CBS

Apple’s streaming web TV service has been rumored for nearly a year now, with reports originating last March claiming that Apple was planning to announce a service at $30-$40 per month. The service was said to feature upwards of 25 channels and be available on the fourth-gen Apple TV. Recently, however, reports have claimed that Apple’s talks with major networks have stalled. Now, speaking to CNN, CBS CEO Les Moonves has confirmed that talks between Apple and CBS have stopped recently.

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Current Apple TV customers are getting at least one more new wave of channel additions before the focus completely means to the new App Store-based Apple TV on Monday. New channels from CBS, NBC, and the fashion-focused M2M arrived on current Apple TV home screens today, bringing CBS’s subscription service, full episodes of NBC shows, and exclusive fashion videos to the streaming box.
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Amazon is reportedly interested in building a live TV service of sorts as analyst Dan Rayburn at StreamingMediaBlog  reports the company has approached NBCUniversal and CBS to gauge an interest in providing content (via Bloomberg).
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CBS plans to bring its $5.99/month All Access subscription service, which offers a mix of on-demand TV shows and live streaming from local stations, to Apple TV and other platforms in the near future, a source with knowledge of the matter informed us.

Word that Apple TV is still in the company’s sights for the All Access service comes as it officially announces support for Google’s Android TV platform today and ahead of an official launch of Apple’s revamped Apple TV platform arriving in October.
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While Apple’s rumored Web TV service is expected to launch with new hardware and software later this year, Comcast has shown its cards on what it describes as an “experiment” to offer live TV streaming to its Internet subscribers without cable packages. Stream, a $15/month Xfinity add-on, will allow Comcast Internet subscribers to view live and on-demand streaming television from “about a dozen networks” including HBO and other major broadcast networks.
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CBS’s channel Showtime is now available on Apple TV. The company this morning began rolled out its version of the service that does not require a cable subscription. Instead, users simply pay $11 per month for the service, after a 30-day free trial.

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[Update: Showtime has officially announced its standalone service coming in July for $10.99/month on Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch ahead of the July 12th season premiers of several shows.]

CBS is expected to announce a standalone subscription version of its premium network Showtime on Apple TV “as early as today or Thursday,” according to a report from Variety. The standalone version of Showtime will allow cord-cutters to pay for access to the channel through Apple TV without requiring a cable subscription. The news comes as Yahoo revealed that it will be the first to stream an NFL game globally for free to set-top boxes, mobile apps, and more…
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Over the past decade, video gaming became social, as voice chat, multi-player matchmaking, and live game streaming enabled gamers to share their experiences with friends and strangers online. Streaming game video was the hardest, requiring so much horsepower that consoles needed computer assistance. Elgato entered the market in 2012 with Game Capture HD, which was designed to record directly from the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Now there’s a more powerful version called Game Capture HD60 ($180), which offers professional-quality full 1080p HD recording support at 60 frames per second, plus one-touch live streaming to uStream, Twitch, and YouTube. It works with iPads, iPhones and iPod touches using Apple’s Lightning to Digital AV Adapter, and Xbox One, Xbox 360, Wii U and PlayStation 4 game consoles with nothing more than an HDMI cable.

Elgato has years of experience making cutting-edge video recorders: back when Macs weren’t nearly as powerful as they are today, its EyeTV DVRs could record live TV while streaming video to iOS devices. Similarly, Game Capture HD60 lets you simultaneously enjoy lag-free gaming, stream live video to the Internet, and optionally include voice commentary with automatic audio level balancing. It also does all of these things with barely any need for user involvement. And although the price was just a little too high when it debuted last year, it’s now hovering around $150 — a great price given the quality of its video output. Read on for all the details…

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Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and the Discovery Channel are among the channels that could be making their way to Apple’s reported new web TV service, as the WSJ reports that Apple is in talks with Discovery and Viacom. The paper had earlier said that Apple’s online TV service would be announced in June and launched in September with 25+ channels.

Discovery, owner of Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and TLC, and Viacom, owner of MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, are in talks to be on the Apple service, people familiar with the matter said.

