Apple TV - page 112

Apple TV may have a new competitor in the form of Sony, which unveiled its PlayStation TV at Monday’s E3 event — showcasing a TV set-top box which features a strong emphasis on gaming.

Released as PS Vita TV in Japan, PlayStation TV will arrive in the U.S. and Canada this fall. It will allow users to stream games from their PS4 to other TVs in the house, thereby extending the gaming experience. It will also let you stream PS3 games and older classics via the forthcoming Playstation Now, which will presumably require no PS4. On top of this it will provide all the streaming services you’d expect from a set-top box, such as Netflix and Hulu.

Apple has made yet more improvements to AirPlay in iOS 8 by enabling compatible devices to make direct connections with each other for content streaming. This eliminates AirPlay’s reliance on a Wi-Fi network and fixes one of its biggest limitations.

After months of anticipation and countless rumors, Tim Cook and his merry band of Apple fellows are about to take the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone West to reveal the latest offerings coming out of Cupertino. It’s time for the Worldwide Developers Conference.

We’ll be covering the WWDC action here all morning with news and analysis on everything like iOS 8, OS X 10.10, Healthbook and whatever other goodies the mothership has prepared. The keynote starts at 10 a.m. Pacific, so bookmark this page and keep it open for a tidal wave of Apple news and insights.

For those of us who will be giddily watching WWDC from the comfort of our own homes (read: those who weren’t lucky enough to get golden tickets), Apple has added its promised WWDC channel to Apple TV for viewing the live stream of the conference’s keynote later today.

The keynote can additionally be streamed from Apple’s website by way of Safari on OS X or iOS, or QuickTime 7 on Windows.

iPhone 6 case leaks have been sprouting up like spring flowers this May, and while we still have a long wait until Apple reveals the date of its iPhone 6 event, its retail stores might already be prepping for a Fall launch.

Apple retail stores have started blacking out vacation dates for employees in September, pointing to a probable September launch for Apple’s bigger screened iPhone.

Since the release of the Apple TV back in 2007, it’s evolved into an essential gadget for all media streamers, and with that, Apple has invented some competition with the likes of Amazon Fire and the Roku. This week Cult of Mac puts the $99 Apple TV against the entry-level $49 Roku 1.

Those hoping to get a peek at Apple’s game-changing future products at next month’s Worldwide Developers Conference reportedly need to “dial back [their] expectations or be disappointed.”

Despite Tim Cook’s promise from the WWDC stage last year that Cupertino would enter “new product categories,” no big reveals are forthcoming on the iWatch or Apple TV fronts at this year’s big conference, according to a report from Re/code.

Compared to the likes of the Roku, which boasts a 1,000+ channel library, the Apple TV doesn’t exactly have a lot of different media channels. The Apple TV boasts only has around 33 third-party channels. Much of the reason the channel selection is so limited is because, unlike Roku, the Apple TV is a closed ecosystem: only Apple can release a new channel for its streaming set-top box.

Things, however, are getting rapidly better, as the above chart shows.

Duck Dynasty fans rejoice, you can now binge on all the splendors America’s favorite hillbilly family has to offer from your Apple TV, but you’ll still need a cable subscription.

An Apple TV update this morning added new channels for the History Channel, Lifetime and A&E offering cable subscribers full access to a catalog of shows from Duck Dynasty, American Pickers, Vikings, Pawn Stars, and yes, even Project Runway.

Along with the new Apple TV app the History Channel and A&E apps for iOS were updated to include live-streaming of TV shows for subscribers, but if you don’t have a cable TV, Verizon FIOS or Direct TV subscription you can still enjoy previews of great hits like Dance Moms.

Could Apple’s revolutionary re-imagining of Apple TV not be a set-top box at all, but rather an Oculus Rift style headset?

A patent published Thursday hints that this might be the case, as it refers to a head mounted display (HMD) capable of providing a personal media viewing experience for users.

The patent describes how data processing circuitry could feature optical component capable of adjusting left and right images to display 3-D media, or else to account for a user’s eyesight limitations.

Amazon’s Prime Instant Video service is on fire in the United States — and that growth happened before Amazon even introduced its $99 Fire TV set-top box.

According to a new report from online-video delivery and caching solutions provider Qwilt, streams on Prime Instant Video have almost tripled over the past year — and in the process have passed both Apple and Hulu in terms of volume of video streaming traffic. The data was gathered from MSO broadband providers that use the Qwilt systems.

You may have heard that Comcast wants to buy Time Warner. In a proposal published today that pitches the merger to the FCC, Comcast drops a hint about Apple’s future plans for the TV.

