Apple TV offered as set-top cable box alternative in France

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 28
    lukeilukei Posts: 379member
    cropr said:
    lukei said:
    Here in the UK companies like Sky, Virgin and TalkTalk provide smart tv boxes that are far more capable than  TV. I have difficulty justifying buying an  TV when I receive a free box that can record multiple channels at once as well as access Netflix and download or stream movies from the provider. I can’t see any UK provider offering  TV in place of their own tv boxes.
    I can. Would enable a lower cost of service and a lower box cost to subsidise. Catch up/on demand services are getting to the stage where recording programmes won’t be needed. The BBC/ITV etc have announced they are going to re-engage on a consolidated video on demand service. 

    Bear in mind that under 25s now watch more Netflix content than BBC. 


    Do you really think that an Apple TV has a lower cost that the traditional settopbox?   What a joke.
    Do you know what settop boxes are like in the U.K.?
  • Reply 22 of 28
    Congrats to Vivendi.

    AT&T's DirecTV Now has offered the AppleTV for sometimes now and it is very good.

    DirecTV now gives you the TV with purchase of a subscription. Canal+ is offering the TV as a replacement to all of their STB’s with a rental fee of $7/mo. 
  • Reply 23 of 28
    asdasd said:
    As for recording that is up to the app. If the MyCanal app allows you to download future episodes then it is a recording app same as any other. Apple probably need an Apple TV with 1TB to keep up with some of the offerings. 
    Not necessarily, My MSO offers a cloud DVR.  No recordings are done in house, instead they are saved on a cloud server, and retrievable from all of the STB’s and from their APP. Unfortunately though they haven’t made an app for the TV. 
  • Reply 24 of 28
    sirbryansirbryan Posts: 33member
    For Apple, the Canal+ integration could be the first of many pay-TV deployments. The growing number of mobile apps from premium content providers legitimizes Apple TV as a direct cable box replacement, not an over-the-top alternative.
    I would say "One of the first."  Beehive Broadband, an ISP in Utah and Nevada, uses the Apple TV as the only set-top-box option and launched it two years ago. That was when larger companies were hemming and hawing about streaming, and Sling and DirecTV were beta-testing (and eventually launching) their lean OTT solutions. A lot has changed/improved in the landscape since then, especially the attitudes of the content providers towards content delivery.

    One of Beehive's reasons for going with the Apple TV* was that the price was the same as other available IPTV STB options, namely from Amino and Entone (who have since merged). For $150, you can get a one trick pony with little control over the firmware, or you can offer the subscriber an Apple TV and the whole Apple app ecosystem. And, in many cases, customers can bring their own device, reducing TCO for leased equipment for the provider.

    Most providers that offer IPTV are now offering a cloud DVR solution. The Apple TV's frameworks prevent the developer from using it as a reliable datastore for video recordings. But, since the DVR is cloud based, you could (theoretically) schedule a recording every single channel simultaneously, provided you have enough disk space in your quota, and the design or limitation of the cloud DVR software allows for it. Such as setup (cloud recording) also allows you to watch whatever you want on any of your devices without interfering with the recording session(s).

    (*My knowledge comes from the fact that I built and maintain the solution for Beehive.)
  • Reply 25 of 28
    sirbryansirbryan Posts: 33member

    asdasd said:
    ajmas said:
    Here in the UK companies like Sky, Virgin and TalkTalk provide smart tv boxes that are far more capable than  TV. I have difficulty justifying buying an  TV when I receive a free box that can record multiple channels at once as well as access Netflix and download or stream movies from the provider. I can’t see any UK provider offering  TV in place of their own tv boxes.
    For recording functionality you may be right. For everything else they are all solvable by providing a software solution, in this case an app for the AppleTV.

    My provider (Bell Canada), which provides an IPTV solution, provides an app that allows me to watch all the channels they offer, their on-demand content and even offers PVR functionality (the latter being in beta). So, with the right software any hardware can be you cable client. In France, Free.fr even allows you to use your PC for this. 

