Will Apple Make a TV? What to Know as Rumors Resurface

[saturn88]

In what world are they selling this for five grand and making a 60% margin?!

In this world they sell TV for $30K. Sony general manager said that they make 60%+ margin on this TV.
Because this TV has no competition:

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[Realityck]

In this world they sell TV for $30K. Sony general manager said that they make 60%+ margin on this TV.
Because this TV has no competition:

LG SIGNATURE Sculpture ZXPUA 88" Class HDR 8K UHD Smart OLED TV

LG SIGNATURE Sculpture ZXPUA 88" Class HDR 8K UHD Smart OLED TV

www.abesofmaine.com

LG SIGNATURE ZX 88-inch OLED 4K Smart TV w/AI ThinQ® | LG USA

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I noticed the LG 88" OLED is discontinued on LG site. They however still sell the $9999 USD 8K 77" OLED model. Most of the 8K sets pushed in the states now are 75" or 85" mini-LED variety. (Samsung Neo QLED, LG QNED mini-LED, Sony mini-LED), its more common to see OLED scale up into 97" 4K models such as the G4 series. That implies the market is falling out from under the super expensive 8K OLED models from just a couple of years ago.

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

Can't that just be solved by paying the extra for a new 4K TV to be installed and setup for the new owner? Even Apple products have people requesting assistance over the phone or in the store.

No, because the experience is completely different from one TV to the next. It's actually very hard to shop for a TV with the intention of Apple TV being the primary use. No way for the average customer to actually do that successfully. You basically need another Apple TV expert to pick out the TV for you, and configure it and the Apple TV itself. I've had to do this myself for multiple family members, multiple times.

It would indeed be a great experience for people to just go online and order an Apple Television delivered to their door, take it out, plug it in, turn it on, and log in, like it were any other Apple product. And require almost no configuration whatsoever.

 

[SactoGuy18]

I don't think Apple will build their own TV. But full Apple TV functionality into a TV built and branded by HiSense or TCL for a high-end model, that's a very different story.

 

[Mr_Ed]

No, because the experience is completely different from one TV to the next. It's actually very hard to shop for a TV with the intention of Apple TV being the primary use. No way for the average customer to actually do that successfully. You basically need another Apple TV expert to pick out the TV for you, and configure it and the Apple TV itself. I've had to do this myself for multiple family members, multiple times.

It would indeed be a great experience for people to just go online and order an Apple Television delivered to their door, take it out, plug it in, turn it on, and log in, like it were any other Apple product. And require almost no configuration whatsoever.

What do you mean by “You basically need another Apple TV expert to pick out the TV for you, and configure it and the Apple TV itself.”?

Why do you need an expert for this when no expert is necessary to set up a FireTV or any other streaming gadget? Is setting up an AppleTV that much more complicated?

 

[CarlJ]

What do you mean by “You basically need another Apple TV expert to pick out the TV for you, and configure it and the Apple TV itself.”?

Why do you need an expert for this when no expert is necessary to set up a FireTV or any other streaming gadget? Is setting up an AppleTV that much more complicated?

I suspect you're both looking at two different things. It's one thing to "plug in a new TV, connect an Apple TV, click 'yes' a bunch of times on both, and be done". It's quite another to go through all the settings on both the TV (differing from one manufacturer to the next) and the Apple TV, and make them play optimally with each other. And you'll get a number of arguments about what constitutes "optimal" along the way (things like matching frame rate between streaming content and what is sent through to the TV, running menus in SDR or HDR, etc.).

I think a thing that would be cool, and wouldn't cost a ton to implement, but the TV manufacturers would never go for it, would be to introduce a "Made for Apple TV", uh, branding, I guess (program or some such), where the manufacturers would have a button (or section) in their settings menus, where you click that button and it changes a few dozen settings in the TV to set it up optimally for working with an Apple TV (and a button in the Apple TV settings to say "the connected TV is configured for 'Made for Apple TV', so adjust accordingly"). *Then*, then consumer could get everything set up optimally with just a couple of button presses.

