Apple's "It's Show Time" media event discussion thread

[OtinG]

The problem I have with antenna TV is that even though I get 60+ channels via antenna, most of them are not worth watching. Many of the decades old reruns they broadcast were recorded on magnetic tape and it degraded horribly. Outside of abc, cbs, nbc, fox, pbs, and cw, there is very little original or watchable programming. It is good for times when cable/satellite/streaming is down and you want to watch one of those six channels.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Amazon sucks because they want to rent or sell me nearly everything I want to watch. Yes they have some very nice add-on channels, but those are pricey, especially since you are already paying for Prime Video but not getting to watch very many without additional money. I do like the Grand Tour which is free, but if I wasn't getting Prime for the shipping I would not pay for Prime Video.

From a lot of the rumors Apple's service is likely to not be much different. It will probably have thousands of TV shows and Movies that are included for a monthly fee (like Prime, Netflix and Hulu) (whether they're something you personally want to watch will depend on preference), a bunch of "originals" and then anything else will refer you to an integrated iTunes store to purchase or allow you to add a channel (like HBO, Acorn, Showtime, etc.) at an additional monthly fee.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

If Apple gets that, and rolls out a service that keeps you in the Apple/iTunes ecosystem so you buy more movies/books/music/whatever then it might work, i.e. it's included in the Apple music subscription. If it's you pay $10 a month for Apple music, $10 a month for Apple video, $10 a month for iCloud, ad infinitum, well then I'm not going to go for it.

One rumor has them doing some kind of "mega bundle" to rule them all of Music, Video and the new News service (based on Texture) they're expected to announce.

Another rumor has it that the original programming they've spent over a billion dollars on will be free for Apple TV owners to generate hardware sales since they're so far behind Roku and Amazon for market share.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

One rumor has them doing some kind of "mega bundle" to rule them all of Music, Video and the new News service (based on Texture) they're expected to announce.

Another rumor has it that the original programming they've spent over a billion dollars on will be free for Apple TV owners to generate hardware sales since they're so far behind Roku and Amazon for market share.

A mega bundle for $30 a month won't impress me, especially since I really was never impress much by their news app. A mega bundle for $10 or $15 a month, I would give it a try, but I think it would be a mistake to take that price point that approaches the "well, I need to think about it" point.

Execs have to get past the idea that everything is a profit center and needs to make a profit. Apple has been able to sell their hardware at a high profit margin in part because Apple didn't nickle and dime the customer to death on everything. They sell an ecosystem.

If they try to charge for their original programming, I'm certainly not even remotely interested. I consider it a mistake for everyone and their brother to invest in original programming. It's like when everyone decided that they needed their own ad platform. It's just a mistake. Stick to what you are good at. Come up with a media platform that is so good that people will love it.

I learned a lot by watching my parents try to deal with their cable system verses their DVD.

[OtinG]

I agree that Apple needs to keep their price competitive with Amazon, Hulu regular, and Netflix if they choose to have a similar service to those. If they choose to provide live TV streaming, and I doubt they will, they need to be priced competively with the other live TV streaming services.

Apple really dropped the ball with Books (formerly called iBooks) by never really fully developing an ePub store. There lack of a good book store and lack of attention to that whole service area is still confusing to me. At any rate they never made books a priority so they never were able to compete against Amazon. I felt their Apple TV service was also ill thought out and poorly executed as well, almost as if they really didn’t put much emphasis on it. Perhaps the Apple TV redo will be better, but I’m still not optimistic.

Their current News service is not impressive at all, but at least it is free. One thing that aggrevates me about it is they keep pushing a lot of days old stories to the forefront rather than only pushing current news stories. They rerun stories all the time! It has a clunky interface too. But to be honest, I won’t pay for a news service as it is very easy to use a browser with favorites to go check my favorite news sites and get the latest stories.

[pwalker8]

Well, it's not exactly surprising that Apple didn't put much effort into the Book store until about 3 or 4 months ago. Remember that when they originally were getting into the business, Amazon got their buddies in the justice department to cut Apple off at the knees. I will say that if you haven't tried the reboot of the the Books store that started last fall, it's a lot better than it was.

Apple's TV app, that came out fairly recently is a step in the right direction. However, once again, we see the issue that Apple has to battle. I went to watch the NCAAA basketball tournament a few minutes ago, I first tried the Apple TV with the TV app. It was easy to see all the games available, the scores etc. Big step in the right direction! Then I select the game and whoops, sorry dude, you need to subscribe to CBS streaming for $5 a month to actually see the game. Naw, I think I'll just watch it on the cable that I'm already paying for.

Way back when, I subscribed to March Madness on cable. I could flip between any game I wanted, commercial free. Great for the days when the tournament was just on one channel and the game they were showing might not be the game you wanted to see. Then they changed it so you could see the game like you were in the market, i.e. with commercials and jumping around between games whenever the producer got bored. Yea, not what I want to pay for.

[OtinG]

Thankfully I don't watch much sports any more. But I have noticed that on Roku and Fire TV boxes a lot of the TV channel apps require a subscription or proof that you have a cable/satellite subscription for that channel via an approved provider. Unfortunately not all of the apps accept all providers--few accept Hulu with Live TV. My Apple TV 3rd gen doesn't really have that many apps and Apple didn't allow you to install new ones nor even have access to an app store.

