My cable provider is pretty terrible. I don’t need to name any names because this likely applies to your cable provider as well. They are all horrible. I often experience drops on popular channels, get bonus filler channels that no one wants, and see indiscriminate additional subscription fees and charges without any real reason. This Onion article, though it is satire, doesn’t stray too far from the truth.
For a very casual TV watcher, it’s not a great experience – to put it mildly.
So the prospect of an Apple web TV service with a price tag of around $40, as the WSJ and others reported last night, is highly appealing to me if it means I can catch the few shows I watch now without the hassle of my cable subscription. I’ll still be tied to the monopolies for Internet service which isn’t terrific, but the theoretical ‘Apple Cable’ service has the potential to fix a number of problems for me.
Apple started off its March event with the announcement that HBO Now, the premium network’s new $15/month web service, will be available with 3-month exclusivity on the App Store and Apple TV at launch next month. While we’ve heard for quite some time that Apple is developing a web TV service, and the upcoming HBO Now channel seems to be the best taste of what that could offer. I’m hopeful that the potential ‘Apple Cable’ can solve my cable subscription woes. Here’s how:
Apple Cable is Cable for Cord Cutters
For starters, I know that an awful lot of people just don’t subscribe to cable or satellite anymore. I’ve cut the cord in the past, but there’s still not a competing service that offers as wide a variety of live content. Even the current Apple TV is much more capable with a cable subscription as the majority of channels require logging in with credentials.
With content available on-demand and online through services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, and YouTube/Google Play, it definitely feels archaic to pay a premium cost to view content at a single location and at a set time each day or wrestle with a DVR that requires a lot of front end programming. My first guess is that people that don’t subscribe to cable would surely subscribe to what I call Apple Cable.
Channel Clarity
At even just 25 channels said to be available at launch (and something similar from NBC in the works), the package will likely include the few channels that people actually care about rather than the filler content littered on my current cable lineup. I’ve never met a cable channel menu interface that wasn’t a total turn off, and bringing the current channels I do watch to Apple TV interface without next-day delays is highly appealing.
Of course even the current Apple TV interface needs a lot of work, search and discovery being high on my list, but for me the quantity of unwanted content is its biggest problem. A lineup that resembles something closer to cable today would make better use of the home screen layout.
Apple’s Negotiating Weight
Apple is historically a negotiating heavyweight. See iTunes and the music industry, the iPhone and carriers, and most recently Apple Pay and banks. The company largely gets what it wants when cutting a deal.
While Apple may not get the record labels to budge on streaming music costs per month like it wants, Eddy Cue has to be a better negotiator than whoever’s running the show at my current cable provider.
It’s no longer a surprise to learn that channels will be dropped from my lineup and replaced with alternatives that don’t offer the same content. My cable provider is the same as my Internet provider, and the inability to cut deals creates ridiculous holes across the web.
For example, not only did my cable provider lose Viacom channels including Comedy Central and MTV several years ago, but actually visiting those sites online results in a black box for video playback. It’s the same story for any Viacom apps. Similar stories make the headlines with other providers all the time.
Apple Cable, Available Anywhere with Internet Access
For my own cable woes, the prospective Apple Cable service based on the web will do just what the Internet is best at: make information available. At my current address, my cable provider is the only option for traditional television service. Satellite options are available at a premium cost, but that option requires jumping through hoops and long term commitments that aren’t appealing to me.
The prospective Apple Cable will use the Internet to overcome infrastructure and municipal restrictions to be more widely available than current offers. Using the HBO Now model, Apple Cable becomes available wherever you take your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV (assuming you’re in the United States).
Apple TV as the Set Top Box, iPad as the Mobile TV
The set top box and streaming stick competition has heated up over the last three years since Apple first introduced its third-generation Apple TV device. I have a Google Chromecast attached to the small TV in my kitchen that has served me well, and many Apple TV lovers have grown tired of the product stagnation and performance issues and turned to the Amazon Fire TV instead. Roku, of course, has maintained a respectable presence in this space as well. Making the Apple TV the modern version of the set top boxes that cable companies issue completely changes the product, at least until the competition manages to get their own similar deals in order.