The TV manufacturers will never go for this, because it downplays (their perceived) importance of their (mediocre-to-awful) built-in software/apps, and it would require a little effort on their part. And Apple would tend to want to make manufacturers buy into this scheme, when instead they should be doing everything they can to entice manufacturers to support this.

One avenue they could take is, make a deal with the first company to step forward (but one with really good screens, like LG or Sony): you put this stuff in your menus, and we'll showcase your TV in our Apple Stores, and sell it for very little markup. LG/Sony would get prestige and some sales, and consumers could go to an Apple Store to see/get a streaming TV setup that "Just Works".

 

[Mr_Ed]

I suspect you're both looking at two different things. It's one thing to "plug in a new TV, connect an Apple TV, click 'yes' a bunch of times on both, and be done". It's quite another to go through all the settings on both the TV (differing from one manufacturer to the next) and the Apple TV, and make them play optimally with each other. And you'll get a number of arguments about what constitutes "optimal" along the way (things like matching frame rate between streaming content and what is sent through to the TV, running menus in SDR or HDR, etc.).

I think a thing that would be cool, and wouldn't cost a ton to implement, but the TV manufacturers would never go for it, would be to introduce a "Made for Apple TV", uh, branding, I guess (program or some such), where the manufacturers would have a button (or section) in their settings menus, where you click that button and it changes a few dozen settings in the TV to set it up optimally for working with an Apple TV (and a button in the Apple TV settings to say "the connected TV is configured for 'Made for Apple TV', so adjust accordingly"). *Then*, then consumer could get everything set up optimally with just a couple of button presses.

The TV manufacturers will never go for this, because it downplays (their perceived) importance of their (mediocre-to-awful) built-in software/apps, and it would require a little effort on their part. And Apple would tend to want to make manufacturers buy into this scheme, when instead they should be doing everything they can to entice manufacturers to support this.

One avenue they could take is, make a deal with the first company to step forward (but one with really good screens, like LG or Sony): you put this stuff in your menus, and we'll showcase your TV in our Apple Stores, and sell it for very little markup. LG/Sony would get prestige and some sales, and consumers could go to an Apple Store to see/get a streaming TV setup that "Just Works".

Yes, many will simply plug in, answer some questions and be done, as you say. They will find the “defaults” more than satisfactory. Those who care at all about optimizing would most likely not find it difficult to match the AppleTV to their TV beyond the basics because they either a) already know enough about the subject matter, or b) are happy to dive into the information in the Apple online documentation. I guess I just don’t see much value added to a TV that can match settings on one of its multiple inputs to a single manufacturer’s (Apple) streaming device, especially if it costs more.

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

What do you mean by “You basically need another Apple TV expert to pick out the TV for you, and configure it and the Apple TV itself.”?

Why do you need an expert for this when no expert is necessary to set up a FireTV or any other streaming gadget? Is setting up an AppleTV that much more complicated?

Try reading it again. You cannot shop for a television with Apple TV as the primary use, unless you know A LOT about both products.

 

[Alameda]

Nope, Apple will never make a TV. Too many dominant players already in that space.

That’s what we all thought when Apple entered the mobile phone market.

What’s different here is that the TV market is extremely low margin. Large, heavy, fragile devices sold at very low margin makes for a difficult market to enter for a company like Apple, who needs large margins.

Unless Apple has revolutionary screen technology, such as rollable, 8K OLED panels or an amazing new projector technology, I seriously doubt they will enter. Apple TV is a $99 product. THAT is the value Apple adds to a TV: $99. They can’t buy LG OLED panels, add $99 of value, and sell the product at acceptable margins.

 

[Mr_Ed]

Try reading it again. You cannot shop for a television with Apple TV as the primary use, unless you know A LOT about both products.

And if a consumer cares that much about a high level of performance optimization for one streaming box in particular, they will do the necessary homework. Most consumers don’t care so much about it, and in reality, they don’t have to. Most TVs accept a variety of signals and formats, and most streaming gadgets (like AppleTV) can generate a variety of signals and formats. This is by design because it benefits both, TV manufacturers and streaming box manufacturers to support a wide range of potential connection combinations.

