I don't understand why people who are experts at making money invariably think that they're experts at everything else. A lot of them preface their statements of "Well, I'm no expert, but . . . " then proceed to talk about the topic at hand, be it parenting, history, education, climate change, defense policy, you name it, as if they're experts.
And here we have Mr. Icahn, whose skill set is financial blackmail, i.e. green mail, and market manipulation, and knows nothing about how to build real physical objects of intrinsic value, talking as if he's the authority on the TV industry.
My guess is that very rich people invariably end up surrounding themselves with yes-men who praise everything they say as the voice of wisdom no matter how stupid their utterance might be.
2k is quickly being replaced by 4k. I'm not sure any of that will change the display market from a low margin, high volume trap. But then, the PC & cell phone markets have the same issues, yet Apple maintains high margins and growing sales in those markets.
Interesting times are coming soon in TVs. Apple may be able to carve out a leadership position.
Steve's "I cracked it" quote in the book referred to Airplay. Apple should license (maybe for free) the rights to have Airplay installed in all new TV sets. This would be a classic win-win. Every TV becomes a display for any and all of Apples iDevices. They should do the same for Airprint and Airtunes.
This one thing would all Apple devices to utilize everyone's TV's, stereos, and printers - all of which are commodity product markets that Apple does not want or need to play in....
I have to agree and if you know anything about TV and how they are sold on the wall of TV and why Samsung does so well. The best analogy I can find it is like bugs to the bug light. Samsung turns up the brightness and color saturations which makes their TV standout in the crowed across the room and people are just dawn to the petty bright colors.
This is hard to compete with, since most people have no idea what makes a good TV picture. They think brights and boldest is the best. If you want to buy a TV and compare them to see how true to color they are have the sales person run a nature video with water and blue sky and trees and such, Samsungs when compared to the TV with correct colors setting will look bad. If you look at a Samsung by itself you will not notice it. Put it next to Sony and you will see how off they are.
ALL manufacturers have a default of high brightness, high contrast, high color saturation. That is commonly warned about in every TV review in AV magazines. Sony flatscreen TVs are not well rated. They lost that when CRTs disappeared and they had the flagship Trinitron. Samsung and LG have far better picture quality than Sony. You are correct in that most people do not adjust the settings out of the box, and leave it with terrible high settings that do not look good in a home environment.
Funny, a few years ago many people here were eating up the Apple-branded TV rumor like candy. They all believed it and thought it would be the best thing since sliced bread. Now that Apple dropped that bad egg, they all suddenly think what a great idea that Apple is not going to make a TV of their own. Apple making a TV would be a worthless product because no one uses the TV features. They use it primarily as a big monitor with their Home Theater system feeding it through HDMI. The majority of the population have cable or satellite through a dedicated set-top box, or a TiVo box. They add a Roku, or AppleTV, or other streaming box to supplement the cable or satellite box. People don't replace their TVs every few years, so that is a bad market for Apple to be in. I would much rather buy an updated AppleTV streamer box every few years at $99 a pop, than thousands on a new TV.
What's the difference between a monitor and a TV? A TV usually has an antenna connection and a tuner. Perhaps Apple could make a $4,000+ 8K res monitor and throw a tuner in it for legal regulations. By then most or all of your video content will be coming from the internet anyway.
I'm still thinking about a Mac Pro, but I sure would like to pair it up with an Apple branded monitor like I did before.
Imo the TV will indeed be moniters. They are waiting on the new thunderbolt standards so they can push more than 4k. Imo they will release 5k monitors for the mac pro at first. Then they will release an apple tv plug in for the monitors that can be replace with new releases over time: the apple tv that will be annonces at the WWDC is the first step.
What I like about a 5k tv is they could put an interface up and still be able to display 4 k signal, pretty much like they do in final cut pro on the retina imac
^ That's a decent idea, an ?tv with both HDMI and Thunderbolt image out. Would quite like to be able to use my current Thunderbolt Display with the Apple TV too, it'll make a good retirement for the old display.
Picking up the banner from Gene, huh? Crazy Carl...
