The latest rumors, which surfaced in March, suggested that Apple is currently working on an "Ultra HD" or "4K" television set with a resolution of 3840 x 2160.
I just saw a Groupon for a 4K Seiki 50" LED TV. $1199 down from $1499.
So I guess 4K TVs are already shipping, and already in the bargain bin.
The great thing about the 4K resolution is that it will be so sharp, pun intended, that it will be possible to shrink the TV image slightly and show other data on the margins. With clever signal processing, image quality will still be very good, and you'd be able to see notifications, sports scores, stock tickers, weather alerts, or whatever other data you might want. Just a small matter of (Cocoa) programming.
The terrible thing about that capability is that it would cause contention among family members. Exactly like any other feature that intrudes on the viewing experience. The rest of your family would be annoyed by your buddys' fishing trip email notifications during an after-dinner screening of Wall-E. You would be annoyed by your daughter's Twitter stream during Monday Night Football ("eeew look wt mom made fr dinner! lolz"). Ad nauseam. Unless you live alone, of course.
So what could be done to avoid all those notifications and other distractions intended for other family members? How could we get notifications during a communal TV viewing session, or interact with absolutely fascinating iAds, without cluttering up the screen or stopping playback, without annoying everyone else in the room?
Easy. Notifications go to individual mobile devices. To each family member's iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. The big-screen living room TV is only for showing pure video content with no distractions. In other words, it will be exactly like any other no-frills HDTV set. Exactly the way things are now, with everyone tapping away at their own devices when they feel like it, while "watching" TV together.
Apple's TV solution just might turn every iOS and OS X device into a miniature television set. There would be no need for any DVR capability. No need to ever record anything. No need to waste energy and silicon storing local copies of content that exists on Apple's servers. Apple would cut deals with live TV providers for, yes, you guessed it, live TV. They would cut deals with content providers for recorded content (including live programming in-progress or that had just recently ended.)
Boom. There goes any argument for an Apple television set.
It would end up being just a 55" Cinema Display attached to an Apple TV box with a few more features.
Including, just maybe, gesture-controlled games from an Apple TV App Store.
But, as we've seen with Google TV, jamming internet complexity into the simple TV experience is a bad idea.