Posted on 09/09/2015 4:31:47 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Back in the early to mid-1980's we had a TV station in the Chicago market called "ON-TV." It was a scrambled signal broadcast OTA and it required a special set top box (descrambler) to decode the picture and sound.
It was ahead of it's time ... well, almost. There were some shall we say "enterprising" electronics buff's who figured out how to decode the signal, built their own set top boxes and sold them for $300/ea. to make extra money while putting themselves through college.
IIRC, "ON-TV" lasted about 2 years before it went off the air and reverted back to a spanish speaking station, as it originally was before "ON-TV."
OTA descramblers are not hard to make. Almost anyone with basic electronics experience can figure out how to descramble a picture and audio. ENCRYPT the signal, that's another story.
Internet. In addition to paid content from iTunes where you can rent or buy movies and TV episodes, Free and paid or subscription content comes from Apple through A&E, ABC, ABC News, ACC Sports, AOL On, Apple Events, Bloomberg, CBS News, CBS Sports, CNBC, CNNgo, Crackle, Computers, Crunchyroll, Dailymotion, Disney, Disney Junior, Disney XD, ESPN, Feeln, Flickr, FOX NOW, Fusion, FX NOW, FYI, HBO GO, HBO NOW, History, Hulu Plus, iCloud Photos, iMovie Theater, iTunes Festival, iTunes Radio, KORTV, Lifetime, MLB.TV, MLS, Movies, Music, NatGeo TV, NBA, NBC Sports Live Extra, Netflix, NFL, NHL, 120 Sports, PBS, PBS Kids, Podcasts, Qello, Radio, Red Bull TV, Showtime, Showtime Anytime, Smithsonian Channel, Sky News, Tastemade, TED, Tennis Channel Everywhere, The Beatles, The Scene, Trailers, TV Shows, UFC, USA NOW, Vevo, Vimeo, Weather Channel, Willow, WSJ Live, WWE Network, Yahoo Screen, Young Hollywood and YouTube.
You can also stream your own ripped movies from an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Mac. . . or a dedicated server.
“Now with Tint Control.”
Apple doesn't need to. . . many of them are already on the Apple TV. Right now, 69.1% of all streaming on-demand video is already sold through Apple TV.
I watch 4 channels and pay for 395. If Apple can solve this problem, this concept will fly. If they can’t, it won’t.
Hehe... OOOOOOK Swordmaker. I know you are completely ignorant to all the cool technology that is being developed and in use unless Apple releases it. For the record, my Samsung Smart TV does most of the crap you listed out and I’ve had it in the house for 18 months. The voice activated Roku was just ONE device that Apple is trying to catch up on. I have others that Apple will eventually copy, too. (Oh, and, btw - I can get these devices for half the price Apple charges.)
But that Pencil looks sooooo cool, though! I just HAVE to have one, like NOW! And $100 - what a bargain! I should get SEVERAL so I can like... DRAW awesome... uh... pictures and stuff! *Fanboi drool*
Let us know when you stomp your Apple watch to bits in frustration.
“Right now, 69.1% of all streaming on-demand video is already sold through Apple TV.”
*cough* bullsh!t *cough*
What makes you think I have an Apple watch?
Almost forgot: There's plenty of spectrum in the old analog "TV Bands." The US Government has wanted to auction off this spectrum since before the Digital TV "revolution" but has run into a problem with doing that.
Without getting into the technical aspects of it, Analog signals "bounce" and are affected by geographical and man-made barriers. I don't know how old you are, I'm 53(ish..) so I remember things like ghosts in the TV picture, static, snowy pictures, and if you held the rabbit ear antenna's juuuuuuuuuuuust right the picture would come in fine. If the antenna on your rooftop was pointed just slightly the wrong way, you'd get the same thing. Heck, even on stormy days the picture could go bad.
Analog signals can "overcome" many things and still deliver a signal. That signal may be crap, may not be watchable, but you got a signal.
Take that same analog spectrum and try running an IP network over it and guess what happens? Packet Loss. Transmission re-tries. Degredation of service to the point of the bandwidth not being usable.
That's why the US Government has struggled to sell off that bandwidth and why very few (if any..) are buying. What worked well for a pseudo-reliable TV signal does not work well in an IP based "guaranteed delivery" model.
Digital TV to some degree suffers the same fate. I live in the Chicago media market. I'm lucky because even 25 miles outside of Chicago, I'm up on a hill and have line of sight to Sears Tower (I'm sorry .. "Willis" Tower now..) and the John Hancock building. I can pick up some 70+ Digital TV stations out here. Friends who live @ 20-25 miles west of Chicago on lower elevations that are heavily wooded aren't so lucky. Many of them cannot pickup one or two of the major network stations from their home. Digital TV is highly hampered by geographical location and things like, oh, TREES.
