Apple pitches $30 a month iTunes TV subscriptions - report - Page 4

Then you act like an adult and pay for cable or sat, or hook up a digital antenna for PBS. Your position that it shouldnt exist at all because iTunes cant offer them is strawman, at best. If you want to take that stance, then Netflix streaming shouldnt exist because it cant offer shows right away like Hulu. But they both have their pros and cons. Your inability to make a balanced argument is your downfall.

And can you watch those channels on a PS3?

One would think that to be a safe assumption, but most people judge Apple products based on the here and now (ie. an Apple tablet would obviously be running the current version of iPhone OS /sarcasm). Offering streaming of all current iTunes TV content wouldn't really be worthwhile, so I don't think that is what they are doing. I'm hoping for an all out cable replacement, but expecting less.

So now you're a therapist too?

So then I need cable plus iTunes subcription services - why?

Not need because you already have cable service. My point is why pay $360 to subcribe to a TV show when you can get that plus all of which I mention in addition.

First, Hulu has repeatedly stated that it is going to a paid content model. If true, this argument doesn't hold water anymore. Second, watching a movie downloaded from iTunes is much more enjoyable and useable.

I remember when cable first started going. The whole selling point was you are paying for commercial free entertainment. Now it seems most cable channels are filled with commercials. Just as many as the Networks.

He conveniently failed to include the cost of Blu-ray purchase with the cost of Netlfix for that year. And he failed to mention the poor quality streams from Netflix of Hulu in comparison to iTS DLs. You can’t watch those on even a medium sized TV without it being overly blocky. Finally, he fails to mention that the PS3 can’t be ported around like an iDevice can. If they allow for you to use your subscription from your iDevice then this could be a hit.

That's why I think the TV programming, especailly the VOD, should all be considered in any net neutrality rules. The cable company could easily put burdensome caps and bandwidth price tiers in place to protect their VOD services from competition from Apple, Hulu, etc.

Do you sleep under iSheets at night as well? You're selling a "subscription" in the hope and assumption that such iDevice is what somebody actually wants without you having even seen it?

So your therapist said the same thing as I did. Interesting!


No, you need whatever option fits your needs. For some, that is cable, for others is satellite. Yet others want their media on the go (iTS) and others dont mind waiting for a show to be put on DVDs and mailed (Netflix).

Its not about you! It never has been and it never will be. Apple not making a product that fits your needs specifically is not a personal attack on you. Has your therapist also told you that?

I wasn't trying to derail the thread. I simply wanted to get a perspective of where your logic lies in terms of Apples future plans.

I haven't been here as long as you or read all your threads and comments but I get the impression your not a fan of what Apple are doing right now. So I genuinely wanted to get an insight as to where you think Apple should be going right now.

I subscribe to Bell ExpressVu and we have a digital PVR. Our monthly package of home phone + satellite TV + PVR rental + Internet Services comes out to 195 CDN per month. I would LOVE to replace it with:

iTunes.
- Movie rentals
- occasional DVD rips of stuff we own, trashed once we're happy or tired with the movie.
- family vids converted to MP4 - the kids get HOURS of fun watching school plays,
photos and educational podcasts i have ready.
- Movie purchases. I never thought I'd like using it, but the convenience is unparalleled.
I've purchased about 10 titles to dat and am happy with all of them. I am not a cinephile
so I have no 10 thousand dollar home theatre to put super HD content into.
Netflix
- for what we can't get we OCCASIONALLY rent thru mail-order DVD. Monthly tally is 11.00
CDN for all-you-can eat with only one DVD out at a time.
Internet.
- 3rd Party ADSL or DSL provider. Good service can be had for about 30 dollars CDN per month.
Basic Phone
- kept for 911 service and phone connectivity. We're going to drop it to a basic service with no extras or VM (two iPhones in the house).

So the Tally in the end would come out about 1/3 to one half the amount we now pay, and we'll get more use out of our entertainment system to boot.

I get all my CBC content besides live radio through iTunes. I can't possibly catch up with the content I want to see or her, but at least I can search, organize, and prioritise the content I want to see, and what I can't consumer on the AppleTV I carry on the iPhone.

Apple has the strategy perfectly right. They will move onto the print and digital reader world to finish the portfolio and I'll ideally be able to stop receiving my Toronto Star and Globe and Mail subscriptions on physical paper and get them in digital formats. It will be pure profit for them to do so as I want to see the paper layout without paying the 130 dollars per year for the delivery.

