Eddy Cue on Apple TV: Customers Should Be Able to 'Buy Whatever They Want, However They Want'

[Supermallet]

Honestly, I'd be fine if we got the same sorts of cable packages currently offered, but through our own set top boxes. To me the biggest issue with the cable companies wasn't the bundling, but the unnecessary, always outdated tech they used to deliver it. You'd have to wait for the cable guy to show up, hours late, to hook up your cable. They'd inevitably screw something up. You'd get an ugly remote that looked like some $5 Radio Shack reject. You'd get heavily compressed, low quality images. And all of that costs you extra money per month, and if you ever canceled your service you have to get the boxes and remotes back to the cable company yourself.

I'd be fine if Time Warner or Comcast or Charter etc. offered roughly the same basic set of cable packages we have now, but it's all piped in through an ATV/Roku/Fire/PS4/Xbox One, whatever. Give us some cloud storage for DVR, you can charge extra per month for higher allotments of DVR space. No contracts, no hidden fees, no blackouts or exceptions, just the same exact thing I can get with a cable subscription, just using my own hardware. Just give me a set of channels for a fair price and I'll pay it. Sony is basically doing this with their TV service on the PS4. I tried it for a bit and it was nice, but ultimately I still felt like I was overpaying (I think it was $50 per month) compared to what I was getting.

I already own my own modem, so I'm not paying extra fees for my internet (but I tell you I have to check my bill every month because they love to try to throw the modem rental fee in even though I'm not renting a modem). I want the same thing for my TV. Let me choose what hardware works best for me, then sell me your service through it. Is that too much to ask?

That being said, I would prefer a channel selection process that's a little more customizable than what we get now. What we should be doing is saying, "Pay X dollars for Y amount of channels," and it doesn't matter what channels those are. Now, there are premium channels that feel they can get away with charging more for access to their content, that's fine. Those are high visibility channels but 99% of what is on cable is not HBO or Showtime or Starz. So why couldn't I choose to get, say AMC instead of ESPN and pay the same price? Maybe get IFC instead of Discovery. And so on.

 

[chatin]

Cue is a sell-out to the cable industry. The price for the new box speaks for itself. This will not be successful with competitors out there building a cable-cutting experience for a reasonable price.

 

[asiga]

I still remember there was a time when I'd wished to have all products released by Apple, with perhaps the exception of the iPod. The change Apple has done is so dramatic that the only Apple product I'd love to have nowadays is the OS X source code (so that it could be forked and we no longer depended on Apple)

 

[George Dawes]

Just as long as it's from Apple

 

[mwd25]

Honestly, I'd be fine if we got the same sorts of cable packages currently offered, but through our own set top boxes. To me the biggest issue with the cable companies wasn't the bundling, but the unnecessary, always outdated tech they used to deliver it. You'd have to wait for the cable guy to show up, hours late, to hook up your cable. They'd inevitably screw something up. You'd get an ugly remote that looked like some $5 Radio Shack reject. You'd get heavily compressed, low quality images. And all of that costs you extra money per month, and if you ever canceled your service you have to get the boxes and remotes back to the cable company yourself.

I'd be fine if Time Warner or Comcast or Charter etc. offered roughly the same basic set of cable packages we have now, but it's all piped in through an ATV/Roku/Fire/PS4/Xbox One, whatever. Give us some cloud storage for DVR, you can charge extra per month for higher allotments of DVR space. No contracts, no hidden fees, no blackouts or exceptions, just the same exact thing I can get with a cable subscription, just using my own hardware. Just give me a set of channels for a fair price and I'll pay it. Sony is basically doing this with their TV service on the PS4. I tried it for a bit and it was nice, but ultimately I still felt like I was overpaying (I think it was $50 per month) compared to what I was getting.

I already own my own modem, so I'm not paying extra fees for my internet (but I tell you I have to check my bill every month because they love to try to throw the modem rental fee in even though I'm not renting a modem). I want the same thing for my TV. Let me choose what hardware works best for me, then sell me your service through it. Is that too much to ask?

That being said, I would prefer a channel selection process that's a little more customizable than what we get now. What we should be doing is saying, "Pay X dollars for Y amount of channels," and it doesn't matter what channels those are. Now, there are premium channels that feel they can get away with charging more for access to their content, that's fine. Those are high visibility channels but 99% of what is on cable is not HBO or Showtime or Starz. So why couldn't I choose to get, say AMC instead of ESPN and pay the same price? Maybe get IFC instead of Discovery. And so on.

