Apple Reportedly Working On an Online TV Service 87
An anonymous reader writes: According to a Wall Street Journal report (paywalled) Apple is in negotiations with media companies to develop an online TV service. The service will include a bundle of roughly 25 channels, so less popular channels will have a very difficult time fighting for a spot. Most major networks should be present, although NBC's participation is dubious because of its ties to Comcast, which would be in direct competition with Apple's service. "If Apple can offer a comprehensive, albeit slimmed-down, bundle for $30 to $40 a month, that could force distributors to cut prices or eat into margins to retain subscribers. At Comcast, for example, average video revenue per user should be about $79.45 in 2015, according to UBS. Meanwhile, its programming costs per average subscriber should be about $39.60. Those costs may need to rise. That roughly 50% gross margin looks vulnerable."
Oh Look (Score:2)
Oh look, it's THIS story again.
Let me guess - they're going to start taking gaming seriously in 2016?
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This isn't an Apple TV thing. From the article:
That's a pretty big deal for a lot of people, and the rumors are that it'll be unveiled at WWDC. I like stories like this: plausible, and soon enough to be interesting.
Re:Oh Look (Score:5, Insightful)
This shit has been rumored ever since the introduction of the first Apple TV. It will at some point finally come to fruition, but it's about as newsworthy as saying the sun will come up at some point in the next 24 hours.
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The main (presumed) benefit of this is that it will be cheaper than cable TV bundles. But, assuming you get your broadband from a cable company, how long can that last? Sure, today broadband is sold cheap as a loss-leader by the cable providers for their expensive TV bundles. But if they wanted to, couldn't they re-balance the cost so that buying broadband from them without TV becomes much more expensive than it is today? TV+Broadband customers would pay the same, but the itemized costs for each would b
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But it looks like Apple is playing catchup to Sling TV.
Very true, but we already have and use an Apple TV. We have very little Apple-purchased content so it wouldn't be financially hard to switch to a different device (and I think we're out of HDMI ports so we'd more or less have to), but it'd be nicely convenient if we could get that content on what we're used to.
Yeah, we could do some AirPlay workaround but the Wife Approval Factor starts dropping quickly when that gets involved.
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Gaming is pretty damn serious. Steam brings me everything I want to play.
Plus they got HBO GO to work without cable, something that google and microsoft was unable to do.
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they're going to start taking gaming seriously in 2016
They'll be introducing a console that only has one game, with a controller that only has 3 buttons. And Wired will run 2 weeks of articles on how it's the greatest console ever, and will CHANGE THE WORLD.
Gonna be like the ipod (Score:2, Insightful)
even though streaming video services have been around for years and years, apple will enter the market & suddenly everybody will be "WOW look!!! Apple invented streaming video! Amazing!"
Re:Gonna be like the ipod (Score:4, Insightful)
even though streaming video services have been around for years and years, apple will enter the market & suddenly everybody will be "WOW look!!! Apple invented streaming video! Amazing!"
Apple essentially invented a new market, just like Starbucks did. Were MP3 players (and expensive espresso drinks) available before that? Yes. Could you download music before that? Yes. What Apple did that wasn't so readily available before was made a device that could hold tons of music and had the market power to negotiate contracts to make music available for purchase on iTunes. Apple (and Starbucks) made their market readily available to the masses - whether it being available to the masses is a matter of perception or of a superior, easier to use product is irrelevant, what matters to the market is whether or not people are actually buying it.
The streaming video market is already pretty big and available to the masses through Netflix and Hulu. What's not so available to the masses is being able to stream the major networks in "real time" (which really means not having to wait a day to watch a new episode on Hulu). Sure, there are options, but those options are not so readily available to the masses - again, whether it's perception or a difficulty of use for non-geeks is irrelevant, what matters to the market is whether people are actually doing it. People hang on to cable either because (1)Hulu/Nextflix doesn't offer them what they want, or because (2) they're afraid of change. For group #1, offer them what they want and make it easy to obtain (and cheaper than cable) and people will go for it.
And people don't want to spend hours and hours figuring out new shit (or driving more than 3 blocks to a coffee shop), which is part of making things available to the masses.
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Streaming "real time"? Who fucking cares? This is 2015, not 1965. The only stuff where "real time" actually matters any more is SPORTS and that's already covered by a number of other options including what Apple is copying.