Add iTunes subscriptions to that so I can get my individual programs and we're set! Lots of shows have gone off the air that I want to see, despite all the "specialty" channels. I see a new dawn coming, and it will be very interesting to watch.

Anyone else with similar experiences?

You are not the only one saying this, but what if the iTunes subscription can replace cable? That is what they are speculating.

FTA:

Now I agree that just offering streaming services of the current iTunes content would not be enough, but maybe that isn't what they are planning at all. As I've said before. If Apple wants this service to replace my cable bill, it needs live streaming not streams/downloads available a day later. I'm willing to wait and see if anything comes of this though.

There is overlap, but the cable and iTS network offering are also very different. One is the living room, the other is the computer, living room and mobile devices. One can be manipulated, the other requires a paid for or rented DVR to do so. This service wouldnt fit my needs but I can see how it may be of interest to people that still want to keep their cable TV.

The long term problem with internet TV in any form is that cable companies will inevitably have to make more profit on the internet side of business to make up for the loss of TV revenue while still paying the high lease fees to the networks.

techstud, give it a rest for a while - step away from the keyboard. Take a tea or coffee break.

I have been saying Apple should offer an iTunes TV Show Subscription service for practically two years now, and now it looks like Apple is trying to lay the groundwork for this, finally. It's a shame we'll have to wait longer over where I live to get what the US might get in Q1 2010, but so be it.

Next step, Apple need to get round to making a television, like I've wanted them to do for a long time now. I like the idea of an all-in-one solution for TV, that would be very simple to setup and use. Time will make this happen me thinks.

Do you even get much of an offering through iTunes? I thought TV and movies weren't offered by iTunes outside the US yet.

Indeed Sir, do you have any scraps? I wouldn't get an Apple TV until they bring out the subscription model anyway. So I'll be waiting until 2022 to get mine.

Cable TV will eventually die, and they will try to make up that cost through internet fees. Every time these companies lay new fiber optic cable, they are sowing the seeds of their own demise.

I don't see a large disconnect between the computer and the living room anymore, now that you can get internet connected set top boxes. My parents TV is essentially an internet provided solution, it just isn't marketed as such. The TV signals are sent through the phone lines and our modem/router before being sent to a set top box. I'm just waiting for someone like Apple to take that a step further. It is something they could do with a live streaming option to complement their current offerings.

You don't have to, it's your choice but I'd personally like to see Apple expand in this area and I think other people in this forum would also like to see this.

Before the iPhone, smartphones were pretty lame, now take a look at the Market and the choice. There's some serious smartphones out there now definately worthy of a look and alternative to the iPhone.

So why should we have to just accept the current cable offerings. Apple obviously see room for improvement. Even if it's from an integration point of view. I have far too many boxes under my tv set and have invested in a few Apple products which I'd like to see Apple improve upon.

I don't see Sony and Sky doing anything revolutionary right now so I'm pinning my hopes on Apple. I can dream.

That's who I see Apple going after: Sky. Imagine automatic bookmark your spot in a program and going back to that point in that one after watching something else. It's things like this that would negate the need for DVR completely. Also, you're not given a choice of 20 good things on at that moment and asked to choose 1, but rather you can pick anything and stream it. I like that idea.

Not so fast. Comcast has been aggressive rolling out phone services, buying Plaxo, and now in a deal with NBC-Universal. They realize that they cannot remain just a dumb-pipe. Content is key.

They are not acting defensively, they are on offense.

Now that would be the ideal solution. I was thinking just a few of the smaller fringe Internet channels added to the atv right now but sky would be a killer for me.

I also agree with your all in one tv solution. I mean go into your apple store and they have it all set up in front of your eyes. It just needs to be in one box with some serious networks like sky on board. I suppose it'll ultimately come down to whether some of these companies see their Market share dwindling away whether companies like Apple can offer a life line.

Yep, I do.

Except iTunes only offers a fraction of the shows you'd get from your cable/satellite provider, the quality is most certainly NOT higher (about the same, at best), and you'd still need a cable package if you want live content like news, sports, talk shows, etc. — and considering half (if not more) of the tv shows available on iTunes come from the networks you can get for free over the air, that $30/mo would only be gaining you a handful of shows.

Hulu will begin to charge soon for shows as well.

So because it doesn’t have all the options of another service it shouldn’t exist, even though it gives the consumer several new options these other services don’t? Not fitting your needs doesn’t mean it doesn’t fit others. By your reckoning, the iTS should have never worked for music, movies or TV shows. But it does. Try looking at the whole thing, just the parts you don’t like.