In some cases, same friends can pick up the two major networks that they ordinarily don't get during the Winter months. Why? NO LEAVES. As soon as Spring comes, same two TV channels disappear until the following late Fall/early Winter.
We've had a summer home in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan since 1993. We had a TV antenna on a tower @ 75' up to be able to pick up stations from Green Bay and Marquette, MI. When the cutover to Digital happened, that antenna no longer worked. Why? Because even at 75' it was below our tree line. The only way to get any sort of TV up there has been Dish Network. To get that to work we had to clear about a half an acre of trees on the southern exposure of the house for the dish to have visibility to the south in order to pick up satellites.
Gawd I love Digital. It's been like that since 2004'ish for them. BTW, I'm not kidding, it's the leaves & foliage that kill the signal for them. Any amateur radio operator who's driven through a heavily wooded area while trying to use the 2 Meter band knows exactly what I'm talking about here.
Check out Slingbox online.
Only problem is the Chinese and Asian fanbots are tapped out due to the Chinese markets imploding/ Americans and Europeans are reaching the saturation point so China and Asia were seen as wide open markets for Apple. But now they lack the disposable income. So they’ll buy Xiaomi tablets and smartfones which is killing Apple.
Steam comes out of Tim Cook’s ears whenever he gets the weekly China/Asia sales reports
Oh - and for the record - even though my TV does all those cool things, like most people, I rarely use the features. That’s why most people on this thread take a pragmatic view: Apple can copy features that exist in all kinds of other devices and cram them into one device, but most people just, you know, watch TV.
It’s kind of like the leather tool on your Swiss Army knife when you were a kid. Neat that your knife had it, but maybe 0.1% of the people actually used it.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUD!!!!
Still, I'm glad Apple is listening. I'm more disappointed in the Apple TV update.
Same here, couldn’t believe that 4k wasn’t part of the update. Why surrender the market to Roku?
“I doubt your Samsung dead stick stylus
could do anything like these lines with one
flowing stroke as the Apple Pencil is doing.”
“So, yes, bolobaby, you are just posting ignorant FUD.”
And you are just posting Apple propaganda. You doubt things you know nothing about. Just a social media troll.
I looked at the Apple information and they also offer apps such as Watch ESPN and NBC Sports Live Extra, which still require a subscription through a cable or satellite provider on Android devices (must enter cable or satellite provider in app to view content). Cable and satellite companies wouldn't be too happy if Apple swung a deal to offer such content directly through Apple TV.
They are still TV and still a smart phone.
WAKE UP and PAY ATTENTION! The Apple Pencil is NOT as simple as the stylus pen for the Microsoft Surface which only has a pressure sensitive tip. The Apple Pencil also senses angle which automatically adjusts the width of the line being drawn, while pressure adjusts the boldness of the line. Making for a much more nuanced experience. . .
I can’t think of any really worthwhile applications around drawing that will really care about the amount of pressure applied.
Better tell that to the people selling Styluses for Microsoft Surfaces. . . because that is essentially all that they sense.
Apple TV = Roku
Pencil = Stylus from any number of devices
iPad Pro = Surface
iPhone 6 = Galaxy Note
ROTFLMAO.
Roku? See Reply 31 for my answer to that absurdity.
Apple Pencil equals the stylus from any number of devices? No, not by a long shot. That's like saying power steering is the same as a tiller on a boat.
iPad Pro equals the Surface? You might be close there. Although the iPad Pro is both bigger, thinner, and lighter, with better screen resolution at 2732 x 2043 than the Microsoft Surface's 2160 x 1440, the iPad Pro is also less expensive than the Microsoft offering even in the 4G Cellular versions at MSRP.
iPhone 6 (sic) = Samsung Galaxy Note. Too funny. Last year's iPhone 6 Plus was already mopping the floor on Bench mark speed tests against all comers except multi-core including the Galaxy Note models. The only thing they beat the iPhone on was size of screen. . . and Apple certainly beat them in the market. Samsung lost both profits and market share not only to Apple but to Xiaomi and other companies. The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus are 70% FASTER in processing power and 90% faster in graphic processing power than last year's iPhones that already were kicking sand in the faces of all the Android competition. . . before Apple introduced their new A9 processor. Apple was copying nothing from the failed Samsung Galaxy Note series. Zip, nada, nothing.
No, because some people who buy the Apple TV, won't have iPhones or iPod touches. Nor will those who have the other devices have the direct Siri connection to the Apple TV the remote provides.
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