Apple has no advantage here. They aren't a prime mover. They aren't a better mover. They aren't even the first to offer this particular variation.
Also, if people can't handle new technology, Apple isn't really going to help them. They can just stick with their old cable subscription (or e
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Apple essentially invented a new market, just like Starbucks did. Were MP3 players (and expensive espresso drinks) available before that? Yes. Could you download music before that? Yes. What Apple did that wasn't so readily available before was made a device that could hold tons of music and had the market power to negotiate contracts to make music available for purchase on iTunes.
Perhaps even more importantly, Apple made it dirt simple for the everyman to actually get their music onto their device.
I had an early MP3 player. It was from before USB was popular, and used a parallel port interface. Getting music onto it required the following procedure:
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MP3 players arose in a time when PCs in general were still primitive. They suffered because of this. A lot of peripherals from that time were more difficult to deal with on a PC. It wasn't just MP3 players.
At that time, pretending that people didn't have anything besides a USB port (or Firewire port) was a double edged sword.
At that time, CD ripping was already simple. Buying ready made content was only a problem because of a sandbagging cartel.
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MP3 players arose in a time when PCs in general were still primitive. They suffered because of this.
Which only reenforces my point that Apple came along, and won the market by introducing a device that didn't suffer from these issues. And a huge part of that was the end-to-end software integration that all the other device manufacturers ignored.
At that time, CD ripping was already simple. Buying ready made content was only a problem because of a sandbagging cartel.
Sure, you could pop open some piece of software and tell it to rip tracks from your CD player, resulting in a whole bunch of files name TRACK_XXX.MP3, but then you had to manually do the work of naming them, organizing them into an album, and getting them into you
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itunes is by far the most difficult method ive ever tried to use to put mp3s onto an mp3 player.
All the rest of them just show up as a drive letter & you just drop files into them.
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So *manually* copying files around to archiac things involving "drive letters” is easier than just plugging in and letting it automatically sync?
Our mileages indeed vary.
Yes you twit. You don't need to download proprietary software, you can use it on any computer, and you can use it on multiple computers without the worry of that 'automatically sync' -ing ability wiping your device when you have multiple computers in your house.
Re:Gonna be like the ipod (Score:5, Insightful)
The USB player I had at the time that the iPod came out was way easier to use. The player I had you could plug into any computer and simply copy a file. With the iPod, I needed to start iTunes, get the music into my iTunes library, and go through all kinds of options to sync. Furthermore, I had to have a dedicated system to sync from even though I use multiple systems, and I couldn't just copy any file and use it as a flash drive, I had to copy a compatible file that iTunes would recognize such as an mp3 or mp4 etc.
I don't know if it is still like that today, but I like the freedom of doing a plug in and copy with no application required.
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I had one of the third generation iPods (no moving buttons). I'm an EE, and remember what tech was like back then. I mean, basically the iPod was amazing in its context. It had a big graphics screen when most products still had those old alphanumeric character displays. I remember it even had a white LED back light! That was just phenomenal back then. And capacitive touch that worked so well was a huge novelty. When I bought it I remember everyone in the office spent ages playing with the UI.
The thing was p
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Fixed that for you.
Tim Cook is an excellent bean-counter and a master of the supply chain, but he sounds like a boring academic teacher even when he tries to fake emotions. His timing is slow and his tone is sleep-inducing.
When Steve Jobs was doing a Keynote, his timing was great and he sounded enthusiastic and amazed by what he was presenting.
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The trouble for Apple today is none of this new stuff they are doing (iWatch, iTV etc) has anything near the wow factor anymore.
I can agree with that, although in a somewhat qualified manner. Apple has always been pretty open that the Apple TV is more of a hobby device for them. It shows, especially outside the US where the app/"channel" support is pretty pathetic. Here in Canada, it's really only useful for Netflix and iTunes content (I bought one for my parents a few years ago after the last video rental shop in their town closed; my father, who is virtually computer-illiterate, loves it for renting movies). I own a lot of App
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You know that the vast majority of people have no idea how to locate their music on their computer, much less where their mp3 player's mount point is when they plug it in or even WHERE on that mount point to put the music files. To say you thought doing this was simple means you're much more computer savy than probably 95% of the population.
