Speculation on Apple's Television Set: Range of Sizes, Device Integration, Premium Pricing

[Anonymous Freak]

The only thing keeping me from getting any new home theater device is the fact that I want a device that can do basically everything the AppleTV does, plus receive live broadcast HD TV. Right now, I have a media center PC doing that, but it doesn't integrate well with my large iTunes-based library.

The only tricky part is that I also have a collection of HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Obviously an Apple television set wouldn't have an HD DVD drive, and I doubt it would even have a Blu-ray drive. Which means I'll have to either rip my collection or continue with my HTPC (which has a combo HD DVD/Blu-ray drive.)

The final straw is that I currently have a 47" 1080p TV. It is old (from the very first generation of 1080p TVs, it's a rear-projection, so it's big and ugly,) and only has two HD inputs (one component input, one DVI that the manual states is "for future use, such as a not-yet-released D-VHS player". Thankfully, the DVI input works fine through a DVI-to-HDMI converter, but it doesn't carry audio.)

 

[Yinmay]

If this full TV set rumor turns out to be true, and it turns out to be a commercial failure (which by today's Apple standards means not selling 2+ million units), everybody will start screaming how Apple without Jobs is dead.

I'm still very skeptical how it can possibly beat the "any flat screen + $100 Apple TV" combo or better yet, "any flat screen + Mac Mini" combo. As Steve said, there's just not much room to innovate in TVs, I wonder what has changed since this statement.

Just give us an iPad that would act as both remote controller and (current) Apple TV and that would transmit audio and video wirelessly through AirPlay. There you have it: a clean user-friendly no-cord solution that eliminates the need for a separate (current) Apple TV device and that gets rid of the awful remote controllers of today that SJ used to rightly complain about. Ideally it would work with any WiFi-enabled TV set of any brand.

And if the iPad could do that, that would ensure Apple's current supremacy in the tablet market and beat any competition for years to come.

 

[Black Belt]

Honestly, I dont want the screen from Apple, the monitors just don't meet the quality and price standard. I have a gorgeous Hi end 3D TV, Apple wont provide that, where the hell would I put another less Hi end TV? And if you connect to an actual stereo system it would take away more reason for an Apple Screen which wouldn't control everything. I would prefer the WELL THOUGHT OUT Apple TV box, not what they have right now. I would also like an Apple Remote, like the Logitech Harmony One but even better.

 

[adder7712]

Apple TV3 will not be a flatscreen TV with an Apple TV2 built in. It will replace your cable box, antenna, remotes, computer, game counsol, etc.

So that means I can play my Xbox 360 games on an Apple TV3?

I'm sold!

 

[PlipPlop]

The newton 2 has arrived.

 

[divinox]

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.




Exactly what I just said.




YMMV - my first one worked fine from the start.




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.

exactly.

 

[divinox]

The only thing that constitutes "cracking" the TV market is going around the service providers and going straight to the content providers. Jobs said from the beginning that dealing with all the different cable companies etc. was a show stopper. Cutting the cord to whoever is currently charging you for each byte that makes it into your house, now that would be extraordinary.

Apple is going to start deliver content on physical media via mail? Awesome. Other than magic, that is your only option. Really.

(That or building/buying their own infrastructure, but it would be hard to keep that on the down-low).

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Considering that a 27 inch ACD costs $1000 which is 3 times the amount of other competitors and Apple sells a bunch of them, Im sure a Apple TV that is double the cost of others will still do well. I buy Apple products because they are superior in build quality, technology and customer service. If this new apple TV is like every other apple product, I will be replacing all my Plasma/LED TV sets in my house!

Its not 3 times the amount of other competitors, more like.. 125% or so. TN v. IPS is like Apples and Pears. Rotten pears...

what they'll do this time (if they're going for "doubling the price") is the iPhone move. Crap hardware at premium price, software being selling point. People in general couldn't tell one panel away from the other anyway, so with Apples marketing it would work. It would be a siht poor TV, but then again, the iPhone was a siht poor phone. Still sold millions.

 

[Ballis]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

The iPhone was ****?!?! Get real. You dunno what youre talking about.

 

[bushido]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

The iPhone was ****?!?! Get real. You dunno what youre talking about.

The first one was. It didnt do apps. It didnt do copy & paste. U couldnt even save pictures from the internet. It did however change the way u use a phone. It certanly wasnt a smartphone tho

 

[MacAudioPro]

This is so ridiculous. Give me an AppleTV version 3 with an IR blaster, iOS app store, and a microphone.