Although by no means a definite indication beyond the previous rumors that something new is coming, Comcast says that Apple is working on a set-top box. Given that Apple and Comcast have been in talks, the cable giant would be in a position to know.

Are we finally getting closer to the existence of the Apple TV set Steve Jobs told Walter Isaacson he had “finally cracked?”

According to a new rumor/report from the South Korea-based Korea Herald, an “unnamed” South Korean display manufacture is currently making 65-inch organic light emitting diode (OLED) panel samples for Apple’s proposed “iTV,” which the company expects to “be mass-produced next year.”

Apple TV may have scored sales of $1 billion in 2013, but that hasn’t stopped Roku CEO and founder Anthony Wood from branding the device a “a money loser” and questioning why Apple would want to keep selling it.

The comments were made at the inaugural Code/Media event on Thursday, hosted by technology site Re/code. They arrive at a time when Apple is reportedly preparing a new version of the Apple TV that will integrate with Comcast’s network to provide users with a streaming TV.

Citing people close to the situation, a new report by the WSJ claims that Amazon is planning to introduce an advertising-supported streaming television and music-video service.

This free service would represent a break from Amazon’s policy of linking video to its $99-a-year Prime subscription service. According to the rumor, Amazon would feature both original series and licensed content — and has discussed the effort with the creators of “Betas,” a show about a Silicon Valley startup produced for Prime last year.

The last Apple TV concept we saw had us swooning for a redesigned Apple remote/gaming pad, but if Apple decides to reduce the Apple TV’s size to take on the Chromecast and the new Roku stick, this Apple TV Air concept from Curved might be spot on.

Rather than running an HDMI cable to Apple’s little black box, the Apple TV Air concept would plug directly into your HDMI port, allowing you to instantly beam video from your iPhone to your big screen TV over AirPlay.

Take a look:

Apple and Comcast are in the early stages of negotiating a streaming TV service, according to The Wall Street Journal. The service “would use an Apple set-top box and get special treatment on Comcast’s cables to ensure it bypasses congestion on the Web.”

Rumors have been saying that Apple is working on a TV streaming product for years, and this latest report suggests that Apple is concerned about its customers have enough bandwidth to make the experience worthwhile at home.

We’ve seen Martin Hajek’s incredible Apple TV concept with a touchscreen remote before, but in an update to the project, Hajek has imagined what the Apple TV would be like if the next gen set-top box didn’t ship with just a touchscreen controller, but a traditional gamepad as well.

I’ll say this for Hajek’s Apple TV gamepad: it looks like a controller Jony Ive would design. Thin, sleek, classic, beautiful, and utterly unsuited for actual gaming.

What do you think? Additional images after the jump.

The best basketball conference in the country just got a front row seat on the Apple TV thanks to the new ACC Sports channel added to the device’s lineup Monday morning.

A new Apple TV is expected in the coming months, but little is known about the hardware. Apple has yet to redesign the basic remote it ships with the Apple TV, and instead the company has put out a Remote app for iOS.

This concept reimagines the Apple TV’s remote with a touchscreen and home button, effectively turning it into an iPod touch for the living room.

If you’re using the latest Apple devices and all your software is up to date, then your iPhone will now use Bluetooth to search for nearby AppleTVs as well as just searching on the network using Bonjour. The end result is the same – streaming over the local Wi-Fi network – but if you have an odd or non-standard Wi-Fi setup, this might help[,your devices talk to one another.

Apple has made some changes to its Customer Loyalty Program, adding new items and increasing the discount offered on existing ones.

The discounts — which quietly went into effect last week — are on offer to people who spend upwards of $5,000 on Apple products in a 12-month period, making this a loyalty program targeted predominately at companies and education customers.

Today Apple updated its Remote iOS app with some additional options for playing content through the Apple TV.

You can now control iTunes Radio like music played through a shared iTunes library. The ability to browse purchased movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store has also been added. Apple added the option to stream purchased content last September, and now it’s easier to navigate an online iTunes library from an iOS device.

Update 4.2 to the Remote app includes bug fixes as well. It can be downloaded for free in the App Store.

Source: App Store

Along with releasing iOS 7.1 to the public, Apple also pushed out a firmware update for the Apple TV this morning. The update, labeled Apple TV 6.1, doesn’t bring any radically new features but it does make it easier than ever to hide your unwanted Apple TV channels.

If you buy an Apple TV by March 5th, you will receive a $25 iTunes gift card from Apple. The promotion began today and only works at Apple retail stores or through the company’s online store.

Apple rarely does deals like this, and the timing is interesting. A new Apple TV is rumored to come out as soon as March, and this time of year is when Apple has updated its set-top box in the past. But that doesn’t mean you should expect a new one in the near future.