Yes, the thing that bothers me is that we clearly dont need the cable companies to deliver the package. Not only has technology given us our own hardware but its also given us the delivery. Almost every channel there is has a website streaming their content or their own app or on Hulu or Netflix. So the thing is, with the technology available, we dont even need them to sell us their service. But.....and here's the but, they have made it next to impossible for us to get around them. Just like music, these companies are going to beating themselves wondering why they didnt keep up with the tech and modify their model. Because they want me to authenticate my cable subscription to watch shows on the BBC America app, well good job, now Im just going to d/l the show. It will take me a whole minute but now I have the show free.....forever......to watch as much as I want on any device I want. So good job, keep doing what your doing, ask the record industry how that all worked out for them .

 

[George Dawes]

The Apple we all knew and loved died on 5th October 2011 , the bean counter Captain Cook took over and the rest is history. Apple are becoming style over substance and it's very VERY sad.

I used to be a big apple fanboy , got banned from many forums for my pro-apple stance , now i just don't care anymore - they're just another faceless greedy boring corporation now.

 

[hick9]

I agree. People should be able to buy what they want when they want...now can they give us an Amazon app?

They can do it... Amazon that is. All they have to do is make the app... it falls squarely on them.

 

[DamoTheBrave]

Netflix is $15/month in Australia for unlimited streaming. They will not compete at $40/month so I hope that part is just unfounded rumour.

 

[CFreymarc]

Unless I have some say as to what those 25 channels are, I don't think I'm going to buy that.

I'd like the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX), CW, CNN, SyFy, BBC America (I'd rather have the actual BBC channels!), ABC Family and probably one to two others that don't come to mind. I can get ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS and CW over the air (and they go to my TiVo DVR), so I'd really be paying for good "reception" (never having to touch the antenna), losing the DVR (unless they have on-demand everything) and gaining a few stations.

For that cost I could buy the shows from the networks that I don't have.

But I'm hopeful they'll do something to shake up the industry...

Gary

My take is we will eventually see the breakdown of private television networks and the distribution of programming and shows via direct studio distribtion. Ads / commercials will come in tuned to the individual viewer profile instead of the broad demographics of the channel content.

Decades ago, there was the Qube Network where the audience has feedback to realtime surveys presented on their television screen. You had four buttons (representing the options on the screen) on your cable tethered remote control to select. Wiki has a good write up about this. It was an 80's era DuMont.

While it was primitive, it was one of the first mass audience, realtime viewer feedback to television programming. It freaked out producers and directors who wanted to send out an unaltered message putting the audience at effect. This innovation was ignored and only had a dozen or so USA cities installed. It is mostly forgotten now.

With Apple TV, IMO the massive potential here is programming with real-time user feedback is the real killer app. All the technology is there, it just needs the right business plan, programming and engineering. Then there is the tragedy of DaVinci Time & Space ... another technology decades ahead of its time.

 

[Juicy Box]

Why would I pay $40 a month for basic channels?? I paid $50 for my HD antenna and get all those channels with no monthly bill. They need to step up their game if they want to break into the TV industry.

Good Luck

Maybe with your situation you would not benefit from this service. But many would.

Also, no one know what this service will include. If this service is live TV only, which I doubt it will be, it is DOA.

If this service includes all current and past shows on the network available on demand, this service will blow cable out of the water.

 

[H2SO4]

How about Eddy, when I buy an app I have the choice to transfer ownership.
Bought TomTom UK, upgraded to Tom Tom Europe and I can’t transfer ownership to my partner. No, I don't want to share I want to make it hers!
Seems I can do this with any other software that I can think of.

This is classic Apple gouging.

 

[IainCov]

If people want to spend $40 a month on a few channels obscured by on-screen graphics and interrupted every few minutes by adverts then more fool them.

 

[sudo1996]

$40/month for the junk local channels that I already can – but don't – watch for free with an antenna... or $8/month for Netflix. And aren't cable plans around that much anyway? I can't see this being even a remotely good deal for anyone besides people who can't get a good enough signal for some channel, and I'd still ask why you want those channels anyway and why you don't already have a cable plan if you really want them.

Eddy Cue is stating what everyone has always wanted, the ability to pay for only the cable channels you watch. There's an obvious reason why this has never happened, and I seriously doubt Apple has any way to change this. At best, you'd get to buy channels separately, but they'd cost so much that it wouldn't be worth it.