Pretty sure that $99 device covers all the functionality described by Munster. And it'll be small enough to velcro to the back of my existing TV. I'm not paying thousands of dollars to put iOS apps and Siri on my TV, but I will gladly pay $99.

Couldn't agree more. Anybody who wants anything except what I want are just "ridiculous". Seriously, if we don't want it here, why should anyone else have it!!!

Woooo Hooo Gooo Apple!!!!!!

 

[superman23]

Twice the price?

if i can buy a 55" for $1000 + AppleTV2 for $99

then

True Apple Television needs to be $1100 (maybe $100 more for integration).

Apple's competition here is itself.

No one will pay $2000 for a 55" Television. Period.

I disagree. First, people already pay 2x as much for an Apple laptop for the same performance as a Dell/HP. This is because they will pay the premium for Apple's software, build quality, and brand image -- why would the TV be any different? *If* image quality is on par with the very high end TVs, which already cost 2-3x as much as cheaper models, then Apple will be fine. But of course they are never going to sell them to the masses like the iPhone. But the only reason the iPhone makes it into the hands of the masses is because of the extreme subsidization of the price by the phone companies. Maybe that will happen here by Apple offering contract pricing for content on the TV.

 

[Crissov]

Channel apps etc.

Guess why OS X Lion removed Front Row. Guess why the Apple TV 2, although an iOS device, does not have apps? Because that’s an essential part of Apple’s TV set plans. This way, it easily becomes a video game console and a media center for local and remote with free, owned and rented material. The sole question is whether iTunes will provide the content or if Apple lets traditional providers (either production companies, TV stations/networks or cable/satellite carriers) offer “channel apps”.

Some commenters have already mentioned that TVs pose an internationalization nightmare: ATSC, DVB, ISDB and probably more, all for terrestrial (broadcast and cellular), cable and satellite distribution on various frequency bands, several encryption and rights management standards (besides proprietary solutions), also home media networks (UPnP/DLNA, …), many audio and video interface connectors. Only IPTV (over WLAN) works across borders (and it would work better if TV Anytime hadn’t failed), therefore it is most likely to be adopted by Apple.

An Apple TV set would probably have a camera integrated and a Bluetooth Smart remote control, which basically is a touchpad with integrated microphone, without digit buttons. It’s smallest size would be the same as current Thunderbolt Displays, but there would be 2 or 3 sizes determined as optimal compromise by user tests as usual.

 

[superman23]

An Apple TV set would probably have a camera integrated and a Bluetooth Smart remote control, which basically is a touchpad with integrated microphone, without digit buttons. It’s smallest size would be the same as current Thunderbolt Displays, but there would be 2 or 3 sizes determined as optimal compromise by user tests as usual.

i wouldnt be surprised to see Apple use sizes that are different from what is available on the market. Right now for LCD those are 32, 37, 46, 55, 60, 65, 70...

IMO the problem is the huge jump from 46 to 55 which is a range that many people want to be in. You can get a 51" but only in plasma

I'd like to see Apple have a range such as 32, 42, 52, 60.

 

[azentropy]

Considering that a 27 inch ACD costs $1000 which is 3 times the amount of other competitors and Apple sells a bunch of them, Im sure a Apple TV that is double the cost of others will still do well. I buy Apple products because they are superior in build quality, technology and customer service. If this new apple TV is like every other apple product, I will be replacing all my Plasma/LED TV sets in my house!

Not to nitpick and a bit off the topic - but if you compare likewise specs the current Apple 27 Thunderbolt Display is VERY price competitive. You can't compare it to the lower resolution (typically 1920x1080) non-IPS 27" displays that are out there. Show me another IPS panel, LED backlit, 2560-by-1440 resolution, with even close to the connectivity that the Apple display has (usb, thunderbolt, firewire, magsafe, ethernet). That said I went with the Dell U2711 display (also a IPS panel and same resolution, but not LED backlit and not the connectivity) because of Apple's fascination with glass covered glossy displays which I can't use and it was still $800+.

Not sure what Apple could do to justify the price premium on an TV. Also if Apple is insistent on using glass/glossy on TV's as well then I wouldn't be interested no matter what it has or costs.

 

[dr Dunkel]

It will cost twice the price of what it cost today. What does a 50" TV cost today? €500? €1,000? €2,000?