To me, that's where the brilliance of the iPod/iTunes came it. You put a CD in your computer, waited 10 minutes for it to rip, plugged in your iPod and your music was
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The USB player I had at the time that the iPod came out was way easier to use. The player I had you could plug into any computer and simply copy a file.
Which is fine if you want to listen to one song. But most people prefer to listen to multiple songs.
So you've been using your media player for a while, full of music, and you decide you want to change what you're listening to. You can't just sync in a new playlist like you can on the iPod -- you wind up having to manually delete the songs you don't want in there, make sure the directory structure is correct, and then move in all of the songs you want to add.
And hope that you only ever want to organize or
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Ahh the Mp MAN... that thing was a nightmare. Mine is in the basement somewhere rotting.
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It wasn't quite like that though, was it?
The first iPod was a POS. Firewire and Mac only, lower capacity and higher price than the competition. Awful LCD display. The only real thing it had going for it was the scroll wheel, which was invented by Synaptic. It didn't sell that well, despite the massive Apple hype machine and reality distortion field, not least because most people didn't have a Mac so couldn't use it.
Eventually they did a version that supported USB, although not for charging. I had one, I cou
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The first iPod was a POS. Firewire and Mac only, lower capacity and higher price than the competition.
Yep, less space than a nomad. On and no wireless either. Pretty lame, I reckon.
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What's not so available to the masses is being able to stream the major networks in "real time"
Depends on the country. In the UK we can get the major boradcast channels real-time over the internet, iPlayer for the BBC being the most well-known example.
Re:Gonna be like the ipod (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea of streaming may have been around for years, but the implementation sucks donkeys. I live in a rural area where I get my big-city broadcast channels through a major nationwide cable provider. If I miss an episode of something on broadcast, I can sometimes catch it after the next day or two on streaming, except when it's on one of the networks where I have to wait 8 days for no particular reason, meaning that before I can see my missed episode I have to wait until the day after next week's episode, or when it's on "verify my provider" and my cable company is never one of the six or eight you can choose from. That's if I'm lucky, of course, for some programs are just not available on streaming at all. For non-br0adcast channels that are carried by my cable company, I should be able to stream catchup episodes by logging in with my provider, right? So why is there still only a tiny list of verifiable providers that seldom includes my own?
What Apple can bring to a mess like this is a markedly better user interface. Because I pay for cable programming with transmission fees, and for OTA content wit commercials and retransmission fees, I have every right to view the content after scheduled broadcast. That's why I torrent everything they won't give me my rightful open access to. What I would like to see Apple do is just buy a vertical slice of about a third of Hollywood and force a unified access paradigm onto it. Make it easy to get BS-free access to the corresponding slice of total content, and viewers will find it so much easier to watch their chosen content that the rest of the industry will have to fall into line.
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Major broadcast network shows are available everywhere. They're on Hulu. They're on network specific websites. They're on Amazon. HELL, they're even on iTunes.
Then there's PVR technology that's been with us for 15 years already.
If you can't manage with all of that, doing nothing more but change the transport layer of your cable service really isn't going to help you.
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Maybe in the USA, but in the UK I suspect that Apple are effective locked out as the main TV channels (BBC, ITV, Ch4) all provide very good streaming services. Hell for £10 you can get a NowTV box (a cut down Roku LT) which gives you all those catch up channels, plus a very wide selection of paid for content.
Oh and the big driver in the UK for these things is sport specifically football (aka soccer) and between them Sky and BT have the Premiership all locked up for years to come. Oh and Sky of c
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Having AT&T U-Verse and no better options in a major metropolitan area, streaming almost anything is useless. NNTP and Bittorrent work great though.
Buying in on day one (Score:1)
I am so, so ready to be done with Comcast. I'd pick this up in a heartbeat to get away from their ludicrously priced packaging (I don't want to rent a DVR just so I can watch baseball in HD!). Toss in the unbundled HBO subscription and this is close to my cord cutting dream.
Oh, and NBC? I'll be subsidizing this by dropping my Hulu Plus subscription. Don't for a second think that your programming is so valuable that I'll pay extra for it a la carte. This would be an excellent time to make nice with Apple and
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Sadly you will stick with Comcast because you have no other choice for broadband internet.
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You want HD service, you have to pay the higher DVR rental fee for it.
But what if I don't want DVR? Sucks to be you.
Can I have DVR without HD? No.