Me, for example, iTS has every show I watch, except some stuff from the UK. I don’t watch cable or sat shows when I have it because I’m constantly on the move. I typically miss them and hate to schedule myself around the TV. I much prefer to have it fit my timeline. I have torrents at this point as the only solution if Hulu doesn’t offer it, or if it’s something that I want with good quality. What part of $30 would not make my TV viewing simplified in your eyes? If this can let me pull a TV show rental from my iPhone while waiting for a plane how would anyone else compete with that? How does that overlap with the cable companies in your eyes?

PS: iTS trumps cable in quality of feeds. Re you really going to argue that 480p MPEG-2 is better than 640p H.264? Are you the one that claims that iTS video is worse than VHS?

They make a lot of money delivering what normally is cable TV or whatever we download. Whether we subscribe to cable TV or whether we pay to get internet access so we can download the movies, the cable company makes money. If they didn't make money, they could be out of business and then how would we download our movies?

Conventional cable TV will eventually die and cable TV providers will try to increase internet rates to make up for the income shortfall. That is all I'm saying. They can also try to adapt as you suggest Comcast is doing.

A frightened puppy will bite you. While offensive in appearance, it is truly a defensive maneuver. I don't know a lot about the situation in the US, but here in Canada, cable providers appear to be resisting the change and your statement about Comcast doesn't convince me that it is any different down south.

If they were truly on the offensive, they would be the ones bringing TV over internet to the masses.

At the moment, I'm pretty much watching what I want to see with ad supported Hulu. That may well change, nothing is set in stone.


From what I understand, the networks would net more renting at $0.50 an episode than they would if the same person watched the ad-supported version on TV. It's certainly a lot more than they would get through Hulu. Even if apple takes half rather than 30% because of infrastructure costs and the low price, that's still sitting pretty good against ad-based TV. So really, a $0.99 per episode rental is a realistic business proposition, if they're afraid $0.50 would undervalue their content, even though they generally get less through their primary income. I might even consider that. I'm generally not paying $1.99 just to watch an episode that I probably will never watch again.


Maybe, there isn't any proof of that.

Cable TV and internet are supplied through the same cable. Most internet offerings are unlimited, so your internet usage doesn't change how much they get paid (right now).

This is simplest with equations.

Current income = internet fees + cable tv fees
Future income = internet fees

If you want current and future income to remain the same (their costs won't necessarily go down) where is the lost income from not selling cable TV to the masses anymore going to come from? Now there are other potential sources of income, they could provide the internet TV, or they could diversify, but denying a potential increase in internet rates seems short sighted.

From another perspective. There are ISPs that do not provide cable TV, will they still be charging the same fees when everyones bandwidth use increases due to them getting their TV over the internet?

cable sucks
i have 76 channels watch only about 10
too bad congress doesn't let us do ala cart

the key is content and when you drop cable they up the price of the broadband
they are looking close to netflix, apple, hulu etc

but i got to have dvr, backup and storage etc

I think this is actually part of the problem. If we're paying less, then some companies are earning less. And they'll fight to the death to stop that happening.
(edit: and now I just read a few people saying the same just above... it pays to get to the END of the thread before responding!!!!)

Which is why we're seeing these older companies who "don't get it"... but what they don't get is how to keep their revenue.

For the change to happen, we probably need to work on everyone paying the same as they do now (with some shuffling of WHERE the money is going)... but getting a much more useful service for them. Perhaps eventually cable & dsl bills will TRIPLE, but the TV services will be much cheaper (ie AppleTV subscriptions cheap, or cheap cableTV, etc)

... and where does that leave Apple? Certainly NOT with a product which lets most people replace their cableTV with something just as good (or better) at 1/3 the overall price. (Unfortunately!).

... my best guess - Apple should start with any content producers that don't own cable delivery networks and give them a better distribution deal (for now) than they currently get. They'll be happy with that, and it'll still be cheaper for us as the cable companies won't respond immediately. As the cable companies start charging more for us using 20 times the bandwidth than we used to, Apple will have to renegotiate with the producers to bring the prices down.

Well, not so fast. If we the customers aren't paying for the cable TV fees because we don't buy the content, the cable companies wouldn't buy from the content providers, right? Their cost would be reduced substantially. It doesn't seem to make much sense for them to pay for the content if the customers aren't buying. We the customers would just be buying the content directly and paying for it separately.

News comes up a lot. Perhaps you watch more live news than I do?