Not to nitpick and a bit off the topic - but if you compare likewise specs the current Apple 27 Thunderbolt Display is VERY price competitive. You can't compare it to the lower resolution (typically 1920x1080) non-IPS 27" displays that are out there. Show me another IPS panel, LED backlit, 2560-by-1440 resolution, with even close to the connectivity that the Apple display has (usb, thunderbolt, firewire, magsafe, ethernet).

On my market here in Europe, the ATD is generally carrying a 50% premium over other 27" monitors of the same resolution and segment. I think I would have gone with the ATD anyway if it weren't for the extreme lack of connectivity on the ATD compared to the other monitors.

 

[dexthageek]

Double the price = No Apple Television for me. Apple will most likely sell quite a few units even at that price point. But I don't see it putting a dent in market share. I could see a markup of $50 - $250 a device making it a big hit, but anything higher then that will cause it to be nothing but another hobby device, and I love my AppleTVs (Modified of course XBMC).

 

[rsocal]

Well said!

Apple shifted the industry from $0-$100 phones to $300-$900 phones because it brought something totally different to the table. Cell phones were prohibitively expensive in the 80's and over time declined to mainstream affordable prices, to even free. Apple put value on the phone again, something people were willing to pay for.

They set the new average price for a smartphone and the competition adjusted to it.

HD TV's used to cost $2,000 to $4,000 but the price steadily declined. You can get a tv for as little as $200 these days. The pattern is the same. An average of $799 will get you a 47-55" TV today. I would pay $1,599 (double) for an Apple TV with its design qualities and ease of use if Apple were able to reinvent the television like they did with music, phones and computers.

People spend way over $1,600 on Apple's computers all the time. Why wouldn't they be willing to invest the same on a TV which has a longer life span?

Well said and I agree 100%, any Apple fan such as myself will pay more for our Apple products for the simple fact, they are much,much better! The quality, ease of use and great user experience is worth the price difference!

Anyone who buys an Apple computer is in fact saying that paying double the price of a so called equivalent PC is worth it. My theory is based on my own reasons for being such an Apple fan. The quality is 100% better, user experience is superior and the customer service is is absolutely the best of any company I've delt with! Just going into an Apple retail store is a great experience, buying the product itself from an Apple store is a fun and pleasurable experience.

I've been waiting for this rumored Apple TV since the rumors started and will continue to wait until its here. I'll have no problem paying the extra money for a great TV just like I pay for all my Apple products. The same ones that all work great and will continue to give me a wonderful User Experience!

Now when is my Apple TV with Siri voice control and game changing UI going to be released???

 

[HelveticaRoman]

It's just what the world needs right now, a television set that shows television programs but at twice the cost.

 

[Digitalclips]

The twice the price is a wild guess based on Apple of old. The iPad experience shows Apple's new MO, make things that previously didn't exist in a way no one else has thought of at a price no one can compete with by using a mix of genius, patents and purchasing leverage.

 

[hipnetic]

I can't believe after all of the comments from many of us pointing out why an Apple television is both unrealistic and unnecessary that we're still talking about it. They already have an Apple TV. It's a little black box. And it's the perfect solution for reinventing television. Cheap, small. It can even be velcroed to the back of your existing television to become completely invisible.

As much as I'd like to see Apple come out with a next-gen AirPort Extreme with a cable card slot and on-the-fly MPEG2-to-MP4 recording, that probably won't happen. But we don't need to speculate on what *will* happen, because it's already here. They have most/all of the television shows and movies available for streaming. They just need to tweak that model a bit. Lower prices, maybe a monthly plan. Longer rental periods would be nice, too. What's holding all of that up isn't Apple, it's the networks and movie studios who don't want the pricing to be too cheap.

Features like Siri, if it comes to pass, can be implemented quite easily into the existing model. An ATV3 with a new remote with a microphone, or simply requiring that you use your iOS device as your Siri remote.

That last point brings me to what I suspect Jobs was thinking when he said that he had figured out how to 'crack the market'. He cracked it by getting iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) into every home. He then made his TV device (the ATV2) a sub-$100 iOS device accessory. It's a stocking stuffer for everyone with an iOS device. Once he gets those into every home of every iOS user, he's cracked the market. Apple just needs to then leverage that penetration by getting all of the content suppliers (TV networks and movie studios) to play ball and increase the selection, and improve the pricing and rental windows.