We first heard about the plans in early February. ABC, CBS and Fox are already believed to be on board for the service, which is expected to cost somewhere in the $25-40/month range … 
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Just one day after HBO announced that it would be offering a web-only subscription at some point next year, CBS has played leap-frog by announcing the immediate availability of a $5.99/month web & app subscription offering on-demand access to almost all content.

CBS All Access will offer subscribers thousands of episodes from the current season, previous seasons and classic shows on demand, as well as the ability to stream local CBS Television stations live in 14 of the largest U.S. markets at launch.

CBS All Access is available beginning today at CBS.com and on mobile devices through the CBS App for iOS and Android.

Cable companies have long shied away from offering access to popular, current programming without demanding that you sign-up to cable access first. But broadcasters now seem to be recognizing that it isn’t just cord-cutting that threatens their existing models, it’s also ‘cord nevers’ – young people who simply aren’t signing up for cable subscriptions in the first place, preferring to get their TV fix online … 
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Lets talk about Aereo—the service that streams over-the-air local TV to any Mac, iOS device, or PC running Safari for $12 per month.

The decidedly McGyver tech behind this venture relies on fingertip-sized TV antennas in data centers that allow servers to live-stream channels with high-definition reception through a speedy Internet connection. Aereo also works with Apple TV via iTunes’ AirPlay and a source iOS device, and Roku-lovers can use the Aereo channel through set-top boxes. The service even flaunts 40 hours of DVR storage space and an HTML 5 experience. That’s right, no apps—nor cords, cables, and boxes. Hence the startup’s “It’s TV made simple” badge.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR8lLt3gFZ8]

Aereo is currently an invite-only 90-day free trial to New York City residents. Oh, and the behind-the-scene gurus verify billing and IP addresses, so there is no fooling Aereo when requesting login credentials.

That’s enough with the basics; now time to spill the juicy details:

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Way back in November, CBS Chief Executive Officer Les Moonves told investors on an earnings call:

..the media company turned down a partnership with Apple for a streaming deal on the Apple TV. Moonves says that the deal was turned down because of the ad-split revenue that Apple was trying to reach an agreement over.

Fast forward to this weekend when the Hollywood Reporter caught up to Moonves at a FUCLA conference:

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said Saturday that he was approached about a year ago by Steve Jobs to provide content for Apple’s long-rumored television service but he declined to participate.

Moonves told a conference audience that he met with Jobs, the late Apple CEO, and heard a pitch for what was billed as a subscription content service, but ultimately he said he wasn’t interested in providing CBS shows or films to the venture.

“I told Steve, ‘You know more than me about 99 percent of things but I know more about the television business,’ ” Moonves said, citing his concerns about providing content to a service that could disrupt CBS’ existing revenue streams. Moonves said Jobs, in characteristic fashion, strongly disagreed with his assessment.

Yeah, that is not much new, but the point is that CBS still is not going to be partnering with Apple any time soon.

However, streaming is pretty much dead anyway except for live TV, news, weather, and sports. Everything else worth watching is downloadable or already in a Hulu/Netflix/Amazon Cloud.

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Interesting move today from Amazon.  Not only did they drop the price of Apple TV to $89.99 matching Best Buy, but they are now calling it the ‘2010’ edition.  Could that mean an update is on the horizon?  At the very least, it is a solid deal.
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During their earnings call this afternoon, CBS’s Les Moonves made comment (via GigaOm) that the media company turned down a partnership with Apple for a streaming deal on the Apple TV. Moonves says that the deal was turned down because of the ad-split revenue that Apple was trying to reach an agreement over.

It has been long rumored that Apple has been working on reaching subscription deals with media companies. In Steve Job’s official biography by Walter Isaacson, it was revealed that Steve Jobs “cracked the TV”. Today’s comments reveal that Apple is indeed going after media companies for agreements. But why?

These types of agreements will be implemented into the rumored “iTV” that is supposedly coming in 2012. From the D8 conference:

Then you get into another problem. Which is there isn’t a cable operator that is national. There is a bunch of cable providers. There isn’t like a GSM standard like with phones. Every country has different standards, different government approvals. It’s very balkanized. I’m sure smarter people than us will figure this out. That’s why when we say Apple TV as a hobby we use this phrase.

