Apple HDTV rumors resurface - Page 3

yeah, right...

I know, I agree.

thanks for the laugh. you are a good joker.

Cheers bro

I cannot see what Apple has done with computers or mobile phone can be compared to the TV. With computers and phones Apple built a unique and expandable platform with an customized OS and developer tools. There is no need for any of this with a television.

The only real differentiators with televisions are price and picture quality. The menu UI isn't that great on most TV's but I don't see why people would care that much about the menu UI to make an Apple TV successful.

True enough downloadable video is in a fledgling state right now. But its future growth curve will be a lot better than Blu-ray's future sales.

In July Youtube recorded 5 billion downloads. In time this will translate into movies and television.

The potential problems of Apple making a TV are valid. The only reason I can see taking such a strong stance is because you want Apple to make a television. Even though its true televisions are a commodity market and their isn't much new or compelling Apple would have to offer.

Mac = general purpose computer
MacBook = general purpose portable computer
iPod = entertainment specific portable computer
iPhone = communication specific portable computer
AppleTV = entertainment specific computer

Putting the screen into the Apple TV makes it a more integrated solution.
More and more devices are converging with the computer.
No company is better equipped to develop a modern "TV" than Apple.

I know this is off-topic, but the Wii is sold at a profit, but is the only one of the three that is. It's not a large one, but it is sold above cost.

Back to the subject, I can see Apple doing well in the HDTV market. They would obviously not compete with the lower-end brands, but with the likes of Pioneer in the plasmas and Sony in the LCD's. Both have been able to distinguish themselves from competition, and I think Apple can do the same.

All the arguments people have of not being able to distinguish brands in the HDTV market is just as true in the cell phone market, or was, until Apple entered the fold. Apple has a way to make their products different, and I think making an HDTV with a removable hard drive for AppleTV and/or DVR functionality would be pretty cool.

Also, and this is a big point, let's not forget the power of the Apple logo. To this day, I still believe the iPhone would not have been as successful, even with all the revolutionary aspects of it, had it not had that little piece of fruit stamped on the back of it.

Seeing that nearly all of the major computer manufacturers have attempted to combine computers and televisions. People for the most part have not been very receptive to this combination.

From what we've seen people don't want to deal with hardware and software on a television. They just want the television to be a television with as little effort from the user as possible.

[QUOTE=Johnny Mozzarella;1321907
No company is better equipped to develop a modern "TV" than Apple.[/QUOTE]

Johnny,

While I agreed somewhat with your statement above you have to take in consideration that the current state the HDTV market means very low profit margins.
Also most of manufactures offer great products right now, but they are still struggling to make it. Some are outsourcing, merging and re-structuring in order to survive.

My point is while Apple could make a sophisticate and nice HDTV, I don't think offering just a AppleTV built-in would be revolutionary and increase ten-fold sales of an HDTV set like they did with the iPhone.

Before Apple venture into making a television, they have to nail the AppleTV box into something that the consumer really wants and craves and see potential to buy it to utilize with iTunes store, etc. Once this product have mass appeal like the iPod, iPhone, etc, we might be able to see it expanding their presence into things like in a tv set.

The current displays out there are great in terms of picture quality. The UI and the way people interact and how they get content is the frontier Apple should go after, bring their easy to use approach and challenge the norm. They can do that with the stand alone AppleTV box and I hope they will do.

my 2 cents.

I'm not saying that a computer and television combo would be wise, but I have the confidence that if Apple ever did make an HDTV, they would do it right. I agree with you that making a television as hassle-free as possible is the ideal way to do it, but hasn't that been Apple's goal with everything they've made, to make it as hassle-free as possible? Combining an AppleTV/DVR with your HDTV would cut out potentially two more devices and cables, would cut down on the headaches of people having to set up even more things and make sure everything is connected right, and would give Apple the edge that they seem to create in every other market. A lot of people didn't think they needed or wanted a phone that could get on the internet (among other things) until Apple came around and did it right. I'm not saying it's as easy with televisions, but Apple's track record of making new, innovative, and desirable products is hard to ignore, and I believe they could be able to do it in a market that is saturated, but not nearly as much as cell phones are.

marginal market.

I provided links to back up my claims, while you have provided nothing to support your belief that those claims are inaccurate, beyond your insistence that they could be and thusly should be disregarded entirely. Show me a link that refutes Blu-Ray's share of DVD sales, or a story about truckloads of Iron Man Blu-Ray's being distributed freely. Please.

Insisting that the numbers are rigged doesn't make it so; you need proof. And saying that one time some other movie was given away is not proof.

