, security etc. Heck maybe the TV in your kitchen could "see" the bar codes off the products your throwing away, and automatically add them to your shopping list.
A little voice recognition technology combine with a gesture recognition camera, the TV notices we are awake and now we can get our morning RSS news, or our favorite news channel. All this and you never have to touch the remote.
The TV notices that your eyes are closed, that starts the power off timer, now you never get woken-up because you left the TV on. All from the TV (Apple) in our bedroom.
Or, the TV notices that there is a strange person in your house, contacts you or the police.
What do I see in the future? The same stuff that went down with the iPhone....rumors it's coming, then rumors it's not, then BAM!! iCable.

 

[Peace]

Just imagine..... competing with the cable companies, you could "stream" cable channels right to your TV. Think about it, in the future, the bandwidth that will be available would make this pretty easy. All you need is agreements from HBO, Showtime, Comedy Central, etc. or maybe you just subscribe to the channels you want. No more packages and bundles of stuff you don't want.

I'd rather pay Apple $40-50 bucks a month, than pay the cable company $100+. The added bonus, all my other media is available on every TV (with an apple box or what-ever), and iCloud.

Cool apps that run on the TV; home control, security etc. Heck maybe the TV in your kitchen could "see" the bar codes off the products your throwing away, and automatically add them to your shopping list.
A little voice recognition technology combine with a gesture recognition camera, the TV notices we are awake and now we can get our morning RSS news, or our favorite news channel. All this and you never have to touch the remote.
The TV notices that your eyes are closed, that starts the power off timer, now you never get woken-up because you left the TV on. All from the TV (Apple) in our bedroom.
Or, the TV notices that there is a strange person in your house, contacts you or the police.
What do I see in the future? The same stuff that went down with the iPhone....rumors it's coming, then rumors it's not, then BAM!! iCable.

Somehow I don't see Comcast allowing customers to use the bandwidth to circumvent the cable offerings they have. They would lose money.

 

[rickdollar]

The whole TV/cable business sucks, IMO. Let me watch what I want, when I want on whatever device I want and charge me only for the content I watch. I don't want to pay for 40+ channels I will never turn to.

And I don't want to buy TV shows from iTunes for $3 each. I wonder how many people really do that? I just want to watch them.

The ABC app for the iPad is a great start. Of course those shows are free. No DVR needed and you can watch stuff anytime you want. If all networks did something like the ABC app streaming to any screen you want, that would be great. That would be something I would be happy to pay a reasonable price for.

 

[Storto]

Somehow I don't see Comcast allowing customers to use the bandwidth to circumvent the cable offerings they have. They would lose money.

IMO it's coming, it's just a matter of when, you can already stream Hulu, Netflix, etc. What would they do? Ban certain connections?
It would be healthy competition, maybe the cable companies would stop charging as much as a cheap/used car payment. They already charge more for faster connections.

 

[darbus69]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

Just imagine..... competing with the cable companies, you could "stream" cable channels right to your TV. Think about it, in the future, the bandwidth that will be available would make this pretty easy. All you need is agreements from HBO, Showtime, Comedy Central, etc. or maybe you just subscribe to the channels you want. No more packages and bundles of stuff you don't want.

I'd rather pay Apple $40-50 bucks a month, than pay the cable company $100+. The added bonus, all my other media is available on every TV (with an apple box or what-ever), and iCloud.

Cool apps that run on the TV; home control, security etc. Heck maybe the TV in your kitchen could "see" the bar codes off the products your throwing away, and automatically add them to your shopping list.
A little voice recognition technology combine with a gesture recognition camera, the TV notices we are awake and now we can get our morning RSS news, or our favorite news channel. All this and you never have to touch the remote.
The TV notices that your eyes are closed, that starts the power off timer, now you never get woken-up because you left the TV on. All from the TV (Apple) in our bedroom.
Or, the TV notices that there is a strange person in your house, contacts you or the police.
What do I see in the future? The same stuff that went down with the iPhone....rumors it's coming, then rumors it's not, then BAM!! iCable.

u go girl - maybe Tim Cook will read your post! everybody needs competition, including apple. apple knows how to to fail and that is is an important part of success. that said broadcast tv will come kicking and screaming like so many industries before them...

 

[Peace]

IMO it's coming, it's just a matter of when, you can already stream Hulu, Netflix, etc. What would they do? Ban certain connections?
It would be healthy competition, maybe the cable companies would stop charging as much as a cheap/used car payment. They already charge more for faster connections.