Can I have the HD package without all the other fluff packages? No.
Can I connect a personal recorder without the cable box? No.
F-U!
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"Can I connect a personal recorder without the cable box? No."
Yes. you need a cablecard ready recorder.
There is your reason (Score:2)
and apple will have to deal with the ISP's that (Score:1)
and apple will have to deal with the ISP's that own the media / have there own TV system.
If stemming gets big then the caps will come down.
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ability to stream anytime you want?
And to any device I want.
If this is some locked in shit that only works with Apple's devices, then no thanks. Who wants to be limited to a single vendor like that?
Bundle (Score:5, Insightful)
When, o Lord, when, will they finally understand.
I do not want a "bundle" of preselected crap.
I want to choose my own crap, ala carte. If I only want ONE piece of crap, then that's all I'm going to buy from you: ONE piece of crap. I want to be able to stream my crap anywhere, any time, to any crappy device (which by the way I probably bought at one of your crowded crappy crap stores in a crappy mall).
Oh, and since I am PAYING YOU to provide me with this service, I will not suffer through even one crappy advertisement while I watch my crap. NOT.EVEN.ONE.
I will gleefully ignore any/all crap services that do not perform to my exact specifications.
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Thank you for demonstrating the Nirvana Fallacy [logicallyfallacious.com]
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The only one committing a logical fallacy is YOU.
He is not comparing this new Apple nonsense to some unobtainable ideal. He's comparing it to what he can already use TODAY.
I guess that makes your argument a false strawman.
He can use a plethora of streaming options that already constitute "Nirvana". He could also use well established PVR technology.
The ads really are a showstopper. I think the last time I had to sit through cable ads was back before Steve Jobs returned to Apple.
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It does seem odd that they would opt for a bundle rather than something like like Netflix, with individual shows available for streaming without ads. Aside from being a shitty deal it would put them in competition with cable and satellite providers, and probably get them into legal wrangles over rights. If people start using it like cable they will run into their broadband data caps.
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The other side of the coin would be a bundle like NBC and NBC Sports Network.
Very true (Score:3)
I'm planning to get HBO. It's a little expensive but I like some shows they have now, and they have a good back-catalog.
The Apple package I'm pretty dubious about though, partly because it's anchored by broadcast networks I never watch, party because as you say - package.
I'm still hoping that when it comes out there's some non-bundle kind of deal for individual channels, even if more expensive... let networks sink or swim based on their own efforts, not riding on the coat-tails of the popular.
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When, o Lord, when, will they finally understand.
I do not want a "bundle" of preselected crap.
I want to choose my own crap, ala carte. If I only want ONE piece of crap, then that's all I'm going to buy from you: ONE piece of crap. I want to be able to stream my crap anywhere, any time, to any crappy device (which by the way I probably bought at one of your crowded crappy crap stores in a crappy mall).
Oh, and since I am PAYING YOU to provide me with this service, I will not suffer through even one crappy advertisement while I watch my crap. NOT.EVEN.ONE.
I will gleefully ignore any/all crap services that do not perform to my exact specifications.
It's pretty much like that now with most shows. You can buy each episode for 2 or $3. Whatever the % of shows that distribute this way, it is only going to increase as time goes on. This isn't an assault on that, just further options for people who prefer the certainty of a fixed budget (rather than a variably one) and think 25 channels is just the right amount of channels.
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Actually, that is the problem. You can only get let's say ABC, TBS, HBO and FOX. And only some of the shows. If the show is from NBC it will be on Hulu and thats ads only or if the networks don't select the show from their catalog, well it is not there. They decide. Their content right? Well I don't like to be forced into a platform to watch my content. I don't like to be said, this show is only on Amazon Prime and that is not on Apple TV so you gotta go and get another gizmo to watch this. I'd like the net
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The success of Netflix contradicts you.
People (including myself) want their crap bundled, and their expensive premium stuff ala carte. Bundling cheap crapy stuff doesn't make it more expensive, instead it makes it cheaper, the problem is when content providers create bundles with the expensive stuff, then customers pay premiun for something they don't want.
Basicaly, bundling cheap things by cost is a good practice. What is bad for the consummers is bundling by theme while mixing the premium stuff with the c
Roughly 25 channels for up to $40? (Score:2)
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Sling won't work for anyone with more than one household user, though. Apple will probably allow simultaneous streaming to any device in the "family."
