Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note:
Thanks to the historic Carterfone decision, an FTC edict that forced AT&T to accept third-party devices on its network, you and I can connect any regulatory-compliant device to a telephone line, whether it’s a handset, a fax machine, a DSL modem.
Last week, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler put forth a proposal, to be heard on February 18th, that would apply this same logic to cable TV set-top boxes. You and I, says the FCC, should be free to pick and choose our set-top box rather than being forced to rent a device from Comcast or Time Warner.
As expected, the carriers voiced strong objections to Chairman Wheeler’s proposal.
And:
If we turn our attention to the complicated world of cellular networks, we see that we can walk into an Apple Store, buy an iPhone, and connect it to most of the world’s cell networks. You can move from Verizon to AT&T or France’s Orange merely by swapping the nano-SIM. If Samsung, Lenovo/Moto, and Apple can build multi-carrier phones, who’s to say that Roku, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple can’t build a set-top box with a decent UI, integrated Wifi, and an App Store full of goods unavailable from cable operators?
And:
The future, as we already see but cannot yet reach, is TV-as-apps, on any screen. The Super Bowl? An app, free because of the ads. Fargo is an app; ad-free (if you pay) or watch-for-free (but with ads). The cable carriers’ mission is exactly the opposite: They need to preserve an increasingly obsolescent money pump that bundles channels and hardware.
And my favorite of all:
We look at a cable operator as the adversary in a sort of cold war, a supplier we have to use but can’t trust.
Imagine if the Apple TV could also act as your set top box, providing channel access and, most importantly, DVR services to supplement their existing on-demand and gaming services. I think that the interface would evolve by leaps and bounds. We’d also have the freedom to choose between an Apple set top box, or one made by Google, or Amazon, or a small garage-based startup.
You’re presuming, of course, that Apple will get their shit together regarding Siri, the UI and the Siri Remote. If so, I’m on board.
Otherwise, still waiting for Siri to find my movies/ TV shows on my NAS. Still waiting for Apple to improve the screen keyboard, (yeah, yeah, I can use a bluetooth, blah, blah, blah). Still waiting for the Siri Remote able to connect to my brand new Denon receiver.
keep dreaming, buddy — you are not a mainstream use case. you’re a techie outlier.
Siri indexing of downloaded content via naming syntax and bum metadata won’t happen. your best bet is if a third-party server (like Plex) supports it and takes ownership of that work. it won’t be apple.
If you can’t wait for this future, I suggest getting a TiVo box right now. They’ve been fighting the good fight, despite being hampered by cable card and tuning adapters, for years. And it works just as well as, if not better than, any streaming box I’ve tried. They have all the streaming services except iTunes, and you can record live TV and easily skip ads. True, it’s not a la carte service…. but I think that that may turn out to be a mirage anyway, at least in terms of cost savings.
” … providing channel access and, most importantly, DVR services to supplement their existing on-demand and gaming services.”
I doubt it. Apple helped kill off the floppy disc by omitting a floppy disc drive from the first iMac. Apple is helping to kill off DVD/Blu-Ray by omitting Super Drives from all current Macs. And they’re most likely helping to kill the DVR concept the same way. Why copy when you can just stream?
I think Apple is thinking far ahead of the primitive DVR model, which forces you to wait for a scheduled “broadcast,” just so you can create a local duplicate of that content, then watch it. To the end user, it is nearly equivalent to streaming (except for waiting to record the content in the first place.)
No, Siri won’t be able to search the terabytes of content (legally and illegally acquired) in your NAS. No, you won’t be able to brag to your friends about the thousands of episodes of Dr. Who you can play on your Apple TV from said NAS.
Yes, I know there are many entrenched incumbents. Yes, I know there will be many legal disputes. Yes, I know there are hundreds if not thousand of contracts to negotiate. But yes, DVRs are headed the way of the floppy disc. To e-waste heaven.
Yeah, but why can’t Siri just read the index db from iTunes Home Sharing. Seems rather straightforward to me.