As for apps on the ATV...A lot of people expected this to come as soon as the first person cracked open and hacked the ATV2 and determined that it was running iOS and had 8GB of storage. I personally didn't see it as definite, because 8GB is not a ton of storage when you consider that it's also needed to buffer photos and movie rentals. Instead, I saw Apple using the ATV2 as a display accessory for running apps on your iOS device, and we're already seeing them move more in that direction via wireless mirroring. They do have some apps already, though (Netflix, MLB, etc.), so I wouldn't be surprised at all to see them open that up more and give developers free reign to create/sell ATV2-native apps. Or perhaps they'll continue more along the current plan and have developers create apps that you install to your iOS device but which can push a different view (rather than simply mirroring what you're already seeing) to the ATV2.

Note that none of what I'm discussing here can't be done on the current-gen ATV2. But I do suspect that we'll see an ATV3 with 1080p output (likely using the A5 CPU/GPU) and Siri functionality.

But as I've said before, unless Apple has plans for televisions which are completely different (in terms of the display itself) such that their vision can't be realized simply by hooking up an ATV2/3 to the TV you already own, I don't see why they would/should create actual televisions. As I mentioned already, one of the beautiful things about the ATV2 is that it's small and cheap. You can have a TV in every room of your house, including a smallish 13" display in your kitchen, and have ATV2's hooked up to all of them. Having them in every room would allow you to make the most of future ATV-compatible apps like room monitors, home automation, etc. But even with what's already available today, it would be nice to watch some cooking shows in the kitchen, or use mirroring to pull up a recipe on the 13" display in your kitchen. If Apple were to sell actual televisions, no one is going to go out and replace all of the TVs in their home, so that would mean that you'd miss out on a lot of the functionality that you could have if your entire house was configured with low-cost ATV boxes in every room.

So the short version of my long-winded diatribe: Stop waiting for some amazing television that Apple might someday offer and instead look at the writing on the wall which shows you the direction that they've already decided to go in (iOS devices in every home, ATV's hooked up to every TV in your home), and think about what new features they could bring to that model that could revolutionize the TV experience.

 

[diamond.g]

How about pay one low price per station and get it streamed. Like they broke up the album they can break up the billion stations I dont watch but have to pay for. This way the money goes straight to the network and bypasses the aweful service providers.

I wouldn't get your hopes up. The service providers would love to be able to charge per channel (cause I am sure they would come up with pricing that would be even more advantageous to them). Sadly the networks are the ones that prevent that from happening. IIRC cable companies would love to sell you an ESPN package, but Disney prevents that (and even forces them to bundle in low viewer channels). For what ever reason only the premium movie channels (and 'special interest' channels) are able to be sold separately.

 

[69650]

Millions of people are willing to pay a lot more for a "smart" phone so why wouldn't they pay more for a "smart" TV. Look at the Samsung Smart TV - they are a lot more expensive than equivalent size TVs but people are willing to buy them. People pay more for 3D TVs, etc, etc.

Let's do the maths: The Apple TV will be an all in one box - so you won't need to buy: DVD Player, Blu-Ray Player, PVR, Games Console, etc - how much would all that stuff cost?

Plus if like me you don't need (or want to pay for cable/sat) you can watch standard broadcast TV plus a few internet channels (like ESPN from Disney), catch up services like BBC iPlayer and Hulu, Netflix/Lovefilm, etc. How much TV do you guys watch? Me I watch maybe a couple of hours in the evening while I'm winding down, so this would be plenty enough for me. But if you really want you can still add a cable/sat box.

The real bonus will be the ability to download/stream your iTunes content directly from iCloud without having to go via your iPhone/iPad.

 

[rsocal]

Well said!

Apple shifted the industry from $0-$100 phones to $300-$900 phones because it brought something totally different to the table. Cell phones were prohibitively expensive in the 80's and over time declined to mainstream affordable prices, to even free. Apple put value on the phone again, something people were willing to pay for.

They set the new average price for a smartphone and the competition adjusted to it.

HD TV's used to cost $2,000 to $4,000 but the price steadily declined. You can get a tv for as little as $200 these days. The pattern is the same. An average of $799 will get you a 47-55" TV today. I would pay $1,599 (double) for an Apple TV with its design qualities and ease of use if Apple were able to reinvent the television like they did with music, phones and computers.

