That would be a nice concept if it woud be possible to implement. To do this Apple would need to build data centers in each city and send only SD feeds. Netflix, which is a single feed stream is already choking the internet. Forget about feeding multiple HD feeds to large quantities of household, its just not possbile.
Netflix, is wreaking havoc on the entire Internet, and is forcing ISPs everywhere to re-think their download polices.
I'm sorry, but the net is just not ready for the type of traffic that a 100% let's-get-it-right-the-first-time service that Apple needs to deliver. Everything needs fiber optics first. Then DL limits will not be an issue. So, that leaves over the air. I really can't see how that's going to work. The cable and telcos will protect that turf until they die.
So Apple, I'm curious, but skeptical.....
I would love to break the shakes on my state run censorship cultural restrictions, but I don't see it happening any time soon, and certainly NOT in 2012!
That would be a nice concept if it woud be possible to implement. To do this Apple would need to build data centers in each city and send only SD feeds. Netflix, which is a single feed stream is already choking the internet. Forget about feeding multiple HD feeds to large quantities of household, its just not possbile.
netflix uses Level 3 to stage the content on the ISP's networks. you are not going to the internet to watch anything, only for the authentication. and even then it's to Amazon's cloud which is all around the world.
Apple uses akamai for OS X updates. maybe for the itunes store as well. same concept as level 3. they store the content around the internet on the ISP's local networks and point you to a local copy of the content
$1 per channel per month? I don't see that happening. Remember, you're going for Ã* la carte pricing which means you pay a premium. Lets say right now your cable company has 100,000 customers all subscribing for a particular base channel station. Now you want to pay $1/month for it but it's an unpopular channel and only 5,000 (5%) want to subscribe to it. That means they are only getting $5/month from the cable company. The station was also getting hefty advertisement payments but now that the subscriber rate has dropped advertisers have dropped out completely. The station has gone under because the environment that made it work is no longer supporting it. You've now lost a channel.
I bet people watch plenty of channels and don't realize how much they watch them or that a particular show is on a channel. Can an Ã* la carte method sustain the future of television networks or will umbrella companies have to consolidate shows differently in order to make a buck? Will we see CBS split NCIS an NCIS: LA — two shows with high ratings — to different channels to maximize the number of stations you rent per month? Will they even go so far as to move a popular show across multiple channels week to week to maximize their return?
What people are wanting is to destroy something that will make it more expensive for customers unless you watch very little TV. Only those that want some select show or two on some cable network could possibly benefit from getting rid of the cable TV model.
Then you have consider how this will affect your cable interest costs. If your cable company loses 1/2 of it 100,000 TV paying customers they still have to pay all the networks the same amount of money. So do they double the costs of their loyal TV viewing customers? Not without losing more TV viewing customers that way. They have to jack the prices on your internet service, they now throttle users speeds, they now put in upper level caps. You're also using more internet than before because that is where your content is coming from. Can you blame them for trying to protect their business? I can't.
I don't think the model would be that a customer would pay a fixed amount per channel. Rather, what I see happening is a certain amount for X number of channels, of your choice, and a little more for a few more channels and more still for even more. So, for example, if you pay for a 30-channel package, you pick the 30 channels and pay let's say $20 a month for said channels. If you want 40 channels, its $25 a month and if you want to go up to 50 channels it's $30 a month. So you consider what channels you want and pick the package that allows you to have them.
My numbers are strictly to illustrate what I mean.
You are right, though, that the cable operators are justified in charging for additional bandwidth use because they have to maintain the infrastructure to provide that bandwidth. As such Apple's pricing model must factor in that additional expense. If Apple can make money while charging a low enough rate to make it worthwhile to consumers, then this makes sense. If, on the other hand, by the time you pay for additional bandwidth, you still pay what you did, clearly this can't work.
Remember, though, that Apple's cost to deliver content would be lower than the average cable operator because of the sheer scale that Apple operates with. Also, Apple doesn't need to have the same sort of infrastructure in place to deliver content because the service provider is taking care of one aspect of that process. That the provider gets a piece of the action for doing so is not unreasonable and neither does it mean that the consumer gains nothing.