Hulu and Netflix still have to have contracts with the studios. Comcast now owns NBC and ABC isn't real hip on Hulu etc. They would rather use their own model. This leaves Les Moonves at CBS and the lesser studios.

This plus IMHO there is nothing better that instant gratification. To be able to simply click on a channel and watch the latest TV show AS it airs will always trump next day showings.

If Apple,Inc. ever wants to control the living room ( which I think they do ) they need to become a pseudo-cable company. Perhaps the first "Internet Cable Company". Which brings us back to Comcast not liking their bandwidth being used.

 

[bretm]

IMO it's coming, it's just a matter of when, you can already stream Hulu, Netflix, etc. What would they do? Ban certain connections?
It would be healthy competition, maybe the cable companies would stop charging as much as a cheap/used car payment. They already charge more for faster connections.

Oh it's coming. If you have HULU Plus and Netflix for $15 a month, you don't have much need for cable. You can use the other services built into your TV like VuDu or Amazon to rent the latest flicks. You want TVland stuff, Crackle is there.

I know there's a lot of other stuff not on HULU Plus like maybe Discovery, HGTV, NatGeo, etc. But they've got iPhone apps that stream quite a lot of their content for free, and some on their websites. I'm sure that for a small fee they'd be happy to add their shows a day after they premiere.

Possibly this is where AppleTV would have to go. They would have to convince each content creator like HGTV or NatGeo to provide a "station" that could be subscribed to where all their shows and past episodes were available. Perhaps Apple could create a Hulu like service where you can piece meal the virtual stations and packages you want for much cheaper than cable. I mean, HULU give you all the big time TV shows less than 24 hours after they debut for $8. You'd think another $8-10 would get you everything else. ESPN is already pretty big into ESPN3 streaming content. They see the future.

It's coming. Right now. But right now it's coming in all sorts of un-unified directions - hulu, espn3, netflix, amazon, iTunes/AppleTV, etc. Apple would have to make agreements with all these people. And many of these companies probably have no-competition agreements with the cable TV companies because they're also providing the internet and don't want to compete. Cable companies have the stranglehold I think for now.

 

[Storto]

This plus IMHO there is nothing better that instant gratification. To be able to simply click on a channel and watch the latest TV show AS it airs will always trump next day showings.

I agree, for some reason people need to watch/get their "fix" as soon as possible. I am one of them. I don't know why, I find myself watching shows as they are being DVR'd more often than watching the DVR'd shows after the fact.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

I'd rather subscribe to a show rather than a channel. HBO can have my money for some of their series, but not all of their stuff is of the same quality.

 

[SkippyThorson]

Heck maybe the TV in your kitchen could "see" the bar codes off the products your throwing away, and automatically add them to your shopping list.

Unrelated to the tv discussion here, but I had to highlight it. Someone make this app. That's an excellent idea. That's one of the few apps I'd pay mora than $1 for.

Anyhow, I don't know if I put much stock in this rumor being false... I think Apple could make great strides in the TV world in the near future. Yet, I do put stock in the cable companies and studios making that very hard for Apple.

 

[Gaspode67]

Yawn......

And as ever, this is of little or no interest to any TV owner outside of the US.

I love my two TVs, but seriously, Apple needs to consider their international customers for one. Sorry, folks, but MLB isn't of that much interest over here in Europe. I'm not even sure we'd be able to subscribe if it was! Why not remove it for those outside the US. Open up the platform to allow national broadcasters to have their catch-up services like the BBCs iPlayer shown in it's place? Make it a box that's worth non-Apple considering as a potential upgrade to their systems.

It's another reason why the oft-mooted Apple TV Set will, if it ever appears, be of no interest outside the US. Here in the UK, Cable isn't a big thing. Internet speeds vary from very good (I'm on a 37Mb down/7.5Mb up) to the terrible (my parents on a 1Mb down/0.5Mb up on a good day). Plus, you'd be trying to compete with the Satellite broadcaster Sky, who own the rights for a large proportion of the major sports series over here for a number of years yet. The model that European broadcasters and rights holders use makes it very difficult for any proposed Apple TV set to make any sense. And before you say *pfft* So who cares about little Europe, remember that the EU has about the same population as the USA. So in pure business terms, you're looking at a massive market that would pretty much be dead to an Apple TV.