And it's apple. Paying extra is part of the chic.
So long netflix, amazon prime, and (LOL) google tv (Score:1)
My body is ready.
Take me, Apple!
Wake me up when it's available outside the US. (Score:2)
On the other hand, maybe that's a bad idea, as I may then have to sleep forever...
This is why, even though I do own a bunch of other Apple gear, I don't own an Apple TV. The Apple TV "channel" selection here in Canada is pretty pathetic. And while we do have a variety of online streaming services at our disposal (Netflix, Shomi, Cineplex Store, NFB, and probably a few more), none of them are available on the Apple TV, other than Netflix (indeed, many of them aren't available on ANY devices outside PCs (Wi
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In Canada, the only notable services we have are the iTunes Store (of course), Netflix, Crackle (if you like watching the same ads over and over even in the same breaks), Crunchyroll (if you like anime). There's also YouTube and Vimeo.
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In Canada, the only notable services we have are the iTunes Store (of course), Netflix, Crackle (if you like watching the same ads over and over even in the same breaks), Crunchyroll (if you like anime). There's also YouTube and Vimeo.
I think you might be selling Shomi and Cineplex Online a bit short. Both seem to be fine services -- what is really holding them back is a near total lack of device support, making it more difficult to integrate them into the living room (or in the case of Shomi,needing to be a Shaw or Rogers customer).
I recently cancelled my 90 day free Shomi trial. It's more geared towards TV binge watching it seems -- while it has movies, its selection is sparse, and in some cases duplicates what Netflix already provid
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What's holding them back is that this is the first time I even hear about them at all. Probably due a total lack of device support, as you say. The fact that you need to be a Shaw/Rogers/Whatever customer is
What a bargain (Score:2)
I get my DSL (5Mbit) and IPTV (SaskTel MaxTV) for $62 a month. Spending $30-40 just for video streaming seems a rather high price to me -- especially as they've already said they're unlikely to be able to carry all the major US networks. (Of course my package is focused on the Canadian networks, but it also gets "the big 4" from the US.)
At $40/month, that would leave only $20/month to pay for a 10Mbit or better internet connection for streaming the video (my 5Mbit link is data only -- the *actual* link
Free bandwidth too? (Score:2)
My ISP gives my entire family 200Gb per month. Streaming TV all the time would eat this up in a couple days. I'm not impressed.
This is like renting me a car, except I can't get any fuel to drive it with :(
So they gonna remove the BS? (Score:2)
Double that for shows like survivor, that distort asscracks and such.
For Fark's sake, if you're going to show it, show it, don't edit it. If you're going to edit it, don't show it. I'm not a kid, I'm an adult watching an adult show. Treat me like an adult, or I swear to god I'll cut the cable and y'all can wonder why pirate's bay gets better ratings that you
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torrent shows asscrack roffles
First work on a decent TV box (Score:3)
Current one is 5 years old. No stick form factor, no 4K or 3D, no Siri, no Facetime, no HDMI-CEC, no apps/games, AirPlay drains mobile device battery life. To really generate excitement Apple would need to release something ahead of the times to makes us forget they churned out the same lame box for last 5 years.
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That 5 year old box kicks the ass of every stick, and most pucks, for UI responsiveness and wifi/streaming stability. The content may be mostly medieval but the box performance as a content viewer, from the user's perspective, is excellent.
Note: I use the ATV we have for two things: ESPN and Plex, neither of which are actually Apple (ESPN requires I have a package from Comcast, the only local cable provider, and Plex requires I hijack the DNS and Trailers app). And yet both work better/smoother on my n year
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Oh well, maybe its good for streaming video from a dozen sources preapproved by Apple. You Plex hack is out of reach of an average consumer and requires an always on machine as a server. Don't you want other things that came out since then? If you had to keep only one box, would you choose Apple TV?
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No, the current one is only a few weeks old. They lowered the price during the keynote!
Not a done deal (Score:1)
Even though I think Apple is trying to work on a internet based TV service. I think the deals are very hard to negotiate. Those that think this will kill the cable industry don't realize that many people have internet access through their cable TV provider. If anything, what will eventually happen is that cable companies will find ways to move profits from TV service and into internet service of which many people don't have many good options to obtain internet services. Thus, I see much higher internet cost