Apple already are streaming HD movies to anyone who rents them. The internet has yet to die.
Most TV is much more heavily compressed.
There's a gaming service called "onLive" - it lets users play video games, which are running on PCs in a data centre. It does this by streaming video (at quite high definitions and high frame rates) from the data centre to each user. Impossible as this sounds, it works today. And we can assume that within 18months, Moore's law will let it work twice as good.
Its works with low volumes only... its impossible to implement with a large client base that would stream multiple HD feeds all the time. Distribution of feeds in volume requires an distributed architectures and only internet providers can do this...
This is the best explananation I could find on the wiki:
"Depending on the network architecture of the service provider, there are two main types of video server architectures that can be considered for IPTV deployment, centralized, and distributed.
The centralized architecture model is a relatively simple and easy to manage solution. For example, as all contents are stored in centralized servers, it does not require a comprehensive content distribution system. Centralized architecture is generally good for a network that provides relatively small VOD service deployment, has adequate core and edge bandwidth and has an efficient content delivery network (CDN).
Distributed architecture is just as scalable as the centralized model, however it has bandwidth usage advantages and inherent system management features that are essential for managing a larger server network. Operators who plan to deploy a relatively large system should therefore consider implementing a Distributed Architecture model right from the start. Distributed architecture requires intelligent and sophisticated content distribution technologies to augment effective delivery of multimedia contents over service provider's network.[3"
I don't think the model would be that a customer would pay a fixed amount per channel. Rather, what I see happening is a certain amount for X number of channels, of your choice, and a little more for a few more channels and more still for even more. So, for example,
I'd expect to see something like the app store. A channel store, where subscriptions can be added (or removed).
Remember, though, that Apple's cost to deliver content would be lower than the average cable operator because of the sheer scale that Apple operates with. Also, Apple doesn't need to have the same sort of infrastructure in place to deliver content because the service provider is taking care of one aspect of that process. That the provider gets a piece of the action for doing so is not unreasonable and neither does it mean that the consumer gains nothing.
All good points, but I question Apple's scale if they are only supplying three sizes of TV. This limits their potential customer base in many ways. If they offer an AppleTV box that can hook up to any TV or projector then you have a low cost box that will work with your current setup. This seems like the best position for Apple if they wish to attempt this move.
netflix uses Level 3 to stage the content on the ISP's networks. you are not going to the internet to watch anything, only for the authentication. and even then it's to Amazon's cloud which is all around the world.
Apple uses akamai for OS X updates. maybe for the itunes store as well. same concept as level 3. they store the content around the internet on the ISP's local networks and point you to a local copy of the content
been this way since the 1990's
It can be done for fixed content but not live feeds. A full IPTV implementation would choke the entire ISP network between the servers and the households. There are no other ways than multicast and distributed servers from inside the ISP network for large amount of clients.
Put simply, they broadcast all channels to local servers close to the households. Streaming occurs only locally. On top of that there is a broadcast feed with 10 secs of all channels that is used for PiP in the guide. Its also used to feed the first seconds after you select a channel so you dont have to wait for the stream to kick in. Its a very complex system.
It took years and billions of dollars to Bell Canada to come up with a system that works.
And on the netflix side, the traffic is already so bad that its now #1 before peer2peer. Bell announced they will no longer nerf peer2peer downloads and are thinking of choking Netflix trafic if the loads on the network affects internet performance of other clients.
Do we not recall how difficult it was for Apple to get any movie and television studios on board after the AppleTV was demoed? Do we not remember NBC pulling out of iTunes Store for a year or so?
Six months tops. And that was before their shows became some of the most downloaded of all time. NBC is not dumb enough to walk away from that money
All good points, but I question Apple's scale if they are only supplying three sizes of TV. This limits their potential customer base in many ways. If they offer an AppleTV box that can hook up to any TV or projector then you have a low cost box that will work with your current setup. This seems like the best position for Apple if they wish to attempt this move.