People spend way over $1,600 on Apple's computers all the time. Why wouldn't they be willing to invest the same on a TV which has a longer life span?

I agree 100%+, Apple products are worth the extra money I(we) spend due to the quality, User Experience and simply the best Customer Service!

I can't wait for an Apple TV with Siri, and I'll be willing to pay double the price to get it! Just like I(we) spend for our Apple computers, iPads & iPhones etc!
I'm sure it'll be a great, simple UI, high quality easy to use TV and ecosystem that will tie into all of our iOS devices! Just talking about it gets me excited for it

 

[divinox]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

The iPhone was ****?!?! Get real. You dunno what youre talking about.

I said siht poor phone. it was. in fact, given what i've read lately its still definitely sub-par... as a phone. which was my point, the point you seemed not to get. Apple capitalized on the smart-part of smartphone (even though it can be argued if the first iPhone was a smartphone at all) - not the phone part. Similarly, they could sell a siht TV, and sell it based on premium software and user interaction. In fact, this time around i would applaud them. The high-end TV segment provide little value for money (other than for videophiles and sad "must-have-the-latest ..."), and is just a sad race of inflated - often times useless - specs (dynamic contrast, anyone?). In that sense, a sub-par (but just fine) panel paired with a great experience (and ecosystem integration) would make for a way better value proposition, regardless of if TV X has twice the picture quality in the end.

And... yeah, sorry but you're mistaken. i do know what i am talking about.

 

[divinox]

Guess why OS X Lion removed Front Row. Guess why the Apple TV 2, although an iOS device, does not have apps? Because that’s an essential part of Apple’s TV set plans. This way, it easily becomes a video game console and a media center for local and remote with free, owned and rented material. The sole question is whether iTunes will provide the content or if Apple lets traditional providers (either production companies, TV stations/networks or cable/satellite carriers) offer “channel apps”.

Some commenters have already mentioned that TVs pose an internationalization nightmare: ATSC, DVB, ISDB and probably more, all for terrestrial (broadcast and cellular), cable and satellite distribution on various frequency bands, several encryption and rights management standards (besides proprietary solutions), also home media networks (UPnP/DLNA, …), many audio and video interface connectors. Only IPTV (over WLAN) works across borders (and it would work better if TV Anytime hadn’t failed), therefore it is most likely to be adopted by Apple.

An Apple TV set would probably have a camera integrated and a Bluetooth Smart remote control, which basically is a touchpad with integrated microphone, without digit buttons. It’s smallest size would be the same as current Thunderbolt Displays, but there would be 2 or 3 sizes determined as optimal compromise by user tests as usual.

While you're on point with internationalization barriers, i still think you miss the target in the end. Granted, the things mentioned add complexity. It is, however, complexity that is quite easy to address technically (in practice, you fix it through modularization). The real killer, as always, is distribution rights. Take the Kindle Fire for example. What prevents it from being launched outside of US is not technical barriers - internet is the platform. Rather, property and distribution rights are the culprit in play.

We saw this in music, heck we still do. And we see it in video. IPTV is not the solution. It may be the future (digitization of signals allow for uncoupling of distribution medium and content), but its definitely not sufficient.

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Millions of people are willing to pay a lot more for a "smart" phone so why wouldn't they pay more for a "smart" TV. Look at the Samsung Smart TV - they are a lot more expensive than equivalent size TVs but people are willing to buy them. People pay more for 3D TVs, etc, etc.

Let's do the maths: The Apple TV will be an all in one box - so you won't need to buy: DVD Player, Blu-Ray Player, PVR, Games Console, etc - how much would all that stuff cost?

Plus if like me you don't need (or want to pay for cable/sat) you can watch standard broadcast TV plus a few internet channels (like ESPN from Disney), catch up services like BBC iPlayer and Hulu, Netflix/Lovefilm, etc. How much TV do you guys watch? Me I watch maybe a couple of hours in the evening while I'm winding down, so this would be plenty enough for me. But if you really want you can still add a cable/sat box.

The real bonus will be the ability to download/stream your iTunes content directly from iCloud without having to go via your iPhone/iPad.

If Apple are to add those things, you need to do way more than double the price. Apples trick will be taking a 399 TV, bundling it with 99 hardware/software, and selling it for 899. To maintain margins in your scenario, the 399 TV would have to sell for 1299, and still be outdated in 2-3 years (as far as gaming goes).