“Apple has made great progress with their ‘hobby’ project – Apple TV. It is a compelling device with great access to online content. Despite limited capabilities as an actual television, the device is selling well and retails for a respectable £99 in the UK,” Sam Beckett writes for The Verge.
“The problem facing Apple TV is that it is essentially iTunes on your TV. If your Music, Movies and TV Shows are not purchased from the Apple ecosystem you will be left with a device that can’t stream much content,” Beckett writes. “Of course the Apple TV does have some other great apps too, like Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and Netflix but these apps are becoming increasingly available on other integrated ‘Smart TVs’. The need for an extra set-top box may be rendered non-existent and so in order to make Apple TV worthwhile, it will need to offer greater capabilities at an equally competitive price point.”
Beckett writes, “Apple currently has 4 main product categories: iPod, iPhone, iPad and Mac. For Apple TV to be classed as 5th category would involve making the device more relevant to the everyday user. I would like to see iTunes on Apple TV relegated to the second most important function on the device and watching live, broadcast television the primary reason for switching on Apple TV.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Sarah” for the heads up.]
This concept is still centered around network TV and cable retransmission, but the icons and touch-capable input are a little nicer. I don’t see people buying lots of special TVs and iPads to use as TV input devices unless doing so somehow frees them from monopolistic TV distribution practices.
Nothing new here, just a little more intuitive than my current PVR.
Revolutionary concept. Pathetic & sad parts are the parsimonious providers who live under Cro-Magnon rocks.
In terms of the live tv bit, that’s basically what the Sky TV app in the UK is like at the moment. Your Sky TV box also has access to pretty much every TV channels streaming service as well, plus you can download episodes, rent stuff, etc. They’ve upgraded them along the way, and other than being much bigger boxes, they are pretty much doing all this already. The problem Apple have is they don’t make content like a company like Sky do, and they don’t have the rights to broadcast things. It may not be as good hardware wise, but it seems much easier for a company like Sky to get integrate their services into new hardware of their own that it is for Apple to get content to go on their hardware. If TV providers had an ounce of sense companies like Apple, Google, Samsung, etc shouldn’t get a look in – most don’t seem to though.
Partnering with cable providers is the same approach used for music, movies, and books. Being able to use any iDevice to control my viewing through touch or voice and get rid of the damn remote control would be heaven.
A concept that requires you to buy a new TV will have limited opportunities since people do not upgrade their TVs often.
A device that can enhance your current TV would have more general appeal.
The challenge as always is how to integrate with the content providers. The easiest way is to do everything via the internet. However most channels are not available that way. The other approach is to connect to the cable / satellite box. Getting that to work would be very challenging.
As many have said Apple’s an seems to be to get in on the front end of the 4K/UltraTV trend. I think they debut this in Spring of 2014 as the screens get slightly more reasonable costwise. Folks will eventually upgrade to 4K. Just like they did from tubes to flat and flat to hd.
Directv is already going down this path. With Siri like voice input though the iPhone and IPad. I haven’t tested it out yet, but the voice control update went live a couple of days ago. If Apple does come out with something like this, I will be getting it. However some companies aren’t waiting.
I agree it needs something more but programming in competitive grid isn’t one of them. I prefer not to have to choose between two good shows because some idiot needs the ratings to interrupt it all with commercials.
The article is interesting on ways that Apple can do this. Apple can do this to make it the ” 5th” category. In my opinion Apple should not move to a TV set yet. They are not ready to make the big jump yet. Maybe in one more product cycle. What they should do is to make the ATV a relavent product like the Roku 3. They do not have the ecosystem like Apple has and it is number one in set top boxes. Apple is second because a lot of smart people like us bought into the Apple ecosystem. To make the ATV to be better and tale over the top spot is to: 1 Drop that it is a “hobby”. 2 make a SDK for developers to make apps. 3 Forget the cable providers. They are not going to deal with Apple
to put their channels on the ATV. They are
making to much money doing what they are doing now. The recent announcement by the CW of putting a streaming app on the ATV is
just the beginning. Apple instead should go to
each broadcast channel and talk with them
about putting a streaming app on the ATV like the CW has done. If it works, and if each channel makes a app for streaming, it will make the cable companies illrelavent. 4 Port Safari, Mail and Siri over to the ATV. Then they will be ready to introduce a iTV or Smart TV with FaceTime and other extras. Also to have a combination of either using your iDevice, motion sensing similar to the Xbox or voice commands.