Considering the only comments that ever came out of Apple were from Steve and his comment to Isaacson was very vague, I think there has never really been a definitive go-to-market strategy for Apple regarding a TV. That they haven't yet offered one indicates to me that the closest thing to an Apple Television will continue to be the iMac.
Incidentally, I'd love if Apple had a build-to-order option that included a digital TV signal card and built-in DVR functionality for the iMac, but I doubt I'll ever see that.
Have you not seen the comments from Cook that it is an area of intense interest?
Stop trying to solve this prediction with current technology. Think about the future. Apple will not build a TV until we see rollable OLED which is as soon as 2017 by LG and or Samsung. Plastic rollable 4k screen in sizes up to 60" initially solve all mentioned problems. Portability, durability, weight etc
I have to agree and if you know anything about TV and how they are sold on the wall of TV and why Samsung does so well. The best analogy I can find it is like bugs to the bug light. Samsung turns up the brightness and color saturations which makes their TV standout in the crowed across the room and people are just dawn to the petty bright colors.
This is hard to compete with, since most people have no idea what makes a good TV picture. They think brights and boldest is the best. If you want to buy a TV and compare them to see how true to color they are have the sales person run a nature video with water and blue sky and trees and such, Samsungs when compared to the TV with correct colors setting will look bad. If you look at a Samsung by itself you will not notice it. Put it next to Sony and you will see how off they are.
Just before plasmas went the way of the dodo bird I had a friend looking to buy a TV. I recommended a plasma but of course he was enticed by the over saturated colors of a LED he saw at the store. Now he wants to know why the picture on my plasma looks more natural than his LED.
What's the difference between a monitor and a TV? A TV usually has an antenna connection and a tuner. Perhaps Apple could make a $4,000+ 8K res monitor and throw a tuner in it for legal regulations. By then most or all of your video content will be coming from the internet anyway.
I bought the first flat screen Apple Studio Display. I loved that thing because it had video inputs as well as an analogue Mac display connector with a VGA adapter. The next year when they changed it to DVI, they dropped the video inputs, and never did it again. I connected a VCR to it which allowed me to watch TV through the VCR tuner, by just switching from the Mac to the video input.
So I'm all for your idea of accommodating external video input. I don't see any reason to include the tuner since nobody buying this monitor would use it. Just incorporate the ?TV inside the display (it only costs $69 now!), and it will process any external video you feed into it through a single input (perhaps via AirPlay). For a typical multimedia environment, Apple could create an automatic remote switch box that allows you to plug in several HDMI devices. The ?TV would then program the device as a channel, and automatically switch to that remote input when selected as well as automatically offer the applicable navigation mode on the remote as long as that device is selected.
But, unless Apple decides to get into the 40" and up display market, they really won't ever be in the TV business, but instead the TV box business.
Apple TV possible if TV & monitor end up being 1 and the same, until/if then a better Apple TV hockey puck with more content & complete controllability of my cheap dumb smart TV
ALL manufacturers have a default of high brightness, high contrast, high color saturation. That is commonly warned about in every TV review in AV magazines. Sony flatscreen TVs are not well rated. They lost that when CRTs disappeared and they had the flagship Trinitron. Samsung and LG have far better picture quality than Sony. You are correct in that most people do not adjust the settings out of the box, and leave it with terrible high settings that do not look good in a home environment.
Your correct many TV have the Sales Demo mode, which is usually in a hidden menu which I found on my TV. I also agree that Sony lost some of its rating, but most who rate is low are not necessarily rating it low because of color accuracy. Very few reviews have I seen someone pull out a color analyser and look at the color compared to a standard.
I learns this a long time ago when I did lots of video testing, the quick and easy way to look at a TV or Monitor and determine if the colors look right is to either looks a nature scene or look at people skin tones. Most times most people can look at a picture of nature and or people and know if it looks right. Back in the day when we worked on Sony studio grade monitors new from the factory we had to go in and turn down the red since Japanese seem to think people with a more nature with red tone to their skin color. It was a Japanese thing and the eventual stop doing this in their set up.
