[opendtv] Re: News: TV Braces for the Apple Tablet

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:17:11 -0600

Mike Tsinberg wrote:

> Apple TV has very nice user interface and excellent portal
> iTunes and both are well integrated. They are on top of copy
> right and pay per content with their content providers.
> Their AppleTV hardware and software price, quality and
> realibility is also only getting A marks. So TV content
> delivery is shifting now to the Internet. AppleTV has a good
> chance to dominate that business as they dominated iPod
> model.

Perhaps, but I'm trying to decipher what "dominate that business" means for 
consumers.

Let me paraphrase the article, specifically with respect to this sentence:

"An Apple pay-TV service, potentially featuring broadcast programming, would 
pose a dramatic challenge to incumbent providers and could upend the economics 
of program carriage."

Here's my rephrasing:

An Apple pay-TV service would pose a dramatic challenge to other services, 
including Hulu or the web sites run by the broadcast networks themselves, which 
today provide that programming free of charge. The price is probably going to 
be $1.99 per episode, although Apple is trying to get that reduced to $0.99 per 
episode. (What a relief!)

This might be a great thing for certain content that is NOT available online 
today, but how exactly is this good for the consumer as a replacement for what 
is available now? Should we be thankful to pay the price, because the user 
interface is slick?

Sounds like the "dramatic challenge" that TiVo posed to standard PVRs. Somehow 
or other, CE manufacturers became "convinced" to stop producing PVRs, so that 
the only ones available became either proprietary rentals or TiVo subscription 
PVRs (and maybe Magnavox still makes one, I haven't checked lately).

What a racket, honest to pete. And we are all made to salivate.

Bert
 
 
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