I'd like the AppleTV to give me a news program that looks more like a DVD menu of choices (or "iTunes Extras"). While I'm reading a choice of article headings the news presenter might be summarising tonights news. Let me click each time the presenters says something I want to know more about... they could offer twice as much news and I could watch what interests me in less time (while still seeing the broad overview). It's not live but it's VERY convenient. And some stories could link to more in-depth "specials" directly (or mark them to download when available, or with tomorrow's news)

I agree with what you say about Free-to-air. I still think Apple needs to find a way of offering "free-to-download" shows that insert commercials (just like FTA) - probably where the advertisers selectively chose which kinds of viewers they want seeing their ads (and thus we see less ads but they're more appropriate).

Maybe this is what that server farm in NC was all about?

"Earlier this year, Apple selected Maiden, N.C., as the location for its $1 billion server farm. The exact purpose of that data center has not been stated."

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...m_project.html

Why do people think that a la carte will be cheaper?

Imagine a world where all we had was those all-you-can-eat smorgasbords with 200 different dishes (and some premium content like a seafood bar for those who want it).

If a consumer said "I don't eat 3/4 of the dishes available here... we should be able to go to a restaurant and chose JUST what we want to eat. That'd be 1/4 the cost!", we'd see it pretty clearly that it's not going to happen.

A la carte is usually more expensive unless you're a very small eater. Sure we never ate 3/4 of the smorgasbord, but everyone ate some share, and everyone ignored some others, the specific choices aren't important.

Usually people totally disagree with me when I say this... but none have argued well (to me) why that model doesn't fit.

Don't be so sure you will be paying less. The shows we watch cost money. A show becomes successful, the cast demands more money, the cost for the show goes up. Pro athletes make more money, the cost to the networks cost more, the cost is passed on. Our cable bill goes up. We the customers have one entity to direct our anger at, the cable company. If we buy our content and the delivery (broadband) separately, will we pay less or will we just pay differently (couple of different bills)?

I agree with your saying. There are plenty on this forum that dont like idea simply because they dont watch enough TV or watch TV in a certain way to suit their needs. For them the subscription model doesnt work. Likely the iTS model doesnt work. I can see how this would fill a void that is currently not met by anyone.

The difference that separates it from buffets is that the cable networks (MTV, ESPN, Discovery, etc.) get paid a per-subscriber fee, whether or not a given subscriber actually watches anything on those networks. Don't watch the MTV networks? Too bad, some of your money does go to them even if you don't watch it. With a buffet, if you don't take the eggs, the chicken farmer doesn't get a specific cut from everyone whether or not they took the eggs, they get money for eggs actually sold, not for eggs sold + a specific cut from everyone's checks.

It should certainly exist, just at a more realistic price given iTunes' limited selection comprised mostly of shows available over the air for free.


You're right. This would be a great service for people who only watch the hundred or so shows available on iTunes (many of which are lingering episodes of shows that have been cancelled), don't mind waiting an hour for their download before they can begin watching, never want to see a show when it airs, don't want the freedom of channel surfing, and never want to watch sports, news or talk shows. Because realistically, to justify the price, most people would have to ditch their cable/dish altogether and make this their only source of television.


I thought we were talking about HD content. What the hell is 640p? Regardless, The Daily Show on iTunes doesn't look any better than it does on cable.

Youre looking at from what you would want, not the business model itself. I think $30 is low balling what Apple could charge for a service that allows for TV shows to easily DLed and viewed on Macs, AppleTVs and iDevices. No cable company can compare to me being able to grab unlimited shows away from the living room. The best solution for that is TiVo which I can copy the MOEG-2 to my Mac and then convert to MPEG-4. That is a PITA that people arent willing to go through. I know how to do it and I still dont want that rigamarole.


There are 200 shows on iTS. Netflix has a lot more, but they have nothing current so they cant compete with that until the optical disc is printed after the season ends. Cable and Sat can only play when the networks air it, but then you have the issue of watching it on the go again. This would fill a void that isnt currently addressed by anyone accept maybe the torrent and newsgroup users, but even that requires VisualHub/iSquint to convert to MPEG-4 for iDevice use. Plus, its not legal and just messy all around. Like most people, I will pay for convenience.

The bottom line is, if you dont need you dont get it. Just like with all products. There is no one else that can fill this void besides Apple. If you can tell me who else can do and how they can do it you be able to make yourself wealthy. I just spent $50 for a couple seasons of a show I watched in a couple weeks last month because I couldnt find it on torrents or Hulu, and Netflix and cable/sat are not options.. I could have saved $20 with such a subscription, even though I would probably still wouldnt have opted for it.