Whatever package Apple would offer would be accessible not only via the rumoured Apple TV but also via any device that currently works with iTunes. The Apple TV would be the most integrated, elegant way of accessing the content in question.
Don't be surprised if the way this service was rolled out would be to announce it as an expansion of what is available via iTunes and then at the same announcement in the best one-more-thing Apple tradition, bring forth the Apple TV.
If Apple restricted the new service to only it's TVs, content providers would simply not be interested. Right now the installed base of such a product is zero and at launch it would still be zero. Being as the Apple TV would no doubt cost more than your average set, adoption would be rather slow and the subscription service for TV would simply not have the critical mass to survive.
Instead, the TV service will be an addition to iTunes, which is well-established with millions of devices out there able to access it, including any PC with an Internet connection. The Apple TV itself would be a good companion piece and as such its market penetration would not be a factor.
I very much look forward to what Apple has in mind but being as I live in Canada, I suspect I will not have access to this service in calendar 2012. I would think that 2012 will see an American rollout and here in Canada this option will be there come 2013. I was planning to buy a new TV November 2012 and I might just hold off if what Apple is going to offer makes sense.
Are we so sure Apple is planning on blowing up the Cable model in 2012? Sure, they likely will later. But the Cable model is only one half of the problem.
The other problem that currently plagues TVs is that they are dumb displays that are clunky, unintuitive, and require a plethora of remotes and a non-user friendly method of switching inputs.
If Apple partnered with, say, Comcast or even made it so the AppleTV accepts cable/satellite like normal TVs but presented the various inputs in a truly smart and user-friendly manner, that alone would be cool. Having a full-fledged App Store where you could also buy apps that stream content would also be possible.
That is if the agreement only works on this fabled TV. Which is unlikely. Whatever they do is more likely to be device independent so they would have the collected Apple TV users, iPad, computers etc to work with.
Yeah, because Apple is so well known for bringing new services to older devices... How do you like Siri on your iPad 2? I'm not even mentioning devices that clearly were capable of using it before the 4s launch, but have different hardware specs, the 3biggest differences between the iPad 2 and the 4s are screen, battery, and camera. The only one of those that the 4s is superior in is camera, and none of them directly affect Siri... If Apple does create an actual television, appleTV will NOT be "capable" of all the best functions. If for no other reason than that Apple will want the screen sales. The $2000 tv will need to do more than the $99 stb. PERIOD.
Sounds just like House. Same formula each show......sick patient, try a few fixes, last one is discovered by House thinking about something someone said or got the clue by staring at something.
Eventually the good shows like house discover story arcs
Six months tops. And that was before their shows became some of the most downloaded of all time. NBC is not dumb enough to walk away from that money
If they have figured out a way for the networks to get more money than before, but it won't happen if they make less than before, which is exactly what is being described by people saying they'd drop their cable/sat in a heartbeat for some Ã* la carte channels.
PS: At least people are realizing that the current distribution method is an obstacle to cross even if they don't understand how. It was only recently that people seem to only consider that Apple owning the HEC was simply putting an AppleTV into a TV.
I wonder how apple will deal with channels like spice etc...
I assume they won't offer them at all. But do they really need to? I'd think most who would buy such a product from Apple can figure out how to find porn on the internet.
This might be Apple's hardest industry to crack. But back in 2001 people said same about digital music distribution. Slowly Apple got them all working out. I just really can't see a COAX cable running straight to the TV and not a cable box. That was like in the 90's. I am still shocked to see that option in modern TVs. A COAX in in the back. Weird.
Comments
That would be a nice concept if it woud be possible to implement. To do this Apple would need to build data centers in each city and send only SD feeds. Netflix, which is a single feed stream is already choking the internet. Forget about feeding multiple HD feeds to large quantities of household, its just not possbile.
Netflix, is wreaking havoc on the entire Internet, and is forcing ISPs everywhere to re-think their download polices.
