“One day that TV show or movie you’re watching will follow you from room-to-room and place-to-place on any of your array of compatible devices; that’s part of the promise of the new tech battleground, smart TV,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “This is set to be a new front for hostilities between Apple [AAPL] and Samsung, that’s what my runes tell me.”
“That huge ignorance-breeding box in the corner of your front room is ripe for change,” Evans writes. “While almost every other device in your world has acquired new features and intelligence, other than a shift to support higher def formats, what has your television been doing to play its part in our emerging tech age? Not a lot, at least, not really.”
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Evans writes, “But I think there could even be a launch date for Apple’s next-generation foray into this market penciled inside Apple CEO, Tim Cook’s diary.”
Read more in the full article here.
Agreed… But there is no reason to put that tech into the screen itself. A box that your TV hooks up to, yes.
The screens will change too often to put the tech into it.
BINGO…. So totally right on. 🙂
en
The screens will change too often to put the tech into it.
Are you sure? I think the tech will change too often, at least in the near term as new tech comes to market and either fails or succeeds. One the tech market settles down, then maybe integrate the tech with the screen
Wrong. Like most people, you’re still thinking within the 20th century paradigm of TV. It’s antiquated and not truly able to be integrated with the emerging tech ecosystem.
TV’s a mess. If anybody can fix it, count on Apple.
“Ignorance-breeding box.” Spot on.
It’s not called the ‘idiot box’ for nothing.
IMO, that depends on several factors including *what* you watch TV and *how much* you watch TV in relation to other activities – reading, sports, hobbies, etc.
Blaming “ignorance” on TV is specious, since it fails to address the issues of personal preferences, motivations, and responsibility for personal development. TV is a tool and you wield it.
My new Samsung “Smart TV” came with a 300 page e-manual that was unusable. How can Samdung claim that they actually invented that tablet they are trying to sell with all of the stolen IP.
BOOB TUBE !!!
This is all well and good, but TV has an infrastructure problem. We simply can’t push multiple channels of live HD content over the vast majority of existing broadband.
I mean as a video buying/rental or Netflix device, the Apple TV is great. But I can’t watch NFL games on it and there’s no way to do so without billions being spent on running new cable.
OTOH, I’m looking forward to the day I can “subscribe” to HBO without a cable subscription. There just doesn’t seem to be a way around the live TV problem (sports, big news events).
The technology is here, it’s just companies are resistant to change their licensing agreements. Bandwidth isn’t the problem. Contrary to what I think of at&t as a company, they have the right idea with their packet based uverse service. Cable essentially sends everything at once where you tune to the frequency which corresponds to the channel being watched. IP based tech only uses bandwidth to what you have tuned.
I have U-Verse.
It’s decent, but far from perfect.
In my household we have several TVs, and unless they are all watching the same channel, you can’t view them/record simultaneously.
U-Verse allows for four streams–half of that for HD.
If I am watching one show in one room, and the kids are in another, while recording with the DVR on another, often times the signal degrades or a channel is interrupted.
It’s a great concept, but they need to push out more bandwidth for it to really take off.
I’ve been looking at what HD TV to buy for a few weeks and the author is just plain wrong about TVs not adding features. The current crop of LCD/LED samsung/sony/etc.. TVs are loaded with “junk”. I’d prefer a nice screen without all the bells and whistles. Most have HD 3D, an internet connection, web browser widget and netflix, hulu and other widgets along with online gaming, 3D gaming… actually tons of stuff. Too much stuff for me. Plus they’re not much more expensive than an apple 27″ display. Unless apple can change the landscape, there is no reason for them to enter the TV market – currently its a race to the bottom/cheapest. I see no explanation of how apple will profit in this market especially since they’ll have to source the screens from one of big players in the same market.
Sorry Jonny Evans, this does not compute.
yeah. Apple could certainly reinvent the TV UI beautifully with an iOS app running on your iThing. but the medicos are never going to agree to provide content to Apple unless they think it will somehow increase their total revenues, whereas what consumers want most of all is a la carte channel pricing that costs us less overall. so … stalemate.
50 inches, glasses-free 3D, apps!
Televisions are getting thinner and lighter but we still have a ways to go before there’s a paradigm shift away from “boxes”.
My money’s on projectors.
Im already there.
My dvr allow me to watch any of my shows and resume on any tv in the house.
All my other content does the same using plex and XBMC.
Plex media player is built into my LG tv in my living room.
The rest of my tvs have either an atv with plex or an okd xbox running xbmc (Ill update them all to aTvs at some point) It all “just works” and its been great.
The technology is here you just nees to look beyond the traditional apple offerings to see it.
People won’t care about the cost. They’ll buy it if there’s an Apple logo on it. I think a lot will go into the design to be very elegant and classy along with functionality.
My guess is if it happens, it will be a TV with Apple TV being integrated inside. You will be able to access all of your iOS apps and you’ll control them with your iOS device. This could be a huge game changer for consoles.
You can already get MLB live through the Apple TV (for a price) and I don’t think it will be long before NFL and NBA are on board as well (NFL opened up to the PS3 this year after being exclusive with DirecTV for a long time). Only a few things need to happen before people start ditching cable and satellite in record numbers over and above what they are doing now. Apple is the one with the power to really get this to take off.
Dude,
What you explained to me gave me a slight headache just reading about it. By the time I’m done setting up a configuration such as yours, I would have given it up and written it off as a waste of my free time doing something I don’t actually enjoy doing.
Its actually pretty easy to set up.
If you remove the modded xbox devices from the equation and stick strictly to Apple TVs running Plex then it is REALLY EASY.
The hardest part (if you can call it hard) is jailbreaking the ATv to get Plex on it. Once that is done its is as simple as firing up Plex and pointing it to a Plex Media Server on your network.
Done deal at that point. All your TV shows, Movies and music are accessible from any TV. Watch a TV show in your bedroom and it shows as “Watched” in the living room etc.
TVs are fine and don’t need such changes. All these desirable features can be done with add-on set-top boxes and ATV’s etc.. and that’s for the better because people buy TV’s for the long term. We shouldn’t start adding gadgets and gimmicks into the sets (even though some have already..).
I think this is one Apple device (AppleTV) that will actually get BIGGER in size, than its current state. The current AppleTV will get a screen and its not the TECH, its the SOFTWARE that will be the killer app for AppleTV if they enter this segment.
Next year will be interesting on the TV front, thats for sure!