    Any company that demands you use their hardware exclusively, is very quickly going to look out of touch. 
    Well in this case that French crowd are using Apple TV only.

    You are right that the only issue is recording, which in fact can be solved in software too, but the issue there is not software ( since recording can be set in an app) but the relatively paltry storage size of the AppleTV and the fact that the app itself will be sharing space with other apps. So you may be ok with the tenth and oldest episode of Poirot being deleted because of a new episode in an existing internet setup box, but in a shared environment it may be deleted because you downloaded some game, or the game didn't download and you needed to launch the TV app, or the specific vendor app to delete some episodic content manually.   

    People don't want to worry about memory management. 
    If you (as a "cable" TV company) deploy Apple TV as your STB, you're doing cloud DVR, plain and simple.  You're not recording anything to the Apple TV itself, precisely because there is no disk space to speak of.

  • Reply 26 of 28
    lukei said:
    cropr said:
    lukei said:
    Here in the UK companies like Sky, Virgin and TalkTalk provide smart tv boxes that are far more capable than  TV. I have difficulty justifying buying an  TV when I receive a free box that can record multiple channels at once as well as access Netflix and download or stream movies from the provider. I can’t see any UK provider offering  TV in place of their own tv boxes.
    I can. Would enable a lower cost of service and a lower box cost to subsidise. Catch up/on demand services are getting to the stage where recording programmes won’t be needed. The BBC/ITV etc have announced they are going to re-engage on a consolidated video on demand service. 

    Bear in mind that under 25s now watch more Netflix content than BBC. 


    Do you really think that an Apple TV has a lower cost that the traditional settopbox?   What a joke.
    Do you know what settop boxes are like in the U.K.?
    Well the Sagemcom boxes are roughly $600 for an MSO to purchase. Samsung and Cisco’s Scientific Atlanta ranges from $650-$1000. 

    If the STB’s in the UK are anything like what my employer and MSO use, it’s a lack luster interface and  although can run apps, is subjected to have a programmer actually produce those apps for the equipment because they have their own GUI it needs to work with. 

    Where on the flip side, the TV costs $180 for the 32GB, if an MSO can guarantee a bulk purchase, Apple could cut them a deal, and if they use the rental structure figure $8-$10/mo. If they offer a 2 year package, They potentially make all of their money back plus some. They could also give the customer the incentive to keep the devices if they complete their 2 year deal, further giving the customer more of a reason to want to take the device. 

    If they allow the customers to keep the devices, This minimizes the refurbishing process that MSO’s have to recycle equipment that is returned when a customer disconnects. This also gives the customers the option buy the device themselves and all they would need to do is get the subscription. 

    This is allows the MSO to always have a rotating supply of new equipment and as Apple updates the equipment, the MSO gets to keep the equipment relevant. 
  • Reply 27 of 28
    sirbryansirbryan Posts: 33member

    cropr said:
    lukei said:
    Here in the UK companies like Sky, Virgin and TalkTalk provide smart tv boxes that are far more capable than  TV. I have difficulty justifying buying an  TV when I receive a free box that can record multiple channels at once as well as access Netflix and download or stream movies from the provider. I can’t see any UK provider offering  TV in place of their own tv boxes.
    I can. Would enable a lower cost of service and a lower box cost to subsidise. Catch up/on demand services are getting to the stage where recording programmes won’t be needed. The BBC/ITV etc have announced they are going to re-engage on a consolidated video on demand service. 

    Bear in mind that under 25s now watch more Netflix content than BBC. 


    Do you really think that an Apple TV has a lower cost that the traditional settopbox?   What a joke.
    Yes.

    When the original Apple TV was announced, Amino's price for the weak 140 series was $150.  And the Apple TV can run apps, works with existing Apple devices, etc. For the company where I worked, switching from the Amino to the Apple TV was a no-brainer.

    The other costs associated with set-top-boxes is the middleware and custom firmware for the boxes. Cisco and Microsoft were big players in that space just a couple years ago. With Apple TV and TVML/TVJS, simple apps could be built in JavaScript that tied into existing streaming infrastructure.
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