To bad when he says this he only means American users. People from any other country (thats right America isn't the only country in the world), have no legitimate or easy way to access content, and even when we do it is outrageously expensive. Please could they just support other countries for once.

Maybe once the people in other countries quit bashing the USA and complaining about our corporations while still buying stuff from them
I mean, not you, but other people do it.

 

[diipii]

TV is defunct as a serious medium. It now occupies the niche formerly reserved for trash comics and low brow magazines. This will be the Apple Car in a more virulent form and will further cheapen the Apple brand.
P.S. What I want is a 4 core i7 Mac Mini. No more self-boiling iMacs for me.

 

[QquegChristian]

There are plenty of movies on iTunes for £5/£6 from smaller independant studios. Any distributor of films who doesn't want DRM on their property to ensure its being paid for needs their head examined.

DRM is a non-issue and it is absolutely absurd that it still exists. Within 3 hours of our movie being available on every digital service it was pirated. The source? iTunes, DRM and all. The iTunes DRM isn't hard to get around for the pirates, so what is the point? We had our movie torrented over 500,000 times. The piracy ratio was 100 to every 1 paid rental and months before we started offering a DRM-free alternative. To this date... Of the hundred or so unique torrents for our movie, NONE of them originated from the DRM-free file. It is truly a case of DRM punishing the honest people who are willing to pay, while not stopping the people who aren't.

Apple dropped DRM on music years ago and for good reason... It does not work.

If you buy my movie, I want you to be able to burn it and give it to a friend... That is good marketing. It only becomes harmful when you actively and proudly post it online for millions, and those types of people are not slowed by DRM in any way.

 

[McGiord]

Yes, because Apple would demand a cut of the subscription and Roku doesn't get that.

Then why didn't you let Amazon have an Apple TV app? Not even talking about the ATV4, I mean past Apple TVs too.

EDIT:
Let's get real, Apple makes most of their money on hardware. Wouldn't an Amazon app make the ATV4 the perfect streaming device for years to come until Apple makes more money when people start buying the 4k ATV5 eventually?

Instead, people who want to use Amazon Prime content are forced to use a Fire TV... and to be honest, the Fire TV hits some points the Apple TV fails to address despite the FireTV's UI being unsatisfactory and boring (don't get me started on the app lineup).

I'll reiterate my point because to me it's just plain silly and I don't understand the situation: Apple makes money on hardware, Amazon makes their money on content so wouldn't an Amazon app make perfect sense? Only pitfall I can think of is that they'll lose some sales in movie rentals and purchases -- shouldn't be much though considering Amazon allows streaming via their website + android support.

Amazon Fire and Androids aren't the only way to be able to watch Amazon Prime videos. There are plenty of solutions for this:
AirPlay to Apple TV from a Mac or iOS device.
Many smart TVs have the App, as well as PS3 or any other console out there and BluRay players too.

 

[Dunk the Lunk]

What I really want is an EPG that plugs into all your downloaded apps that are showing live events/tv. Whether thats live news (eg Sky News), sports (eg Red Bull) or general TV channels (eg a future BBC app). An EPG would allow me to know whats going on each app, rather than having to load each app individually to check.

 

[McGiord]

Honestly, I'd be fine if we got the same sorts of cable packages currently offered, but through our own set top boxes. To me the biggest issue with the cable companies wasn't the bundling, but the unnecessary, always outdated tech they used to deliver it. You'd have to wait for the cable guy to show up, hours late, to hook up your cable. They'd inevitably screw something up. You'd get an ugly remote that looked like some $5 Radio Shack reject. You'd get heavily compressed, low quality images. And all of that costs you extra money per month, and if you ever canceled your service you have to get the boxes and remotes back to the cable company yourself.

I'd be fine if Time Warner or Comcast or Charter etc. offered roughly the same basic set of cable packages we have now, but it's all piped in through an ATV/Roku/Fire/PS4/Xbox One, whatever. Give us some cloud storage for DVR, you can charge extra per month for higher allotments of DVR space. No contracts, no hidden fees, no blackouts or exceptions, just the same exact thing I can get with a cable subscription, just using my own hardware. Just give me a set of channels for a fair price and I'll pay it. Sony is basically doing this with their TV service on the PS4. I tried it for a bit and it was nice, but ultimately I still felt like I was overpaying (I think it was $50 per month) compared to what I was getting.

