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Apple Wants To Sell Premium TV Channels in a Bundle (recode.net)
Apple isn't done trying to sell you pay TV. From a report on Recode: Here's Apple's latest proposal: It wants to sell consumers a premium TV bundle, which combines HBO, Showtime and Starz. Apple already sells each of those channels individually. But it has approached the three networks about rolling them up into a single package, as conventional pay TV operators sometimes do. The difference: Traditional pay TV operators, like Charter, usually require consumers to subscribe to a basic level of TV channels before it will sell them a premium bundle. Apple could sell the bundle as standalone product, delivered via its iOS devices and its Apple TV settop box. Apple doesn't have a bundle deal in place with any of the premium networks, industry sources say. Apple currently sells HBO for $15 a month, Showtime for $11 a month, and Starz for $9 a month.
Just wait for ATT/Directv to buy HBO time Warner and see how fast this gets dropped
I can see Comcast buying them before DirecTV/ATT.
Apple used to make computers. Remember those? I think they were called "Reds" or "Honeys", I can't remember.
How about we build our own bundle? Or better, pick our movies/series and lose the channel system completely. That way the creators hopefully get more of the money.
Same as the old boss. Selling bundles is exactly what the Cable-Mafia does, and exactly what cord cutters don't want.... But its apple, so iGuess the iSheep will buy it, and claim its the greatest thing since sliced bread...
I don't care to piece meal a package together buying some content here, and some at Apple and maybe Netflix, and Amazon or a Hulu. No Apple either has to expand this of face people who simply do not see it as a great value. I gave up on Apple TV years ago, and do much better with Roku's. This is one market Apple never really kept pace with the rest.
The same crap that happened to cable tv, will eventually happen to online tv. Queue the added commercials soon.
Cutting out the middlemen and fucking over the end user over is a great plan.
No one wants you to use some tiny ARM SOC with HDMI. KODI and some cheap 4TB drive to your "not so smart TV" - After all, that gives you a better service that no one can compete with. I'm not even talking about the price point it's genuinely a better service because of the lack of ads and the fact you can get whatever content you want regardless of whichever "bundle" is offered.
Once I had a "smart TV" which had YouTube on it. Pretty cool. Except the YouTube licence ran out and now the "app" no longer exists for the TV's smart menu. It also cannot record to DVR from any "non TV source" so no HDMI gaming etc. perhaps in place in case I wanted to copy a BD stream.
Paid for content, paid for UI, paid for set-top boxes routinely give you inferior service, shit prices and subject to changes. Tame consumers just bend over and take it. They pay their subscriptions and think they are living the big life not once realising they are beyond fucked over.
I'm sure apple drones will sign up to the superior new service apple will create through it's superior TVs that magically ties into the rounded edges iThings ecosystem...if it comes to that.
Fuck all you monopolizing idiots with your "packages". Give me a service I want and I will pay for it. No excuses. I can force this stance because I can and I will never pay until I, the (well paid and legal owner of copyrighted works) customer get excatly what I want.
But, there is nothing much worth watching in all the 25 channels and 100 movies, all ready to be streamed on demand! One social debate TV show and may be three movies would make the cut. I would rather watch Russian dash cam videos of truck crashes than any of this junk. Well, Mom is visiting, as long as she is here, just pay up and shut up.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
With Apple;s income stream on the line, we might actually see a revival of anti-trust law in this country.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
$36 a la carte for those three channels is kinda ridiculous. At those bundled prices to all of the other streaming a la carte channels you need to pay for and you may as well stick with your cable/FIOS and at least gain the advantage of a unified interface. A game changer would be ESPN being ONLY available via an app or some sort of exclusivity like that. This isn't that.
Wrong, Apple. We do not want bundles. We do not want to buy N channels in order to watch M channels, where N >> M.
We need more forced-bundling like a whole in the web. The great promise of web-based content delivery was more a-la-carte choice. Now Apple is doing the same bleep as the other bleepsters. Bleep you, Apple!
Table-ized A.I.
There isn't any "cord cutting" TV service I can get that lets me only select the channels I want. Every single one (DirectTV Now, PS Vue, Sling TV) forces me to get a bunch of channels I don't want to get the channels I do want. The closest one comes for me is PS Vue's Core Slim package, but I can count 41 out of 61 channels on that package that I have absolutely no interest in, and probably another dozen or so I wouldn't pay for on their own. I'd gladly pay $25/month in order to get the 10 channels or so that I'm actually interested in.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I think the entire concept of a "channel" (except for perhaps live sports or news broadcasts) is a slowly dying concept in the streaming age. On-demand content bundles (like buying the rights to all Netflix content) are what this will shape into.
300+ channels of content that i simply cannot be without ðY(TM)
Theyalready do games, books, music, so why not tv shows movies and series
I have to question the intelligence of people who would embrace the idea of bundling channels in 2017.
Having said that, though I use Apple products, "WTF" has been my response to new stuff Apple has introduced
over the past few years, more often than not. As much as I liked the Apple products of years past, I find myself
seriously contemplating means of leaving Apple and its "ecosystem" behind, at least until Tim Cook leaves the
company.
tl / dr :
With the advent of streaming video, an "a la carte" model is the only model that makes sense, for too many reasons
to list.
Rolling over in his grave. No new ideas in years, fast rise, slow an steady decline again without a visionary at the helm.
Sorry to sound a bit immature in asking, but, "Who doesn't?"