If Apple could make AppleTV a comprehensive hub for all my A/V stuff, I’d buy it like a shot. The way I would like them to approach it is for all devices to connect wirelessly and for any device’s output to be accessible on any display within the house.
The rat’s nest of cable behind most TVs is ugly and unwieldy. In a minimalist home, it looks dreadful because the cables are visible, while in a traditional ( British ) home, cable runs can be hard to conceal of you have things like stone fireplaces and beamed ceilings.
I think that Apple needs to create a device looking a bit like an Airport Express, but designed to accept the signals from third party A/V equipment and send it wirelessly to the Apple TV and other devices.
It’s important that it should accept video and audio from third party devices as around the world, people use all sorts of hardware, such as local satellite boxes, cable boxes, digital terrestrial TV receivers ( such as Freeview in the UK ), radio receivers, Blu Ray players, DVD players and legacy devices such as VHS players. Apple wouldn’t be able to supply it’s own version of all those devices, so it would need to be able to work alongside them.
Having a house with multiple sources of content available on multiple devices without wires cluttering up the place is very much Apple’s way of doing things.
Agreed! Need ala carte programming options to replace cable and satellite take it allot leave it crap that forces the repulsive liberal agenda down our throats with no way other than parental patrols to block them. Scum like Bill Maher, sex channels, Rosie O’Donnel, etc. can stay on irrelevant gutter while the rest of us enjoy wholesome family content that we CHOOSE to pay for! Bring it Apple TV and stop the acid-reflux of liberal TV and Hollywood once and for all!
Uhhh. Nothing on TV is “forced” down your throat.
But I’m with you on the rest — the wholesome family content (lies) of FOX, the televangelists who use drugs, cheat on their wives, etc. with the excuse of “I’m only human”, those to whom the almighty buck matters far, far more than the teachings of Jesus who they supposedly follow (e.g. the Good Samaritan), the Republicans who made up a bunch of lies about Benghazi and “released” it to the media.
Liberal all bad. Right wing all good. OK.
While I think this makes a bad remote control, it would be an awesome iPad app for streaming to your iPad and controlling your DVR.
This model still presumes that people will watch things because they are ‘on’ and I think people want to watch things that are available and not be tied to an arbitrary schedule. The PVR is teaching people that they don’t need to avoid being involved in real life with their own schedules rather than running to the TV on a certain time to watch their shows.
What we really want is a huge collection of shows that are updated regularly and available anytime but are easily searchable. ‘Live’ TV is dead or dying and the sooner the better.
I agree the only thing LIVE tv is good for is sports, news and special events. It is also a fair means of discovery.
The odd sports program is great live but there are so many that it is even better if they are stored and streamed on demand. News is something that happens 24/7 and is not constrained to 6 o’clock. As news stories are put together they can be presented or stored and aggregated by a ‘news’ show. We have the ability to re-imagine TV.
The biggest reason Apple needs to get a fully functional iOS based TV on the market is the game industry – there are thousands of developers waiting to get started. Imagine being able to play all the games on your iPhone/iPad on your TV, not to mention apps and iTV specific games. There is huge potential and I believe only a matter of time until we see something amazing. Something like a supercharged iTV built for consuming content and for high end gaming – imagine taking on the PC and console gaming market head on…lets face it Apple have turned more than one industry on its head and what better way to move into new markets?
It looks nice..