If Apple Cable makes the Apple TV the modern cable set top box, then it makes both the iPhone and iPad the new mobile TV. Sure, we have the TVs in our living rooms now, but the bedroom TV has been replaced by the iPhone and iPad for many, and it’s a whole other story when you consider the same TV experience at home as in transit. For many people, the iPad has been a device asking for a clearer purpose. Even with the iPhone 6 Plus in the lineup, the full-sized iPad is a superior for viewing video content. I can see Apple Cable being a major selling point for the iPad that’s much more digestible than iTunes and the combination of Netflix, Hulu, and similar services.
iCloud as the New DVR
Finally, and this may all be a pipe dream, but the value of upgrading to paid iCloud storage tiers would greatly increase if the cloud storage service could replace the DVR as we know it. Apple currently offers a tiny 5GB of free iCloud storage and up to 1TB of cloud space for $19.99/month. With the reported Apple web TV service price sitting around $30-$40, positioning iCloud storage upgrades as a way to “record” content not otherwise available immediately on-demand is something I can get behind. I currently pay $3.99/month for 200GB to fit my family photo library in the cloud. Adding some sort of DVR-like functionality to iCloud could easily convince me to move to at least the 500GB $9.99/month tier.
Bottom Line
We could see the new Apple web TV as soon as WWDC in early June alongside updated Apple TV hardware and a brand-new music subscription service based on Beats. HBO Now will provide a preview of the prospective Apple Cable experience next month, but if this plays out I see a much wider reaching benefit for cord cutters and cable subscribers alike.
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For Apple Cable to really appeal to me that damn Apple TV needs a massive UI overhaul. It drives me crazy I have to click the menu button countless times to get back to the main page. That is NOT how “changing the channel” should be handled. If I am inside Netflix and want to switch to the listen to music I am clicking the damn thing all day to go back one page at a dang time.
I agree 100% about the UI but … there is a shortcut for getting back to the main screen that you’ll find helpful.
Holding down the menu (“back”) button for a long pause immediately takes you to the top level UI. Holding down the pause/play button (once you are on the home screen), puts the device to sleep.
Apple TV’s UI is pretty horrible across the board, but those shortcut might help your immediate problem.
I was hoping someone might have a tip for this! Thanks!
Press and hold Menu for 3 seconds to jump all the way back to the main Apple TV Home screen.
Or you could just hold the menu button which returns you to the home screen from anywhere in the Apple TV.
This is going to be a life saver
Here’s the tip you were looking for:
You can get to the Main Menu from anywhere in the UI by holding down the Menu Button.
Click and hold the button just once from inside any app to go back to the main menu no matter how deep.
Still, Apple needs to allow us to set up categories of channels or some UI innovation to improve the interface.
Hold down the menu button to take you back to the Apple TV main menu.
Yeah, I had to say it too.
Agree
I don’t think Apple will ever make a cable service for the obvious reason that they are no longer a USA only company and haven’t been for a while.
Many US residents see their country as pretty much the only one that matters and believe that things like the Internet, and companies like Apple are only making things for them, but in reality this is not the case.
Cable is a 20C concept. It will never work in a modern connected world. It’s failing as we speak.
Cable is one of the things RUINING content delivery systems right now in that it is the main reason why media and content is located in different national “silos” around the world. There are millions of people in North America that would watch Japanese TV for instance if it were available here. Millions more that would watch British TV or French TV.
The world is moving AWAY from proprietary, nationalistic systems like cable and it’s a good thing too. Except as a definition of a variety of wire, “cable” has no future at all.
It’s being called “Cable” but what is being talked about here is NOTHING like traditional cable service.