 

[Peace]

Unrelated to the tv discussion here, but I had to highlight it. Someone make this app. That's an excellent idea. That's one of the few apps I'd pay mora than $1 for.

Anyhow, I don't know if I put much stock in this rumor being false... I think Apple could make great strides in the TV world in the near future. Yet, I do put stock in the cable companies and studios making that very hard for Apple.

[off topic]

There is an app that does that. It's called Grocery IQ. I use the barcode scanner part every time i run out of something and it adds it to my shopping list.

[/off topic]

 

[iCeltic]

They should make their own

I think it could be a good idea if they buy a studio and start making TV shows and movies.
They already have a globaly recoginized distribution channel. internet base entertainment providers are very are out side US. It could be a hit.

 

[iSayuSay]

I'm so into this .. I have a lousy internet connection, so .. online movie business like iTunes movies is bad idea for me .. not to mention that their HD videos is kinda crappy for the price.

So .. a subscription program like cable TV is a perfect solution, cheaper, more channel to watch and also no need to download or stuttter

Bring it on Apple, just don't forget to keep developing Mac (especially desktops) while you're at it

 

[BornAgainMac]

In the meantime there is Netflix. I was surprised to see all the Star Trek episodes on it the other day. It may not have the latest shows but every once in awhile it has a few surprises. Apple would have charged a lot more for Netflix content or have newer shows at Mac memory prices.

 

[divinox]

(below is based on the assumption that the industry works as it "used to").

personally, i'd like to think that the financing model that dominates the tv-industry where networks to a degree can be seen as producers (cash-wise) makes it hard for Apple (or anyone else for that matter) to gain decent content access, at least while pricing the end-service at a level where it would be a great customer offering.

as Jobs have noted, this industry is a whole different beast than the music industry. I'd say, if anything, he should go for full length movies. That one is not as hard of a nut to crack.

(on demand is getting big though, ironically for all you american commy haters i'd say that the "state-tv" is often leading the charge. A quick glance at Britain or Sweden tells the tale...)

From The Free Dictianary.com


A season pass would imply for a period of time, possibly a specific time of year. I don't think there really is a difference.

Subscription is (pay) as you go, a pass simply is not. When you park your car downtown you dont "subscribe" to that spot (generally), you get a "season pass". The easiest way to separate the two is in the renewal (opt-in vs. opt-out).

You could of course have a season pass subscription, but that's a different story all together : -)

----------

I think it could be a good idea if they buy a studio and start making TV shows and movies.
They already have a globaly recoginized distribution channel. internet base entertainment providers are very are out side US. It could be a hit.

Cut-throat, high-risk, business. But sure. It's "the easiest" way in. If they want to get in, that is.

 

[axual]

Tv

Television channels ala carte is exactly what I'm looking for. If the reason the 99 cent rentals is going away is because TV executives don't think it's enough money, then they need their heads examined. They get far less for the % of the cable bill I pay every month.

The reality is, most people only watch a small handful of channels each month, and an individual can only watch one show at a time.

I hate paying for 150 channels I will never watch ... how is that consumer choice?

If anyone can figure it out, it's Apple ... but if executives at television channels don't stop whining, I and many others will just stop watching (and paying) altogether.

 

[MrFusion]

... to have put the plans on hold in the face of opposition from media companies.

Will someone please tell these dinosaurs that we are now living in the 21st century.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Dumb question.

What's the difference between a subscription and a season pass ?

Not really a dumb question. The quick answer is nothing, technically since a subscription can last for any set amount of time therefore a season pass is a subscription.

But for the purposes of iTunes the difference would buying the right to view as many shows as you like during a given period (like Hulu Plus, Netflix, etc) vs purchasing a copy of a complete season of one TV show.

Will someone please tell these dinosaurs that we are now living in the 21st century.

They understand that very well. It's why they don't want to give that kind of power to Apple. They already see the Hulu effect -- and that was intended to destroy iTunes, not them. The cable cos. pay the networks a lot of $ to carry channels no one watches. If they allowed Apple to offer a sub service think of how many more people would cancel their cable sub. It's about $, not modernity.

 

[LucasLand]

Apple should start their own internet service like a Clearwire, with these new Freq. that have opened up from analog tv days.

As long as its fast enough, their own internet service could offer an IPTV subscription. No reason why they can't compete with cable, fios, satellite and Uverse