[jfb]

The problem here is that the TV hardware business is chicken feed compared to the TV content business. And while Apple is very, very good at negotiating with content owners, the money in TV is tied up in really, really complicated and retrogressive contracts, and the TV people perceive Apple as predatory, entirely missing the point of what happened to the record industry.

[gfodor]

Well, yeah. That's why it's 2013 and we still don't have our iTV. My prediction is at launch the contracts with the content providers will be fairly unappealing to consumers, once the fine print is understood, and the media will yawn. (HN will predictably announce iTV as a dud because of the content payment model being inferior to X, Y or Z.)

But the UX will be compelling and there will inevitably be a few "killer apps." Once the iTV is in the living room the experience will be frictionless enough people will probably start buying content that is technically more expensive than on competing platforms anyway. (all-you-can-eat vs pay-as-you-go, Apple will probably go for pay-as-you-go to start out.) That'll drive adoption so that Apple will build marketshare quickly enough to provide leverage to pull the content providers into the 21st century. But even the starting point they need to be to provide a MVP is probably tough to get to.

This has nothing to do with the fact that if and when it ever exists Apple will have basically rendered the current "Smart TV" user experience an embarrassment to the industry.

[jfb]

The idea of an app ecosystem for TV content is enormously appealing to the consumer, but in a world where one half of the internet access duopoly buys a content licensing company, the resistance from entrenched interests is going to be Stalingrad bitter.