Cord cutters don’t cut to avoid the cable company. We cut because we don’t want to pay for channels we don’t watch. Apple cable if a bundle is just as bad as TWC or Comcast. If Apple cable lets us subscribe a la carte then it would be a huge draw. I get all my locals with an antenna and TiVo. Tivo lets me access Netflix Hulu Amazon and Vudu. I use Apple tv for ESPN, HBO and showtime. Get your family members to join you and split the costs one person pays for Netflix another pays for Hulu. Get the shows you want for free or access through iTunes or Amazon for the specific shows you want. Don’t pay for bundles of channels you won’t watch..
I cut the cord about 3 years ago and in my case it WAS because I hated cable companies. For me it was about how deceptive and “anti-consumer” cable companies are, and the fact that the cost is very high, and everything has commercials with it anyway.
A lot of the new online services that you can access through Apple TV are immediate “fails” for me for these reasons. The cost of the digital channels are often very high (HBO being the easiest example) and the content is STILL full of commercials, even though you are paying for it directly.
Until they stop this kind of deceptive crap, I’m still going to say that I actually “hate” cable companies and Cable TV in general. It’s just wrong to do what they do.
You realize most of your problems are with the actual networks and not the cable companies themselves right?
Cable companies are typically just gigantic middle men who pay to carry networks and the networks have all the power in the relationship since people like entertainment more than the company that delivers it to them.
Shifting the delivery medium wont change how the networks operate.
I agree. Paying high fees for content loaded with commercials is a ripoff, no matter who provides it.
I cut the cord over 6 months ago and now view ad-free programs for a whole lot less than I was paying before. I had already weaned myself off network TV, save for the occasional sports broadcast.
a la carte subscription is horrible since you’ll typically pay more for less.
“Get your family members to join you and split the costs”… you do know that is kind of going against the whole concept of paying for what you watch, right? Besides, at least for Netflix, it goes against its TOS.
Have you looked into Sling TV?
“I often experience drops on popular channels, get bonus filler channels that no one wants, and see indiscriminate additional subscription fees and charges without any real reason”
Drops in popular channels==Networks wanting to charge a lot more to the cable company for the privileged of carrying the channel.
Bonus filler channels no one wants==Networks saying “If you want to carry popular network X you will have to carry unpopular networks Y and Z”
Additional subscription fees and charges are passing that cost on to you while keeping the core price the same.
We dropped cable TV a year ago & haven’t missed it. We stream Netflix and sometimes iTunes on our AppleTV. I will pickup HBO when it becomes standalone. I would rather use the AppleTV interface rather than my cable. My ISP has a policy of not authenticating HBO GO for AppleTV EVEN IF you ARE a paid HBO subscriber on the ISP. The 100 Mbps internet only is all they’re good for and all I need from them.
Nice article Zac. Your chromecast comment made me think Apple should sell a tiny dongle about the size of a USB flash drive for Airplay purposes only. If the price is right ($10 or so) I think it would be a huge success and another tool to lock folks into the ecosystem. I know I would use it in the business environment for presentations and turn any TV into an AirPlay connected device.
The awkward addiction that America has to TV is truly sad. Cut the cable, forever. Get outside. Talk with people. Live life. It’s an addiction and you need to wrestle with it and overcome it.
I’m really hoping they don’t try to make an end run around royalties owed to the actors and musicians. I’ll sign regardless. between netflix, hogo and hulu, I can’t remember the last time I actually watched something when it aired.
Bandwidth, Bandwidth, BANDWIDTH…it’s not going to be pretty streaming content and using your internet connection for many of us, particularly those tied to CABLE internet. And given the voracious appetite for the ISP’s to go to metered tiered consumption, they’ll just make up in lost subscriptions from usage overage – anyone else think of the consequences?
My mom and stead dad have cable. Thus I do. We upgraded to 1tb DVRs. We got two. It is great. I do not worry about watching shows when they air. I just have series recorded on the thing. Last night, I just deleted like 4 shows, I had done about the same amount a week or so ago. The reason? They had all been canceled. It was last night that I realized paying for cable is pointless. It is better to just find a show and either record the entire season or get it on streaming services. My mom and step dad are not ready for that yet, but, I would be very into a service like this.