When I bought my 60" LED I went into HH Greg and dealt with the TV wall. Luck for me they want to sell something that night and I was the only person looking at a TV so they were willing to turn off all the TV's I was not interested in and turn off the CGI video movie they were looping and turn on a nature scene to allow me to look at the colors accuracy. The scene as lanscape and ocean so I had good idea how the colors would look. I was looking at the Samsung, LG Sony and Sharp all with in a few feet of each other. Sony nailed the color, the ocean was a blue green color and the sky was light blue and the trees were a light muted green. Samsung the ocean was grayish blue, the sky was a bright blue and the trees were bright green. The Sony GUI such that is for sure and LG actually had a much nicer GUI and it was easy to navigate and use but is colors were closer to the Samsung than Sony. The Sharp was very close in color to the Sony. Also I had them turn off the demo mode if it was in fact turned on. The interesting things was the Samsung was the only one in Demo mode, the others were set as they come out of the box.
I end up buying the Sharp since it was in the middle of cost between the LG and Sony and I did not want to pay the Sony $400 extra for the same TV with a terrible GUI. The Sharp was a nice balance and trade off in cost.
Comments
I don't understand why people who are experts at making money invariably think that they're experts at everything else. A lot of them preface their statements of "Well, I'm no expert, but . . . " then proceed to talk about the topic at hand, be it parenting, history, education, climate change, defense policy, you name it, as if they're experts.
And here we have Mr. Icahn, whose skill set is financial blackmail, i.e. green mail, and market manipulation, and knows nothing about how to build real physical objects of intrinsic value, talking as if he's the authority on the TV industry.
My guess is that very rich people invariably end up surrounding themselves with yes-men who praise everything they say as the voice of wisdom no matter how stupid their utterance might be.
The TV market is getting ready to go through another tech upgrade. Broader color gamut, HDR. See http://www.dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-vision.html
2k is quickly being replaced by 4k. I'm not sure any of that will change the display market from a low margin, high volume trap. But then, the PC & cell phone markets have the same issues, yet Apple maintains high margins and growing sales in those markets.
Interesting times are coming soon in TVs. Apple may be able to carve out a leadership position.
brilliant !
Think diff'rent
I have to agree and if you know anything about TV and how they are sold on the wall of TV and why Samsung does so well. The best analogy I can find it is like bugs to the bug light. Samsung turns up the brightness and color saturations which makes their TV standout in the crowed across the room and people are just dawn to the petty bright colors.
This is hard to compete with, since most people have no idea what makes a good TV picture. They think brights and boldest is the best. If you want to buy a TV and compare them to see how true to color they are have the sales person run a nature video with water and blue sky and trees and such, Samsungs when compared to the TV with correct colors setting will look bad. If you look at a Samsung by itself you will not notice it. Put it next to Sony and you will see how off they are.
ALL manufacturers have a default of high brightness, high contrast, high color saturation. That is commonly warned about in every TV review in AV magazines. Sony flatscreen TVs are not well rated. They lost that when CRTs disappeared and they had the flagship Trinitron. Samsung and LG have far better picture quality than Sony. You are correct in that most people do not adjust the settings out of the box, and leave it with terrible high settings that do not look good in a home environment.
Funny, a few years ago many people here were eating up the Apple-branded TV rumor like candy. They all believed it and thought it would be the best thing since sliced bread. Now that Apple dropped that bad egg, they all suddenly think what a great idea that Apple is not going to make a TV of their own. Apple making a TV would be a worthless product because no one uses the TV features. They use it primarily as a big monitor with their Home Theater system feeding it through HDMI. The majority of the population have cable or satellite through a dedicated set-top box, or a TiVo box. They add a Roku, or AppleTV, or other streaming box to supplement the cable or satellite box. People don't replace their TVs every few years, so that is a bad market for Apple to be in. I would much rather buy an updated AppleTV streamer box every few years at $99 a pop, than thousands on a new TV.
Imo the TV will indeed be moniters. They are waiting on the new thunderbolt standards so they can push more than 4k. Imo they will release 5k monitors for the mac pro at first. Then they will release an apple tv plug in for the monitors that can be replace with new releases over time: the apple tv that will be annonces at the WWDC is the first step.
