New Apple TV this year? Apple TV set in 2011?


Analyst outline what he believes is Apple's living room ambitions.

Long-time Apple watcher Gene Munster from Piper Jaffray issued a research paper Thursday outlining what he sees as Apple's roadmap for your living room. First phase is an updated Apple TV later this year (oh, lets guess September 9th?).

The Apple TV update would finally alter Apple's frankly flawed model of essentially a TV bridge for iTunes purchases. Netflix, Blockbuster, and Amazon with its box partners Tivo, Sony, and Microsoft, not to mention on-demand content from the old guard cable/dish/phone providers, have sufficiently altered the landscape. Plus, there's always Hulu out there waiting to get unleashed, at least officially, to the living room. Munster sees the updated Apple TV gaining a tuner input and DVR. That sounds great.

Next phase for 2010 will be an "iTunes TV Pass," which offers wide variety of content from Apple's iTunes video library as all you can yet. Rates would run between $30/$40 per month, essentially marginalizing cable providers to bandwidth utilities.

The final phase in 2011 would be an Apple branded TV set. By then, HD sets will likely be well commoditized, so it will be interesting to see how Apple adds value over conventional sets. It, however, wouldn't be the first time Apple took a commodity industry by storm with high tech hardware and well honed software.

Not too sure about the TV set idea, but a significant retooling of Apple TV certainly seem both possible and a great idea. While we love our Tivo, there is definitely room for improvement in the areas of connectivity and programming from home and the cloud.

Munster: An Apple TV set by 2011