I am excited to try the HBO thing. Cable companies, like blank-cast, are stopping people from using streaming services for certain companies, I would say drop that place as a provider. They do not own anyone. So, I think companies have to realize that things are changing. It excites me!
I understand the problems some cable providers provide. It’s a mess and they are going to eat it.
I am very, very lucky because I have had Verizon Fios for over seven years and they are great (customer services sucks, but the service is the best). I am paying about $110 for every network and movie channel. I could probably drop some channels like Fox 1 and others that I don’t watch and get the bill down to $90.
I watch about 20 channels and frankly it would drive me crazy to do a La a carte system in which I have Apple TV for some (costing $30 to $40 a month). Then I have to get HBO for another $15. Then I have to go through the problem of getting NBC for another $5 to $10. Then how am I to get Fox Business, Golf Channel, METV, Comedy Central, you know we all watch some of these.
The point I am saying, I am staying with my Fios service, get one bill with my internet and phone instead of having to do five to ten different buys and having to pay each one of them monthly.
Of course we all are screaming at the high cost of cable. An it seems easy to say, hey I only want 20 of the 200 channels so I should pay only 20% of my bill.
I see this getting messy.
I see big companies like Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon taking it in the shorts. They may have a monopoly in their area but it’s getting slowly wiped out.
Some suit at Comcast has to figure out packages that are cheaper like Sling.Tv is. Only problem like you and I know, there is so much crap with those popular networks. So the challenge for them is that they have to offer packages just like Apple is going to do for $30 on the new package or what Apple is doing for $15 with HBO. I have a funny feeling that the cable/Satellie contracts with networks won’t allow them to do that because I think those networks are charging too much.
They also have another problem and that is the same folks that they deal with, CBS, ABC, ESPN, you know everyone is now starting there own app which further erodes the market.
I can see a serious depression on it’s way for not only cable, satellite and provides of content, but I can see a good amount of these networks going belly up.
I saw in one article that stated that on the surface if the cable system broke down and let’s say ESPN had to do it alone, they would have to charge $30 a month and get 20 million homes to break even on what they are doing now. I could easily see ESPN getting a quarter of their audience to pony up $30 a month. But this still creates a terrible problem for them. All their advertisers are paying for an audience of 100 million, so you cut 80% of that, the advertisers will need a 80% reduction in price. So ESPN will not be the milk cow they are now.
The smaller the network, the bigger the problem is. A place like Golf Channel, who are in 90 million homes would be lucky to get 7 to 10 million to pay $10, $15 a month. But their advertising revenue would take it in the shorts.
I guess that is what is killing Weather Channel. They have to give in on demands from cable provider because they don’t have the kind of audience that would go to another system out of loyalty. I read this a couple of weeks ago that the figure in loses for networks are staggering. For every million people gone, Weather Channel loses a million dollars a month. So when they lost Dish for three months, Dish has 14 million subscribers so Weather Channel lost $42 million. So I guess that the days of networks looking for increases, even if it’s just pennies could bite them in the butt.
Sorry if this was long.
So 40 bucks for Apple Tv, then 50-70 bucks for fast internet? That’s what I pay now for more channels. To me, the problem is the cable co. is always going to own “the pipe’. Unless there’s a wireless solution in the near future. Apple and the Cable Co’s need to work together
I’ll gladly pay for a few “channels” I do watch if it means no commercials, and on-demand.
I haven’t had cable in about 10 years, but back then, if I wanted to watch Formula1/MotoGP, it mean I had to have a cable subscription with a higher tier bundle that offered Speedvision/Speed TV. That means I had to pay more money for more channels that I didn’t watch, on top of the price for basic cable. Screw that.
