With CES upon us, USA Today chatted with Sony executive Kaz Harai on wide array of home entertainment topics — including Sony’s foray into cloud services across various platforms and the, perhaps inversely related, decline of Blu-ray sales.
But what I found most interesting are their “smart” TV intentions. First, Kaz is on target when stating both Sony and their competitors simplify messaging to convey the benefits of an Internet-connected platform. As, while I believe widgetized televisions are selling, I’m not convinced web feature, as currently implemented, see much use. Next, kudos to Ed Baig for this killer question, “Will there be an Apple TV?” To which Kaz reponds,
I’m on my product development guys to do the very best they can to deliver a compelling experience and have competitive product in the market, whether Apple is there or not.
There’s been significant speculation that Apple might enter the television space with something more significant than their small hobby. With chatter picking up significantly last fall given this juicy nugget from the 2011 Steve Jobs biography:
I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use. It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.
More recently, various rumors suggest large screen Apple HDTVs are indeed being developed. But, whether or not Apple chooses to expand their presence within the living room, Smart TV challenges remain the same. Current lean back solutions, beyond traditional “television” viewing, feature fragmented content silos with all sorts of usability issues. Can Sony or Apple do better? And will the content industry play ball?
Since I’m once again playing tag with Comcast on a Cable Card install (after a failed Tivo HD upgrade by weaknees.com where they screwed up my upgrade and failed to copy the settings properly), I certainly know the challenges Apple would face in attempting to enter this market–e.g. the same ones Tivo faces now.
I think an integrated Apple TV would be very interesting, but don’t understand how they’d avoid the obvious problems:
– low margins
– the need for various sizes
– the fact that TVs are large and need to be stored someplace, which costs money, or shipped very expensively
– since TVs are expensive people tend up upgrade them very infrequently
– since TVs are kept for a long time it isn’t obvious how they can be upgraded and maintained over long periods as far as a software upgrade cycle is concerned
That said I think it COULD happen, though I’d still rate it as rather unlikely. Certainly there are advantages to an integrated product, but the same advantages would accrue if you just got input 1 on the TV. And the only way to do either is to support live TV and I think these days that means a DVR, Cable Card, issues with all the people who want Satellite, etc.
The only way I can see around all of these issues is to partner with the MSOs. E.g. sell these things through Comcast, DirecTV, etc. Meaning only some people could buy them. But Comcast would stock them etc. Could you even buy one in an Apple store? I don’t know.
For Comcast they would arrive at your house pre-paired. Which would avoid the whole cable card hassle the same way Comcast does with its cable boxes? Why would Comcast co-operate? Because its Apple, and because the fees would be HIGHER than the already ridiculous fees they charge for Cable/DVR access etc. Which would seem to be a problem. But hey, its an Apple TV right?
Still confused by this…
“The only way I can see around all of these issues is to partner with the MSOs”
If an Apple TV is released, it won’t be the god TV you’re looking for. Apple ain’t gonna do CableCARD cuz it won’t scale globally, thus Apple ain’t gonna make a multicast receiver device. That’s what the HDMI input will be for.
It’ll just be a good looking TV with cutting-edge tech for dealing with black level ghosting, and AirPlay and the Apple Store built in. Think of it as being akin to their networking gear, which is slightly easier to use than commodity networking gear, and sells at twice the price.
If the Apple TV is released, it’ll be priced at quite inflated margins, and sell to the status hungry and the suckers. The “smart TV” market is ripe for Cupertino to add some shareholder value by leveraging their brand.
“Since I’m once again playing tag with Comcast on a Cable Card install (after a failed Tivo HD upgrade by weaknees.com where they screwed up my upgrade and failed to copy the settings properly)”
I guess your TiVo HD must’ve been an XL originally, no? Cuz otherwise you can’t get to 2TB, right?
Good to have a report about Weaknees’ customer support. I’ve been wondering what to think about them as a potential vendor…
Don’t forget iSight and Siri…
Glenn, let me know if I can intervene with the Weaknees folks. They generally get positive reviews and my interactions with them have always been very positive.
Keeping the TV separate from the DVR/cable box is certainly an approach they can take, but it has the obvious drawbacks of most internet connected TVs–who even knows where the remote for their TV is?
Most people get their TV by using a box from their cable provider or satellite TV vendor and 99% of the time they use the remote for that. The TV is just a monitor.
If Apple has a solution to that–using apps (one from Apple for the TV, one from Comcast for their box), using HDMI-CEC (which I doubt cable companies support), using IR repeaters (hah!), using network commands (maybe?), using a complex IR programmable remote to control both, or some other innovative approach to uniting the things… even in a limited sense, then maybe this could work.
Otherwise I don’t know what the point is exactly. I think people would buy these and then over time figure out just like other internet connected TVs that they don’t use any of those features. And since unlike a regular internet connected TV you would pay quite a premium for the Apple TV, when the shine came off the rose you might not have a lot of repeat customers…
Dave, sure feel free to jump into the conversation with Weaknees if you like. I think you know my real contact name, info. Since you offer how about I don’t air my dirty laundry here anymore at least until you see if you can do anything. I’ve bought a lot of WeaKnees stuff (a DT, two HDs, and at least one other drive upgrade) and for whatever reason they f’ed up this time, but I’m having a bit of trouble getting them to admit it…
“Otherwise I don’t know what the point is exactly. I think people would buy these and then over time figure out just like other internet connected TVs that they don’t use any of those features.”
This is the point.
If Apple can leverage its current brand and status into selling “smart TV” flat panels at a tremendous markup, why wouldn’t they?