I don't think we spoke about price justification; we discussed overpricing.
Sounds like your argument is solely based on the expectation that Apple should sell at a loss so that you can feel it's right-priced.

If you are buying a PS3 only for BD movies, you are getting a great product and nobody argues that point.
If you are using it for gaming as well as most people do, you are paying a whole lot more for your PS3, you just don't seem to know it.

There typically is no free lunch in retail...

There are 3 issues here
1) the maximum quality video that the AppleTV can play (720p25)
2a) the maximum output resolution sent to the TV (1080i60)
2b) the input the TVs can accept (usually up to 1080i60 on plasma)
3) the native resolution of the TV screen (usually 480p, 720p, or 1080p)

On the AppleTV - people confuse 1 & 2a. The AppleTV can not play a 1080 movie, it's not capable of it.

Likewise, on TVs people have confused 2b & 3. Plasmas were advertising themselves as 1080i even if they were only 480p TVs. Fortunately TV makers have been forced to make the true resolution clear. The give away phrase is "1080i" on a Plasma - Plasmas can NOT be be natively "interlaced".... so if it says 1080i it's just the input accepted.


No he was right. The 1080i60 replaces half the lines every 1/60th of a second, which can work great on a regular old cathode ray tube. But a plasma screen can't show just 1/60th of the lines, so when half the lines are replaced it has to continue showing the other half of the lines which come from a picture 1/60th of a second ago. If the picture hasn't moved much, those other lines fit almost perfectly. But in fast motion scenes they don't, and you get a weird series of horizontal lines where the picture is moving (called the 'combing' effect).

So 720p30 would refresh less often than 1080i60, but each picture would be very clear (clearer than the higher resolution 1080 with combing effects). Of course when it's broadcast at 720p60 the frame rate is matched.

Oh, 2 other sources of confusion
1) when 1080i refreshes HALF the lines 60 times a second, most times that's referred to as 1080i60. But every now and then I see an article that calls that 1080i30... due to measuring whole frames rather than every second line (aka fields).

2) when it comes to movies, it's a 24 frame movie that is then converted into 1080i60... but it's done in a way so that TVs can easily convert it back to 1080p24. So for movies, the interlaced vs progressive differences disappear, as do the 60 frames a second. It's 720p24 vs 1080p24... and easy to say which is better.


A lot of TVs simply halve the resolution for fast moving TV scenes. Some estimate which sections of the picture are moving fast and halve that part of the picture's resolution, while for the still sections they combine the previous field. There are several ways of converting interlaced to show on plasma/lcd screens - and the latest technology for estimating every 2nd line is really impressive.


No... mainly it's the combing effects. Remember also that 1080i60 broadcasts the same number of pixels as 720p60 (though progressive compresses a little better). 720p30 has half as many pixels of course since it has half the frames - but since MPEG4 compression encodes what has changed since the last frame, each frame in 720p30 has changed more than when there are twice as many frames.

It's not at all simple this stuff.

Oh another factor to make things more confusing
3) the latest compression schemes are starting to put LESS effort into the fast moving scenes and MORE into the still sections, which goes against what's been done for years. The theory is that you can't tell how good the quality is in fast moving sections anyway, so make the still sections look STUNNING and people will rate the whole picture as better quality. This is kinda similar to what better 1080p Plasmas already do with 1080i as I described above. Of course, if you pause a fast scene you'll see that the detail isn't there... but the comparisons of paused fast motion scenes miss the point of this compression.
(I have to say I haven't watched this type of compression knowingly. I did once watch a 4Mbps 720p24 film of people walking in a snow storm and it was terrible, it couldn't handle all the detail of the snow... it would have looked far better if they'd dropped the resolution to 320p24 for those scenes!)

Hmmm... yes and no. At a glance it is expensive, but if you line up all the HD options it starts to fit quite well.

The "for what it does" comment is the most important bit. I don't have a large sample - but people I know who think the AppleTV isn't worth it have been incredibly surprised at 'what it does' once they use it for a short while. And I think half the critics would be silenced if Apple just supported divx files.


Yeah, for it's hardware it's well priced. But above what many people want to pay.


Yeah, that would be nice. The rumours of the graphics chips going into the latest iPhones showed that Apple's partners already produce portable graphics chips that can natively output HDTV to TVs.

What if Apple uses the iPhone as the basis for the next AppleTV?
ie: the iPhone ARM cpu, a better graphics decoder, and the iPhone OS - of course no touch screen, no battery, and may as well use a desktop hard disk. I'm reasonably sure they could pull it off - would it save money though?



Something like that is also worth considering.