I'm sorry, but the net is just not ready for the type of traffic that a 100% let's-get-it-right-the-first-time service that Apple needs to deliver. Everything needs fiber optics first. Then DL limits will not be an issue. So, that leaves over the air. I really can't see how that's going to work. The cable and telcos will protect that turf until they die.
So Apple, I'm curious, but skeptical.....
I would love to break the shakes on my state run censorship cultural restrictions, but I don't see it happening any time soon, and certainly NOT in 2012!
Drink coffee before hitting publish.
hello, disney? we would like to license ABC.
OK, just sign here to license ABC, ESPN, Disney Channel and 20 other ones we offer.
but we only want ABC?
Sorry, sign or go away
That would be a nice concept if it woud be possible to implement. To do this Apple would need to build data centers in each city and send only SD feeds. Netflix, which is a single feed stream is already choking the internet. Forget about feeding multiple HD feeds to large quantities of household, its just not possbile.
netflix uses Level 3 to stage the content on the ISP's networks. you are not going to the internet to watch anything, only for the authentication. and even then it's to Amazon's cloud which is all around the world.
Apple uses akamai for OS X updates. maybe for the itunes store as well. same concept as level 3. they store the content around the internet on the ISP's local networks and point you to a local copy of the content
been this way since the 1990's
$1 per channel per month? I don't see that happening. Remember, you're going for Ã* la carte pricing which means you pay a premium. Lets say right now your cable company has 100,000 customers all subscribing for a particular base channel station. Now you want to pay $1/month for it but it's an unpopular channel and only 5,000 (5%) want to subscribe to it. That means they are only getting $5/month from the cable company. The station was also getting hefty advertisement payments but now that the subscriber rate has dropped advertisers have dropped out completely. The station has gone under because the environment that made it work is no longer supporting it. You've now lost a channel.
I bet people watch plenty of channels and don't realize how much they watch them or that a particular show is on a channel. Can an Ã* la carte method sustain the future of television networks or will umbrella companies have to consolidate shows differently in order to make a buck? Will we see CBS split NCIS an NCIS: LA — two shows with high ratings — to different channels to maximize the number of stations you rent per month? Will they even go so far as to move a popular show across multiple channels week to week to maximize their return?
What people are wanting is to destroy something that will make it more expensive for customers unless you watch very little TV. Only those that want some select show or two on some cable network could possibly benefit from getting rid of the cable TV model.
Then you have consider how this will affect your cable interest costs. If your cable company loses 1/2 of it 100,000 TV paying customers they still have to pay all the networks the same amount of money. So do they double the costs of their loyal TV viewing customers? Not without losing more TV viewing customers that way. They have to jack the prices on your internet service, they now throttle users speeds, they now put in upper level caps. You're also using more internet than before because that is where your content is coming from. Can you blame them for trying to protect their business? I can't.
I don't think the model would be that a customer would pay a fixed amount per channel. Rather, what I see happening is a certain amount for X number of channels, of your choice, and a little more for a few more channels and more still for even more. So, for example, if you pay for a 30-channel package, you pick the 30 channels and pay let's say $20 a month for said channels. If you want 40 channels, its $25 a month and if you want to go up to 50 channels it's $30 a month. So you consider what channels you want and pick the package that allows you to have them.
My numbers are strictly to illustrate what I mean.
You are right, though, that the cable operators are justified in charging for additional bandwidth use because they have to maintain the infrastructure to provide that bandwidth. As such Apple's pricing model must factor in that additional expense. If Apple can make money while charging a low enough rate to make it worthwhile to consumers, then this makes sense. If, on the other hand, by the time you pay for additional bandwidth, you still pay what you did, clearly this can't work.
Remember, though, that Apple's cost to deliver content would be lower than the average cable operator because of the sheer scale that Apple operates with. Also, Apple doesn't need to have the same sort of infrastructure in place to deliver content because the service provider is taking care of one aspect of that process. That the provider gets a piece of the action for doing so is not unreasonable and neither does it mean that the consumer gains nothing.
