A TV should just be a panel that you can buy from anyone.
Completely agree. I paid over $3K for a 52" several years ago, for the image quality.
It sits on "HDMI 1" input, none of the other inputs (even OTA TV) are connected to the TV set. Its speakers are disabled - its only control is power-on/power-off.
Everything goes through the AV cross-bar switch, which upconverts video (with high-end converters) as necessary, up converts audio to 6.1 as necessary, and sends signals to remote systems in the kitchen, bedrooms and office.
The OTA HD RF signal goes to the TiVo for when we want very high quality broadcast TV. The Comcast cable goes to the dual CableCard on the TiVo. The Comcast cable box was powered off a few years ago - it isn't in any signal path.
So yes - the TV screen should be a dumb commodity panel that the user chooses to fit her viewing space. Apple would be crazy to try to compete in the big screen panel display business - stick with an ATV-like box that drives a panel or projector purchased from someone else.
Why does it have to be a full TV? Why can't they just make another upgrade/evolution to the current AppleTV box?
Exactly what I just said.
Once they are installed and FINALLY worked, they are great... when you find a card that works. There was a day that I went through 12 cable cards to find one that worked. The concept of the cable card is great, but it never worked right and never will.
YMMV - my first one worked fine from the start.
Let's hope they introduce 4K or even 8K resolution.
Without content - a waste. Why would you want to upscale Itunes horribly over-compressed 720p content to 8K?
The first problem to solve is delivering honest 1080p content. (By "honest" I mean BD-quality 1080p in the 20-50 Mbps bandwidth range. And "BD-quality" means the bitstream from the BD, not a recompressed "net optimized" version of the BD.)
After the 1080p content delivery issue is resolved, and *only after* the 1080p content delivery issue is resolved, 4K and 8K can be brought to the table. And then with 4K/8K on the table, we can discuss the problem of using your entire month's bandwidth quota for the first 30 minutes of the movie.