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I guarantee that Apple has more imagination than you do, so I'm sure they've figured it out. Everything seems 'good enough' until you see something drastically better. Most people don't have that kind of foresight and imagination.

Apple, no doubt, has a lit of imaginative and talented people and comes up with a lot of need products.

The issue with TV is not can they make a cool TV; but where can the come up with a game changing (and very profitable) product? IMHO, that's not the TV but the content delivery mechanism. If Apple can move people off of cable and into an iTunes ATV subscription model then they can take a cut out of the recurring revenue stream rather than a 1 time TV sale. Moving to that requires a lot of pieces to fall into place - content providers willing to give up steady cable revenue for uncertain subscription revenue; ISPs willing to sell truly unlimited (for all practical purposes) high speed access (and since they often are cable providers as well be willing to destroy their cash cow for a much smaller dumb pipe revenue stream) and consumers willing to cut cable - not the tech heads but the average cable buyer who probably doesn't even have a Mac and to whom apple is the iPhone.

Not easy, but they may just pull it off. If so, we're talking a seismic shift in the world of television - similar to what TV did to radio in the 50's and how cable changed viewing habits in the 80's.

SIRI is nice but until the latency is equal to or less, and it recognizes various voices (anecdotally I know a number of people with issues because of accents) is more of a curiosity than something which will replace remotes.

The real problem with a TV is that the real innovation comes in the software, but the product is a longer term durable good, especially if Apple prices it like they do other products at the higher end of the spectrum. The life span means older TVs may not be able to do what new ones do; with consumers unwilling to shell out a lot of money when they have a perfectly good existing Apple TV and thus get frustrated that it won't do things new ones do.

In addition, while Apple does neat industrial design, existing manufacturers can produce TVs that look as nice and are as capable in terms of display, making it hard for Apple to command a premium on design alone; unlike for Macs/iPhones/iPads where the design is coupled with software that makes the device compelling.

the ATV, OTOH, overcomes most of those limitations - it's cheap, works with most newer TV's, and gives Apple an entry into the content market that they can build on and show content owners there is money to be made.

Can they come out with a TV set? Sure, but I don't find the reasons all that compelling compared to opportunities elsewhere in the broader TV market.

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how about this for a theory:if apple were to make their own displays (which they still do) and tailor it to their CDN - they should be able to deal with higher resolution assets much faster than the rest of the industry

The question is - are there enough people that want, and will pay for, higher resolution content when they find today's content resolution sufficient? Once you get to a certain point, better is hardly noticeable; so is 1080p so much better than 720p, for example, to warrant replacing a bunch of existing stuff?

I think the interconnectivity between ATV/iPhone/IPod is a much more compelling area to explore.
 
The question is - are there enough people that want, and will pay for, higher resolution content when they find today's content resolution sufficient? Once you get to a certain point, better is hardly noticeable; so is 1080p so much better than 720p, for example, to warrant replacing a bunch of existing stuff?

I think the interconnectivity between ATV/iPhone/IPod is a much more compelling area to explore.

Depends on your screen size and your eyes .. ever see Ultra High Definition TV? They used to run demos at NAB .. makes 1080p look like cheese cloth .. they used a 22.2 channel sound system as well - talk about immersion - when they showed crowd shots at a soccer game you could pick out pimples on individual noses. Apparently the BBC is experimenting with it for the summer Olympics with a couple of 15m displays .. so we'll see what people say.

As for the interconnectivity - completely makes sense if you get the low-res metadata off the main screen where you can interact with it - but now I have a remote controller that's higher resolution than my main screen. Kind of makes me want to build a beam splitter and project the ipad.
 
He's got to save something to sell in the paperback. It's the new move to change a few chapters for the paperback release so that diehards have a reason to buy both. Timing seems about right.
 
Depends on your screen size and your eyes .. ever see Ultra High Definition TV? They used to run demos at NAB .. makes 1080p look like cheese cloth .. they used a 22.2 channel sound system as well - talk about immersion - when they showed crowd shots at a soccer game you could pick out pimples on individual noses. Apparently the BBC is experimenting with it for the summer Olympics with a couple of 15m displays .. so we'll see what people say.

While it will no doubt be impressive, it's adoption would depend largely on cost. There's a lot of really cool and impressive displays out there, but the sweet spot for sales isn't the high end; cost would be one of the big hurdles, of several, Apple would have to overcome to have a hit vs another hobby product. that's why I think the content delivery and control side is a more likely way they will go about it.

As for the interconnectivity - completely makes sense if you get the low-res metadata off the main screen where you can interact with it - but now I have a remote controller that's higher resolution than my main screen. Kind of makes me want to build a beam splitter and project the ipad.
Roger that - now there would be an impressive piece of technology.
 
Considering how expensive apple's computer monitors are I can't imagine what they would charge for a television.
 
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