Apple already are streaming HD movies to anyone who rents them. The internet has yet to die.
Most TV is much more heavily compressed.
There's a gaming service called "onLive" - it lets users play video games, which are running on PCs in a data centre. It does this by streaming video (at quite high definitions and high frame rates) from the data centre to each user. Impossible as this sounds, it works today. And we can assume that within 18months, Moore's law will let it work twice as good.
Its works with low volumes only... its impossible to implement with a large client base that would stream multiple HD feeds all the time. Distribution of feeds in volume requires an distributed architectures and only internet providers can do this...
This is the best explananation I could find on the wiki:
"Depending on the network architecture of the service provider, there are two main types of video server architectures that can be considered for IPTV deployment, centralized, and distributed.
The centralized architecture model is a relatively simple and easy to manage solution. For example, as all contents are stored in centralized servers, it does not require a comprehensive content distribution system. Centralized architecture is generally good for a network that provides relatively small VOD service deployment, has adequate core and edge bandwidth and has an efficient content delivery network (CDN).
Distributed architecture is just as scalable as the centralized model, however it has bandwidth usage advantages and inherent system management features that are essential for managing a larger server network. Operators who plan to deploy a relatively large system should therefore consider implementing a Distributed Architecture model right from the start. Distributed architecture requires intelligent and sophisticated content distribution technologies to augment effective delivery of multimedia contents over service provider's network.[3"
I don't think the model would be that a customer would pay a fixed amount per channel. Rather, what I see happening is a certain amount for X number of channels, of your choice, and a little more for a few more channels and more still for even more. So, for example,
I'd expect to see something like the app store. A channel store, where subscriptions can be added (or removed).
C.
Remember, though, that Apple's cost to deliver content would be lower than the average cable operator because of the sheer scale that Apple operates with. Also, Apple doesn't need to have the same sort of infrastructure in place to deliver content because the service provider is taking care of one aspect of that process. That the provider gets a piece of the action for doing so is not unreasonable and neither does it mean that the consumer gains nothing.
All good points, but I question Apple's scale if they are only supplying three sizes of TV. This limits their potential customer base in many ways. If they offer an AppleTV box that can hook up to any TV or projector then you have a low cost box that will work with your current setup. This seems like the best position for Apple if they wish to attempt this move.
netflix uses Level 3 to stage the content on the ISP's networks. you are not going to the internet to watch anything, only for the authentication. and even then it's to Amazon's cloud which is all around the world.
Apple uses akamai for OS X updates. maybe for the itunes store as well. same concept as level 3. they store the content around the internet on the ISP's local networks and point you to a local copy of the content
been this way since the 1990's
It can be done for fixed content but not live feeds. A full IPTV implementation would choke the entire ISP network between the servers and the households. There are no other ways than multicast and distributed servers from inside the ISP network for large amount of clients.
Put simply, they broadcast all channels to local servers close to the households. Streaming occurs only locally. On top of that there is a broadcast feed with 10 secs of all channels that is used for PiP in the guide. Its also used to feed the first seconds after you select a channel so you dont have to wait for the stream to kick in. Its a very complex system.
It took years and billions of dollars to Bell Canada to come up with a system that works.
And on the netflix side, the traffic is already so bad that its now #1 before peer2peer. Bell announced they will no longer nerf peer2peer downloads and are thinking of choking Netflix trafic if the loads on the network affects internet performance of other clients.
.
I think the market will quickly inform vendors the best ways to publish content on this new platform.
C.
who needs to deal with vendors when they are already dealing direct to the source.
Why would a network want to get 40%or whatever of a cable companies 70% when they can deal direct with Apple and get the whole 70 like they are now.
Do we not recall how difficult it was for Apple to get any movie and television studios on board after the AppleTV was demoed? Do we not remember NBC pulling out of iTunes Store for a year or so?