If Sky Sports would offer a la carte programming like HBO Now, I’ll gladly fork over $10 a month during the season to have access to all Free Practice sessions, Qualifying, and Races, with great commentary AND no commercials.
WWE (WWF) already offers WWE Network for $10 a month, which includes all programming past and present. It even includes special events like Wrestlemania which are normally PPV events.
Realistically, I would probably pay like $5 per channel I’d subscribe to. I don’t watch lot of TV. Give me HBO, Showtime, AMC, Sky Sports, Comedy Central and I’ll call it a day. For everything else/local tv, I have an over-the-air antenna that gives me free channels, in HD too.
1) I love these editorials, and this one is another excellent one.
2) Things aren’t so bad in The Netherlands, but it’s still TV, with all its shortcomings, like ads, no info on why a program was delayed and your DVR will simply record at set times, the useless channels can be hidden on your TV set, but the UI is so horrendous it’s excruciating to use.
Yes, I would welcome a new way of watching TV, but as it stands, I only watch the news and turn the box off right afterwards.
“there’s still not a competing service that offers as wide a variety of live content”
I get all my live content over the air via antenna, for free. I almost never watch it “live”, though (I use TiVo). Older stuff I get via Netflix, which is $8/month.
So I pay a total of $8 per month for current as well as older material. That’s 5 times less than this rumored Apple streaming service. Much better value, in my opinion.
I said this yesterday on MacRumors.com and I’ll repeat it here: paying Apple $30 – $40 per month for TV instead of Comcast, Verizon, or Time Warner isn’t cutting the cord – it’s just a different cord. I might consider it if it was in the $10 – $20 range, but $30 – $40 is too close to what the cable companies are currently charging.
I almost feel like a Genius because our DVR is so easy. and I’ve heard many complain about horrible DVR service. I’ve had DVR with various companies (Comcast, Fios Comcast/Xfinity) and all have been super easy to set up and watch the shows I recorded.
As far as the Same TV viewing no matter where you are is OK. We we travel for vacation we aren’t huddled around a TV set.
The idea of paying what you want (a la carte) sounds great but as someone else noted the pricing will be close to the same as a current subscription-based setup.
Then there is the Speed, Bandwidth, and Internet Caps that will surely be enforced. (I think Fios doesn’t have a data usage cap like Xfinity) but over time the more people drop Comcast/Xfinity or Fios types, the more they will charge for internet.
There are a lot of assumptions in here, this could be every bit as bad as your cable subscription service is far as drops, number channels, etc… that are going to be had.
We know that for the most part the cable providers are slaves to the content providers and make them do things like “add channels you don’t want” all in the name of getting top dollar. At this point I don’t Apple has convinced the content providers to end these practices so my expectations for this service out of the gate is extremely low but at least it is a start.
“Assuming you are in the United States”? Why? Is interned any different in US, than it is in EU for example? This (separating US from rest of the world) is complete nonsense.
If I am not going to simply buy certain TV shows, I want to be able to select one-by-one which channels go into my package. There should be a sliding scale where the more channels you subscribe to the less you pay per channel. Any channel with regular commercials should be free.
Is CW having financial troubles? Friend with cable doesn’t get it, hasn’t been for months, the cable company claims technical difficulties with the audio from the local station, but, if that was the case, it should have been fixed by now. …Also, it was “rumored”, supposedly Apple & CW had reached an agreement for a CW channel coming to ATV TWO YEARS AGO! And CW is now not mentioned among apple’s upcoming service?
But, more importantly, I am not willing to pay for TV that includes commercials. Back in the ’80s when you bought cable TV you bought TV without commercials, as, you could just pick up free TV out of the air, so, since it was free, you could justify having to put up with ads.
At the very least, I would like apple to include a way to skip or fast forward past commercials!!
Well, Apple seems to utilize the mammoth cash reserves it had over the sales of iPhones and capture other markets as well. They’re slowly marching towards to be the next Rothschild family!! Still, a lot will depend on the internet providers. How bout jumping in that arena too..!!!!