Apple has a long and tortured history when it comes to the development of its own TV offering. But now, it seems Apple may be trying once more to build its own small-screen provision.
According to Re/code, Apple is currently in a new set of talks with TV programmers to develop its own “over the top” pay-TV service. The theory, if the report is accurate, suggests that Apple would put together different bundles of programming — but, as Re/code points out, “not the entire TV lineup that pay-TV providers generally offer” — and sell it to customers over the web.
It’s not quite the technological transformation of TV that Apple may have wanted in the past. Instead, it’s a repackaging of the way TV works today, delivered over the Internet via Apple hardware and software — and so with the shiny interface and user experience we’ve come to expect from Cook & Co..
Re/code’s sources suggest that Apple has already been showing programmers demonstrations of the proposed new service. But, and this is a pretty weighty but, the same sources also explain that talks are in “the early stages,” which means that you can forget any notion of pricing or availability — and perhaps, for that matter, the very existence of the service at all.
This is, of course, simply the most recent in a long run of stories about Apple negotiations with TV suppliers. This time there may be a tiny glimmer more hope than usual though: Dish and Sony have both recently reached agreements with programmers to deliver both live TV and content-on-demand in the US. In other words, there’s now a precedent for this stuff actually working — and where there’s a precedent, there’s hope.
But for now, that’s all there is. One day, there may be a proper Apple TV service — but currently, all there is is rumour. [Re/code]