As far as Apple Books go, they lost me in the first few minutes several years ago. I bought one Book, quickly decided that iBooks (as it was then called) had almost no formatting options, and never bothered with it again. I have used the Kindle bookstore and app exclusively ever since. The only time I use the Books app is when I want to open a PDF that someone emails me. I have the Books app squirreled away in a folder named "Utilities" which is home to the dozen or so native apps I never or rarely use.

[kyteflyer]

I wonder if there's going to be a new "must have" AppleTV to go with the video stuff coming up. I have the 2, 3 and 4, but never upgraded to the 5th gen. 2 is jailbroken and stored away because although I bought Firecore atv-Flash (black), its now defunct and no longer being developed (although the dev is still making it available for sale, how rude)... it was a way of being able to see your own stuff on the aTV, for those who dont know. Not about pirating apps or anything like that. 3 could never be jailbroken, but it could be hijacked so you could use Plex, too much trouble for me... and 4 of course has its own apps plus whats in the store. I hope Apple is not going to make life difficult for those of us who choose to continue with our other preferences.

[OtinG]

This MacRumors article claims that Apple has negotiated the rights to sell bundles of TV channels in their new service. In theory that means they could offer say HBO, Showtime, and Stars at a price that is lower than purchasing all three separately. It also says that they doubt Apple TV will compete against Hulu and Netflix, but will go after the streaming of channels market based on selling the bundled channels.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

I wonder if there's going to be a new "must have" AppleTV to go with the video stuff coming up. I have the 2, 3 and 4, but never upgraded to the 5th gen. 2 is jailbroken and stored away because although I bought Firecore atv-Flash (black), its now defunct and no longer being developed (although the dev is still making it available for sale, how rude)... it was a way of being able to see your own stuff on the aTV, for those who dont know. Not about pirating apps or anything like that. 3 could never be jailbroken, but it could be hijacked so you could use Plex, too much trouble for me... and 4 of course has its own apps plus whats in the store. I hope Apple is not going to make life difficult for those of us who choose to continue with our other preferences.

Good question. What do you bet that Apple at the very least will require the ATV 4 or 4K in order to get their new service, and maybe even require a brand new ATV soon to be released. I seriously doubt the ATV 1 through 3 will be able to get the new service. Apple does love to squeeze every possible dollar out of us that they can!

[tomsem]

I’ve been a Texture subscriber for about a year (now owned by Apple). I expect the news subscription service will leverage that. I’ll be interested to know if Texture subscribers will be offered some sort of migration, or whether it will just continue indefinitely. I think I’m only paying about $7-8/month for it. There are only a handful of magazines I have any interest in, but I like having access to New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones etc. even if I rarely read them cover to cover.

Apart from that I have no idea what the announcement will be regarding video services, or what I’m even interested in seeing Apple do. I have not watched any broadcast TV for many years, and frankly don’t have that much time to watch very much of anything.

None of the live TV options work where I live. We aren’t in range of any broadcast content and ironically that is what you need in order to sign up for Hulu Live etc. If we lived in metro area, why would we need to pay for TV streaming? Just put up a $20 antenna....

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tomsem

None of the live TV options work where I live. We aren’t in range of any broadcast content and ironically that is what you need in order to sign up for Hulu Live etc. If we lived in metro area, why would we need to pay for TV streaming? Just put up a $20 antenna....

Don’t they let you stream their 50+ stations that are not abc, cbs, nbc, fox, cw, and pbs? Seems like they would. They might not allow you to get the ones I mentioned since they aren’t available locally, but you should be able to get stations like a&e, tbs, tcm, history, etc.

As far as ota goes, the local stations are often doing the least they can to qualify under the “must broadcast locally” ruling. Five years ago, or less, I still got really strong, uncompressed 1080i or 1080p signals from most of the local HDTV stations. Now I tend to get compressed and/or 720p signals and they are weak signals. I think TV stations are allowed to broadcast at 50,000 W PEP (Peak Envelope Power), but it appears most of my local stations have cut way back on their TX power. Now I get pixelated signals quite often when a few years ago that was very rare.

[The Old Man]

I’m guessing the announcement will be something similar to YouTube TV probably with add-on’s at additional cost. I cut the cable cord and am very happy with YouTube, especially with TCM movies and their DVR type feature that lets you “record” unlimited shows for future viewing.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by The Old Man

I’m guessing the announcement will be something similar to YouTube TV probably with add-on’s at additional cost. I cut the cable cord and am very happy with YouTube, especially with TCM movies and their DVR type feature that lets you “record” unlimited shows for future viewing.

It won't likely be like YoutubeTV, Hulu Live, Sling, etc. Apple tried negotiating with networks for something like that and said they couldn't reach an agreement. So no live channels.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by tomsem

None of the live TV options work where I live. We aren’t in range of any broadcast content and ironically that is what you need in order to sign up for Hulu Live etc. If we lived in metro area, why would we need to pay for TV streaming? Just put up a $20 antenna....

You mean you just can't get locals? That's the only thing any of the live TV offerings (Hulu, YouTube, Sling, DTVN, etc.) have that are location based that I'm aware of. Channels that are "normally" cable/satellite channels aren't restricted (as long as you're not trying to use the service from outside the country or anything).