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Here’s the Daily Show link for non-Flash and international (still has ads). “One guy made the Zune, another guy made the iPod”.

Colbert talks about the book as well, below…

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jqSK8Qv4ZY]

CBS has posted the full 60 Minutes program of the interview with Walter Isaacson, the author of ‘Steve Jobs’ — which is due out tomorrow (already available on iBookstore). Part 2 below, family life, competition and more.

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The Washington Post details an interesting revelation from Steve Jobs to biographer Walter Isaacson prior to his death earlier this month.

“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant,” Isaacson wrote.

Isaacson continued: “‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”

That is particularly interesting when you consider that Apple has been rumored to be entering the TV business since the beginning of time. There has also been speculation that Apple’s Siri Voice control could play a big part in Apple’s HDTV venture.

Jobs’ passage could also relate to the current Apple TV model which Apple just makes the pass-through box, instead of Apple actually manufacturing the LCD TVs themselves. Obviously with iCloud only being released this month, there could be some Apple TV updates coming shortly.

Meanwhile, CBS posted another clip from the 60 Minutes interview with Isaacson in which Jobs himself reveals on tape the circumstances around meeting his biological father, below:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np2_pysQzpU]

The blurb from CBS seems to eerily echo a Quora post by a Harvard Cancer Doctor Ramzi Anri that basically said that his cancer was mild and treatable but spread while he was trying to treat it holistically.

While Mr. Jobs was trying all sorts of alternative [medicine] his tumor grew, and grew, and grew…

… and then it somehow grew beyond control.

• Jobs waited so long before seeking normal treatment that he had to undergo a Whipple procedure, losing his pancreas and whole duodenum in 2004. This was the first alarming sign that his disease had progressed beyond a compact primary to at least a tumor so large his Pancreas and duodenum could not be saved.
• Jobs seemingly waited long enough for the disease revealed to have spread extensively to his liver. The only reason he’d have a transplant after a GEP-NET would be that the tumor invaded all major parts of the liver, which takes a considerable amount of time. Years, in most neuroendocrine tumors. It could be that this happened before his diagnosis, but the risk grows exponentially with time.
• We then saw the tumor slowly draining the life out him. It was a horrible thing to see him lose weight and slowly turn into a skin and bones form of himself.

Yet it seems that even during this recurrent phase, Mr. Jobs opted to dedicate his time to Apple as the disease progressed, instead of opting for chemotherapy or any other conventional treatment.

Isaacson also seems to imply that it spread during that time and obviously in hindsight, Jobs was regretful for not choosing to operate on it sooner. Isaacson said,

“I’ve asked [Jobs why he didn’t get an operation then] and he said, ‘I didn’t want my body to be opened…I didn’t want to be violated in that way,'” Isaacson recalls. So he waited nine months, while his wife and others urged him to do it, before getting the operation, reveals Isaacson. Asked by Kroft how such an intelligent man could make such a seemingly stupid decision, Isaacson replies, “I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don’t want something to exist, you can have magical thinking…we talked about this a lot,” he tells Kroft. “He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it….I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner.”

As Ryan Tate said,

In the end, may prove the most compelling reason to forgive the brilliant CEO his many faults: Of all the people who suffered on the dark side of his headstrong, iconoclastic decisionmaking, it was Jobs himself who appears to have paid the biggest price.

Jobs also told Isaacson:

Jobs had actually met the man who turned out to be his biological father before he knew who he was. He also talks about the discussion he had with Jobs about death and the afterlife, explaining that for Jobs, the odds of there being a God were 50-50, but that he thought about the existence of God much more once he was diagnosed with cancer. Another aspect of Jobs’ character revealed was his disdain for conspicuous consumption. He tells Isaacson in a taped conversation how he saw Apple staffers turn into “bizarro people” by the riches the Apple stock offering created. Isaacson says Jobs vowed never to let his wealth change him.

The full interview will air on Sunday.