What I like about a 5k tv is they could put an interface up and still be able to display 4 k signal, pretty much like they do in final cut pro on the retina imac
^ That's a decent idea, an ?tv with both HDMI and Thunderbolt image out. Would quite like to be able to use my current Thunderbolt Display with the Apple TV too, it'll make a good retirement for the old display.
Picking up the banner from Gene, huh? Crazy Carl...
Considering the only comments that ever came out of Apple were from Steve and his comment to Isaacson was very vague, I think there has never really been a definitive go-to-market strategy for Apple regarding a TV. That they haven't yet offered one indicates to me that the closest thing to an Apple Television will continue to be the iMac.
Incidentally, I'd love if Apple had a build-to-order option that included a digital TV signal card and built-in DVR functionality for the iMac, but I doubt I'll ever see that.
Have you not seen the comments from Cook that it is an area of intense interest?
Just before plasmas went the way of the dodo bird I had a friend looking to buy a TV. I recommended a plasma but of course he was enticed by the over saturated colors of a LED he saw at the store. Now he wants to know why the picture on my plasma looks more natural than his LED.
What's the difference between a monitor and a TV? A TV usually has an antenna connection and a tuner. Perhaps Apple could make a $4,000+ 8K res monitor and throw a tuner in it for legal regulations. By then most or all of your video content will be coming from the internet anyway.
I bought the first flat screen Apple Studio Display. I loved that thing because it had video inputs as well as an analogue Mac display connector with a VGA adapter. The next year when they changed it to DVI, they dropped the video inputs, and never did it again. I connected a VCR to it which allowed me to watch TV through the VCR tuner, by just switching from the Mac to the video input.
So I'm all for your idea of accommodating external video input. I don't see any reason to include the tuner since nobody buying this monitor would use it. Just incorporate the ?TV inside the display (it only costs $69 now!), and it will process any external video you feed into it through a single input (perhaps via AirPlay). For a typical multimedia environment, Apple could create an automatic remote switch box that allows you to plug in several HDMI devices. The ?TV would then program the device as a channel, and automatically switch to that remote input when selected as well as automatically offer the applicable navigation mode on the remote as long as that device is selected.
But, unless Apple decides to get into the 40" and up display market, they really won't ever be in the TV business, but instead the TV box business.
Your correct many TV have the Sales Demo mode, which is usually in a hidden menu which I found on my TV. I also agree that Sony lost some of its rating, but most who rate is low are not necessarily rating it low because of color accuracy. Very few reviews have I seen someone pull out a color analyser and look at the color compared to a standard.
I learns this a long time ago when I did lots of video testing, the quick and easy way to look at a TV or Monitor and determine if the colors look right is to either looks a nature scene or look at people skin tones. Most times most people can look at a picture of nature and or people and know if it looks right. Back in the day when we worked on Sony studio grade monitors new from the factory we had to go in and turn down the red since Japanese seem to think people with a more nature with red tone to their skin color. It was a Japanese thing and the eventual stop doing this in their set up.
When I bought my 60" LED I went into HH Greg and dealt with the TV wall. Luck for me they want to sell something that night and I was the only person looking at a TV so they were willing to turn off all the TV's I was not interested in and turn off the CGI video movie they were looping and turn on a nature scene to allow me to look at the colors accuracy. The scene as lanscape and ocean so I had good idea how the colors would look. I was looking at the Samsung, LG Sony and Sharp all with in a few feet of each other. Sony nailed the color, the ocean was a blue green color and the sky was light blue and the trees were a light muted green. Samsung the ocean was grayish blue, the sky was a bright blue and the trees were bright green. The Sony GUI such that is for sure and LG actually had a much nicer GUI and it was easy to navigate and use but is colors were closer to the Samsung than Sony. The Sharp was very close in color to the Sony. Also I had them turn off the demo mode if it was in fact turned on. The interesting things was the Samsung was the only one in Demo mode, the others were set as they come out of the box.
I end up buying the Sharp since it was in the middle of cost between the LG and Sony and I did not want to pay the Sony $400 extra for the same TV with a terrible GUI. The Sharp was a nice balance and trade off in cost.