It's not the only way
Apple could simply add AVI/DivX playback to the ATV and a lot of people would be more interested. Nice up-sell to HDTV purchases too, but I suspect the show producers wouldn't see it that way.

Or perhaps they could partner with TiVo... use the AppleTV to watch shows recorded on a TiVo somewhere else in your house.

Or they could work as a "virtual PVR"... choose what you want to 'record', Apple records it centrally for you, and downloads it to your AppleTV.


The only current differentiators are price and picture quality. But that's the point isn't it? - can Apple create a 3rd differentiator that NO-ONE else has even considered? If Apple creates an interaction method that makes the TV easier to use it'd be appealing to some people. A basic example, I'd say 1/3 of plasma screens are set to the wrong aspect ratio (all shots are stretched). There's room for something there - though yeah I'm not sure whether it's enough room for Apple to play in. Perhaps there's value where Apple can merge the regular TV experience with online options.

I do think that an Integrated AppleTV+screen is likely to have the appleTV technology outdated far earlier than the screen itself, the value of integration would depend on the extra cost up front and future upgrade options.

Last time I checked, Apple doesn't exactly compete with the Dell computers that sell for $349, so even in computers they can't compete with everyone

Considering the Wii has been on the market for nearly 2 years with no price cuts (correct?), the profits line would be pretty substantial...

And FYI, the 360 has been making dough for quite awhile now; perhaps not after the recent price drops, but even then the loss would be tiny, and I'd still be surprised if it was any.

Quick google: http://www.techspot.com/news/23612-m...-hardware.html

Even after just 1 year on the market the manufacturing cost had dropped nearly 40%, bringing them $70+ profit at a retail price of $399. Add another 2 years of manufacturing, and retailing at $299, I imagine the profit is still double digits.

Not if the internet providers have anything to do with it; Comcast is currently implementing 250GB caps, and other providers are expected to follow suit. That's only enough bandwidth for six Blu-Ray-quality movies. I rent no less than eight a month from Netflix.

If you had read my earlier post, I had said that they would be competing with the Pioneers and the Sony's of the TV world. I never said they would compete with everybody, just like the iPhone doesn't, but that they would be able to differentiate themselves and be successful. Not in the lower bracket, but in the high-end market (read: profitable market)

You are correct, and I stand corrected. It was my mistake to look at information about launch days for each system instead of considering the current market. At the time of each system's launch, the Wii was the only one being sold above cost, but you are correct, that has drastically changed as component pricing has gone down. My mistake.

The word is they are no longer losing money per unit sale, but they are still in the hole by several billion.

I think those who like Blu-ray hope this will be the case.

OK, since my PS3 will do everything that the ATV will do (play videos, play music, stream music/videos off network, purchase videos), plus play games, plus play BD movies, and DVD's, and CD's, and will work as a DVR in some countries. And since the price is in the middle of the two ATV models, it is a lot better deal than a ATV. Regardless if Sony is selling it at a loss, I don't care, I know that I paid a certain price for it, and I was happy at that price.

I look at the ATV, see the price Apple is charging for it, do I think about buying a ATV? No, I would rather get a second PS3.

As for paying a whole lot more? That is crazy talk, you have to buy games for any platform, the PS3 has region code games, I can buy them from any country I like, and I don't pay retail prices for them.

There's something to be said for making your money off other aspects - Sony makes its money from the games. Apple dropped the AppleTV price as soon as they released movie rentals in the US iirc. They did the same in Australia about 9 months later. I assume they still make some money on it, but shuffled where their priorities were.

Perhaps Apple will make enough money from apps and movies to lower the cost.... or maybe they can sell the AppleTV at the current price and give away $200 worth of rentals (or half price rentals for a year, up to $200 value... etc). It's not a way Apple seems to work normally though.

I really can't imagine ANY electronics retailer partnering with Apple to bundle AppleTV's with HDTV's instead of a Blu-Ray player like they currently are doing. Selling a Blu-Ray player means they may get more business from that customer when they come back to buy movies for the player. The AppleTV is a dead end revenue wise for retailers unless Apple is going to give them a cut of iTunes movie sales.

Crazy talk? If you buy games for the PS3 you have paid Sony again, no matter how you slice it. In fact you and the game developer has... This is wether you pay retail or not. You can ignore that of course but should consider it in your price comparisons.

Same as indirect taxes; just because they aren't broken out doesn't mean they don't exit...

Btw. I do have a PS3 from the day it was launched and love it for BD movies & games. The remaining media UI is rather sad and unintuitive. I use AppleTV for that.

How did you deduce that? The ATV has massive potential.

