You really think Apple is after tech enthusiasts? Been living under a rock the past four years?
No. But it's the only market I really see the thing appealing to. But...
You ignored many of the points I made, but namely my point about the content providing. No receiver will be necessary to access all of your content. I imagine xBox 360 will *still* probably work with an Airplay dongle... but even if not, people won't really care too much once the 360 starts going out of style.
First. I'm talking about a receiver as in a Dolby Digital AV receiver. As in the thing you hook up speakers to, so you can get the full experience out of your home theatre setup. If it doesn't have any jacks to hook a receiver or a Blu-Ray player up to, then what's the point of having a premium top of the line, best of class TV? Content provided over the internet is middling as far as quality is concerned. A real enthusiast will want the best of the best to take advantage of their newly acquired expensive hardware. Without ports, it'll be a device that doesn't live up to it's own full potential.
But what about the low end folks who only care so much about image quality and sound fidelity? For those people, it's too expensive. It might have a slick UI, but a UI on a TV is ultimately just an interruption to the main even, which is watching TV. It isn't as important here as it is on the other iDevices, which you use actively, rather than passively.
Being able to talk to your TV will be a cool feature, but will it be enough to cause people to flock to it much like the iPhone and iPad? Probably not. Because shouting commands at your TV is pretty awkward when it comes right down to it. It'll be a nice initial draw feature, but probably fall by the wayside once people get used to whatever kind of remote the TV comes with (which I would guess will be an iPod-like device, and I'll explain why if you ask).
The Xbox360, or consoles in general, falling out of favor is about your only hope to justify the TVs lack of ports. And even if they do, it's still not enough of a justification.
Basically, your vision of the AppleTV is a boutique television aimed at no one in particular.
Trust me, consumers are willing to pay a light small premium for a paradigm-shifting device vs the old bulky TV. iPhone was released originally for $499 & $599 with no subsidy. Steve Ballmer laughed at it. But since 2007 much has changed, and Apple has the clout to take a chance on pricing their products very competitively. The iPad is a prime example of how this strategy worked in their favor.
First of all...
bulky TV? HA!. And I bet the thing has HDMI ports, too. Secondly, a paradigm shift in the television market will be more about getting content, rather than the device itself. This is something Apple CAN provide, and provide well. But is a closed environment television the way to do it? Sacrificing the ability to create a personalized home entertainment system to force people into their ecosystem probably isn't the way to go about it.
Also holy crap. LG made a 4000 horizontal line TV set.