I already own my own modem, so I'm not paying extra fees for my internet (but I tell you I have to check my bill every month because they love to try to throw the modem rental fee in even though I'm not renting a modem). I want the same thing for my TV. Let me choose what hardware works best for me, then sell me your service through it. Is that too much to ask?

That being said, I would prefer a channel selection process that's a little more customizable than what we get now. What we should be doing is saying, "Pay X dollars for Y amount of channels," and it doesn't matter what channels those are. Now, there are premium channels that feel they can get away with charging more for access to their content, that's fine. Those are high visibility channels but 99% of what is on cable is not HBO or Showtime or Starz. So why couldn't I choose to get, say AMC instead of ESPN and pay the same price? Maybe get IFC instead of Discovery. And so on.

Be careful with those modem rental fees, I had been suffering those for years and what I figured out is that besides their intention to charge you for something they shouldn't they use it as an extra way to get you to call them, and when you call to get rid of it their agents, whom are instructed to write down your request as "a change in your account contract requested by the customer", therefore whatever package you had is modified to any of their conveniently ones that is better for them, therefore it will expire in a few months down the road and jack up the price again. I had gone several times through this Comcast/Xfinity malpractive and then either something is off or the internet speed is lowered and then you have to call again and repeat the same thing. Those guys then just simply go by whatever is written by their agents. The only way I found to be able to maintain my service running as contracted and paying something equivalent to what I was offered when I signed for the service was to email their quality department via their website and have someone from corporate review my case and re-negotiate back to my original contract.
Soon something good will come out of this new Apple TV.

Cue is a sell-out to the cable industry. The price for the new box speaks for itself. This will not be successful with competitors out there building a cable-cutting experience for a reasonable price.

they are greedy but now also offer great Apps, and this thing will explode if they get Nintendo on board with their Super Mario and other games through the Apple TV, some of the current games available are pretty nice to play, just as more developers work their magic we will see it grow

 

[roadbloc]

I already can. It's called Putlocker.

 

[xtshabi]

Unless these packages include sports, it's kind of missing the point of live television for the most part.

 

[sjjones]

Ok so here we are on the same page. I had digital cable with HD svs, plus HBO, & Starz. Then tack on the 2 set top boxes that were required, then add on the DVR function for both, After "bundling" with internet( at that time I think I had 12mb dl) I was paying $205-$210 with taxes. I now just have internet from them, $65 for 50mb dl and I have antennae for all local network channels and $8 for Hulu and Netflix. So Im getting everything and more and my hulu and netflix COMBINED FOR A YEAR is cheaper then 1 month of what I paid for cable.Got it all streaming to a ATV and a WDlive media player. Never going back to that crap again!!!

A big chunk of your savings is sacrificing live sports (i.e. ESPN), a move many of us are unwilling to do.

 

[Rogifan]

The problem is both since Time Warner and Comcast own most networks out there.

Nah the problem is Disney which owns ESPN. ESPN is biggst cost of a cable bill and no way would a cable company be able to offer a package without it.

The Apple we all knew and loved died on 5th October 2011 , the bean counter Captain Cook took over and the rest is history. Apple are becoming style over substance and it's very VERY sad.

I used to be a big apple fanboy , got banned from many forums for my pro-apple stance , now i just don't care anymore - they're just another faceless greedy boring corporation now.

Then I suspect you'll be leaving since you'll no longer be owning Apple products, right?

Eddy Cue is stating what everyone has always wanted, the ability to pay for only the cable channels you watch. There's an obvious reason why this has never happened, and I seriously doubt Apple has any way to change this. At best, you'd get to buy channels separately, but they'd cost so much that it wouldn't be worth it.

Exactly. Ala carte channels is a pipe dream so we get skinny channels packages instead. Big deal. The cable companies that don't currently allow you to watch what you want wherever you want will be forced to offer that. The only thing they won't be able to offer is the big four networks because of local advertising. But I think that nut will eventually have to be cracked or sports packages will have to become cheaper and available to everyone. The only time I watch CBSABCNBCFOX is when I'm watch sports.

 

[George Dawes]

I didn't actually say that . Wish I had , but I didn't .

 

[satcomer]

All I know all these "streaming" boxes that now with Bandwidth limits 4 K streaming looks like a pipe dream!

 

[scaramoosh]

Well that isn't the Apple way