Six months tops. And that was before their shows became some of the most downloaded of all time. NBC is not dumb enough to walk away from that money
All good points, but I question Apple's scale if they are only supplying three sizes of TV. This limits their potential customer base in many ways. If they offer an AppleTV box that can hook up to any TV or projector then you have a low cost box that will work with your current setup. This seems like the best position for Apple if they wish to attempt this move.
Whatever package Apple would offer would be accessible not only via the rumoured Apple TV but also via any device that currently works with iTunes. The Apple TV would be the most integrated, elegant way of accessing the content in question.
Don't be surprised if the way this service was rolled out would be to announce it as an expansion of what is available via iTunes and then at the same announcement in the best one-more-thing Apple tradition, bring forth the Apple TV.
If Apple restricted the new service to only it's TVs, content providers would simply not be interested. Right now the installed base of such a product is zero and at launch it would still be zero. Being as the Apple TV would no doubt cost more than your average set, adoption would be rather slow and the subscription service for TV would simply not have the critical mass to survive.
Instead, the TV service will be an addition to iTunes, which is well-established with millions of devices out there able to access it, including any PC with an Internet connection. The Apple TV itself would be a good companion piece and as such its market penetration would not be a factor.
I very much look forward to what Apple has in mind but being as I live in Canada, I suspect I will not have access to this service in calendar 2012. I would think that 2012 will see an American rollout and here in Canada this option will be there come 2013. I was planning to buy a new TV November 2012 and I might just hold off if what Apple is going to offer makes sense.
The other problem that currently plagues TVs is that they are dumb displays that are clunky, unintuitive, and require a plethora of remotes and a non-user friendly method of switching inputs.
If Apple partnered with, say, Comcast or even made it so the AppleTV accepts cable/satellite like normal TVs but presented the various inputs in a truly smart and user-friendly manner, that alone would be cool. Having a full-fledged App Store where you could also buy apps that stream content would also be possible.
That is if the agreement only works on this fabled TV. Which is unlikely. Whatever they do is more likely to be device independent so they would have the collected Apple TV users, iPad, computers etc to work with.
Yeah, because Apple is so well known for bringing new services to older devices... How do you like Siri on your iPad 2? I'm not even mentioning devices that clearly were capable of using it before the 4s launch, but have different hardware specs, the 3biggest differences between the iPad 2 and the 4s are screen, battery, and camera. The only one of those that the 4s is superior in is camera, and none of them directly affect Siri... If Apple does create an actual television, appleTV will NOT be "capable" of all the best functions. If for no other reason than that Apple will want the screen sales. The $2000 tv will need to do more than the $99 stb. PERIOD.
Dim
who needs to deal with vendors when they are already dealing direct to the source.
Why would a network want to get 40%or whatever of a cable companies 70% when they can deal direct with Apple and get the whole 70 like they are now.
New publishing platforms may result in a bit of disintermediation.
But I reckon Apple will make more progress in TV by making friends than by making enemies.
C.
Sounds just like House. Same formula each show......sick patient, try a few fixes, last one is discovered by House thinking about something someone said or got the clue by staring at something.
Eventually the good shows like house discover story arcs
Six months tops. And that was before their shows became some of the most downloaded of all time. NBC is not dumb enough to walk away from that money
If they have figured out a way for the networks to get more money than before, but it won't happen if they make less than before, which is exactly what is being described by people saying they'd drop their cable/sat in a heartbeat for some Ã* la carte channels.
PS: At least people are realizing that the current distribution method is an obstacle to cross even if they don't understand how. It was only recently that people seem to only consider that Apple owning the HEC was simply putting an AppleTV into a TV.
I'd expect to see something like the app store. A channel store, where subscriptions can be added (or removed).
C.
I wonder how apple will deal with channels like spice etc...
I wonder how apple will deal with channels like spice etc...
I assume they won't offer them at all. But do they really need to? I'd think most who would buy such a product from Apple can figure out how to find porn on the internet.
I don't know Spanish. I will never learn Spanish. I do not want Spanish channels.
Never say never. You might want to order a hamburger someday.