 

[Alameda]

Try reading it again. You cannot shop for a television with Apple TV as the primary use, unless you know A LOT about both products.

I don’t know… I have a three year old Samsung in the living room and an AppleTV box in the bedroom, and they’re basically no different. Someday, maybe the Samsung software will be outdated and unsupported and I’ll buy some future AppleTV box for it. But no need to right now, that’s for sure.

 

[redbeard331]

I’d rather Apple make a smart fridge, I feel there’s lots of room for improvement in this area.

 

[zarmanto]

Try reading it again. You cannot shop for a television with Apple TV as the primary use, unless you know A LOT about both products.

Gotta say, I'm mostly right there with Mr. Ed on this.

I can think of nothing at all that a layman would actually need to know about the AppleTV itself, prior to a purchase. It's just a little box that connects via (ubiquitous) HDMI cables and comes with its own remote. The rest of what they need to know to use the AppleTV, they can probably figure out by randomly launching apps once it's up and running and just discovering the possibilities as they go.

With regards to buying any given TV to be used as primarily an AppleTV monitor: Ignoring the simple fact that most of my own TV sets were bought before my AppleTVs... if I were in that market right now, the specific details I'd personally be seeking out are 1) I obviously want to be able to navigate to the AppleTV's HDMI input pretty easily -- which is of course usually a basic one-button operation, 2) I'd want to be able to set the TV to default to that input when I turn it on (which historically was just a given... TVs remained on the last selected input; apparently that's no longer a given these days.) and 3) I don't necessarily want to spend extra on a set that has a bunch of "smart TV" features that I'm not likely to use; if there is a less expensive version without those features, I'm all for that option.

It seems to me that all three of those questions can be answered by any layman just playing around with the TV set in the store.

But I'm very curious: would you care to enlighten us as to the other considerations which you feel are important enough to warrant "expert" consultation?

 

[Alameda]

Try reading it again. You cannot shop for a television with Apple TV as the primary use, unless you know A LOT about both products.

I'm sort of at a loss about what you mean.
For our family, we use TV to watch TV shows using apps such as YouTube TV, AppleTV +, Netflix, etc. And for that use, I personally see no difference between using our AppleTV box and using the software built into our Samsung TV.

Maybe for other stuff, like screencasting from your iPhone to the TV or Apple Music, there may be some AppleTV features that the Samsung doesn't have, but we don't use that stuff on our TV.

 

[zarmanto]

Maybe for other stuff, like screencasting from your iPhone to the TV or Apple Music, there may be some AppleTV features that the Samsung doesn't have, but we don't use that stuff on our TV.

Actually, my father-in-law's Samsung "The Frame" TV does support AirPlay from iOS devices. I think it also supports casting from Android devices -- though nobody in our immediate circle still uses Androids, so I can't say for certain.

And Apple's AppleTV app on Samsung's TV is... okay-ish. It's good enough to get you out of Samsung's interface and into your iLibrary and aTV+ content, and it largely follows Apple's usual design language -- but for myself, I still much prefer hardware AppleTVs (wherein Apple has implemented a consistent design language across the entire interface) over using that app.

 

[saturn88]

I noticed the LG 88" OLED is discontinued on LG site. They however still sell the $9999 USD 8K 77" OLED model. Most of the 8K sets pushed in the states now are 75" or 85" mini-LED variety. (Samsung Neo QLED, LG QNED mini-LED, Sony mini-LED), its more common to see OLED scale up into 97" 4K models such as the G4 series. That implies the market is falling out from under the super expensive 8K OLED models from just a couple of years ago.

No, that's one of the previous models with Gen3 processors is discontinued. The latest model with Gen5 AI processor is still in production but available only through dealers. I just purchased it 3 months ago. I replaced my old 2017 Oled TV and the difference is huge on every level including smart TV functions. It's like a huge computer with retina display.

LG's OLED tech is very successful. I don't think it would be replaced with some inferior LED variants. Sony, Bang and Olufsen, Panasonic, Visio, Phillips, Hisence and other use LG OLED panels.

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