For Nintendo, this is simply never been true. All of Nintendo's consoles have *never* sold at a loss for the company. It's a clear difference in philosophy over Sony & Microsoft.

However, Microsoft for the first time (earlier this year) posted a profit for the XBox 360 division. At this point (based on manufacturing/etc), I highly doubt MS is selling the 360 at a loss.

Until Apple comes up with an AppleTV that is a genuine hit there is no credibility to the notion it will start selling premium HDTV's with one built in. it would be a total flop.

and everyone agrees the AppleTV needs to do more than it does to become a real hit.

but there is no consensus at all about what that "more" should be. witness the many posts here.

my own pitch, which is rarely mentioned anyplace, is that it should become a "mirror" for using an iPhone/iPod touch wirelessly on the sofa, duplicating on your TV screen what you see and control on the your iPhone/touch. all the apps, games, surfing, media, etc. now that would be really something new and exciting.

I don't understand why one would want it built in. The only possible conveniece it the use of having one remote to rule them all, but that can be done in other ways. Like using a USB port connected to any number of vendor TVs or all types and sizes to relay info to the AppleTV that will then send the appropriate audio and video signaling.

a remote, etc.

No matter what you buy someone is getting money from it.

Apple is selling items to be placed on the ATV, they should be making some bit of money from this, so you can't make the comparision to Sony on that one.

There is no reason for the ATV to be so expensive, except for the fact it has an Apple logo on top


Is that right? I find the PS3 will play back media from my uPNP NAS a whole heap better than an ATV will

Because you said...

"ATV makes little to no money from YouTube, Podcasts, TV shows, and Movies. Add-up the hosting, infrastructure, bandwidth, and IT services and you're left with zilch if not -ve."

Apple is in this game to make money, if they cannot make money from the device then why sell them.

What's etc.? What other reasons would you need, considering the UI is on the TV.

The MacBook announcement is interesting for the AppleTV.
At present, the AppleTV has an older Intel chip with a separate GPU.
(The Mac Mini has a modern Intel chip with built-in GPU).

I imagine that the next AppleTV could easily use the same NVIDIA GPU and stick with the older Intel CPU. The 9400M GPU can handle 1080p... so maybe this is the direction we'll see next year? Or is the chip too expensive for the aTV?

Another alternative (as I said earlier) is that we see the AppleTV based on iPhone's ARM chip and a bump up on the iPhones GPU (the same GPU family as the iPhone uses now can also handle HDTV at the high end).
(I presume the iPhone's ARM processor can not work in tandem with the NVIDEA 9400M, which has a chipset designed for Intel chips... but I'm not sure about other NVIDEA options.)

That is a good question, but Intel GMA X4500HD can also do 1080p. We know Apple likes to use as much of the same HW as possible, but the AppleTV is the odd man out, and I'm not sure that the media extender needs the extra power of the 9400M, what the cost difference is, or if Apple even cares to make the AppleTV support 1080p natively when they don't offer 1080p videos in the iTS.

The iMac was updated this past April with a special Santa Rosa/Penryn package with Montevina aspects. Will Apple do a silent iMac update for the holidays or wait until MacWorld? I think it's the latter for the iMac, as well as all other Mac desktops. I think the Mac Mini will get a complete revamping, too, going more green, but won't see a price difference. Will the Mac Pro get Nehelam (at least to showcase the high end model) later this year or will we have to wait for MacWorld? Again, I think we'll have to wait until MacWorld.

Regarding the 1080p delivery argument over PS3 and BD players, note that at this time, there is almost ZERO content (aside from certain CG-generated console game content) that is actually ACQUIRED (photographed and recorded) in 1080p. As mentioned by AppleInsider previously, ABC and Fox currently acquire and broadcast in 720p, using 720p-native cameras (or 1080i cameras, utilizing a subsequent 720p downconvert). CBS and NBC acquire their HD content with (mostly) 1080i cameras, and broadcast it in 1080i. Except for certain specialized digital cinema camera systems (and P2-based Panasonic ENG/EFP cameras), 1080p acquisition is not employed in current TV production, and therefore, virtually no on-air programming has been ACQUIRED in 1080p. In digital motion picture production, however, this is quickly changing.

I would not be at all surprised to find Apple selling TV's. They now have the store fronts, they can insert the AppleTV into them, and they can market the first mass produced TV with a 6 button remote.

That's the idea! I don't buy this economic downturn bull. If this device, is simple enough, cool enough, powerful enough and integrates like magic with your devices and the internet; people will save to buy one. If Apple made a TV there's no doubt in my mind it would be a hit!

It would be sexy, networked, and run a variant of OS X like the Apple TV box. Why wouldn't you buy!? Seriously.