Apple’s new, iOS-driven Apple TV is largely selling itself to consumers as a box that will allow them to stream all of their favorite television shows for 99-cents a pop whenever they want, but that price point is facing some notable resistance from network executives, and may quickly inflate once the device begins shipping at the end of the month.

Although Apple has inked deals with News Corp’s Fox and Walt Disney’s ABC to make shows available for $0.99 when the Apple TV launches, NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker does not intend on following suit, claiming that the price point was setting the bar too low.

“We do not think 99 cents is the right price point for our content. … We thought it would devalue our content,” Zucker said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference.

It was common knowledge that Apple’s new AppleTV was running some sort of variation of iOS under the hood, especially since it uses the iPhone 4 and iPad’s A4 CPU for silicon horsepower, but TUAW has confirmed it: the AppleTV is an iOS device, and therefore jailbreakable using existing techniques… although since there’s no local storage, I would imagine any AppleTV jailbreaking would mostly focus on improving functionality by beefing HD output up to 1080p.

Stories leading up to Wednesday’s debut of a $99 Apple TV focused on how some studios were worried about the impact of the Cupertino, Calif. company offering 99-cent episodes. However, the bigger threat from Apple TV may be the damage that can be done to the cable industry’s video-on-demand revenu.

The addition of Netflix and YouTube, along with $4.99 movie streaming not only moves Apple TV out of the self-professed “hobby” classification, but the little box could also “kick the cable companies in the shins in the process,” according to Light Reading.

Apple for now has signed-on just ABC (owned by Disney, where Steve Jobs is the largest shareholder) and Fox (owned by News Corp., whose owner Rupert Murdoch lusts after Apple’s iPad as a savior of print newspapers.) Noticeably missing was NBC, recently purchased by cable giant Comcast. Not only would a 99-cent per episode cause some cable subscribers to pause paying the monthly subscription, but the Apple TV device could also put a crimp in Comcast’s ability to sell video-on-demand.

[Barron’s, Light Reading]

Ok, maybe the little black box won’t arrive in every single home, but unlike the 1st-gen AppleTV, the 2nd-gen announced today is going to sell like buttery hotcakes slathered in maple syrup.

There’ll be a new $99 AppleTV tomorrow with Netflix movie streaming, Bloomberg reports.

Apple Inc., preparing to announce a new set-top box that delivers TV to consumers, will include movies from Netflix Inc., according to three people with knowledge of the plans.

The streaming service would be available on the revamped version of Apple TV, due to be introduced tomorrow in San Francisco, said two of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been made public. Users would pay a subscription fee to Netflix for the service, the people said.

The new AppleTV will cost $99 — $130 less than the current model, Bloomberg says. Apple will also update iTunes and offer a new iPod touch with a higher-resolution screen (likely a Retina display to match the iPhone 4’s).

The new Apple TV is rumored to be renamed iTV and run a version of iOS, possibly making is capable of running apps and games from the App Store. There’s no word on whether Netflix’s service will be an app or integrated into the device, as it is with some DVD players.

Netflix already offers a subscription movie streaming service through a wide variety of devices, from Blu-Ray players to  TiVo and game consoles. There are also Netflix apps for the iPhone and iPad that stream movies and TV shows to subscribers.

File firmly in the rumor folder, but NewTeeVee is resurrecting the old iOS-driven AppleTV rumor, but with a twist: this time, they say a future $99 AppleTV will feature the ability to stream television shows for just $0.99.

On one hand, such a move would make iTunes television offerings a lot more competitively priced, especially compared to services like Netflix and Hulu Plus… but on the other hand, it seems that this would replace (on the AppleTV, at least) the current purchase scheme of $1.99 – $2.99 per episode, depending on definition.

At the end of the day, though, it all seems a bit expensive to me: $20 bucks to rent a television season is a hard sell when that’s what the DVD will cost. There’s no doubt, though, that a change in the way iTunes currently prices television shows will go a long way to making the AppleTV a lot more popular, though.

Apple TV remains just a hobby, the Cupertino, Calif. company’s chief executive said in a Tuesday interview. The problem: the cable industry.

Cable operators “give everybody a set-top box for free, or for $10 per month,” Steve Jobs told an audience at the All Things Digital conference. “That pretty much squashes any opportunity for innovation, because nobody’s willing to buy a set-top box,” he said.

Steve Jobs’ “hobby” device might not be a hobby for long: Engadget reports that sources close to Apple claim that the Apple TV is currently getting a massive overhaul as an iPhone OS, streaming video device.

The old Apple TV was like a big iPod that connected to your set, so it’s not really a surprise that Apple’s re-imagining of Apple TV is essentially as a big iPhone connected to an HDTV. According to Engadget, the new Apple TV will have an A4 CPU, run iPhone OS and only ship with 16GB of flash storage.

Why so little room? Because Apple’s trying to do away with local storage in favor of their cloud iTunes service. The new Apple TV will be capable of streaming your media at 1080p through a web connection (or a Time Capsule, if you still want to store your media locally, but it’s all still streaming).

The biggest reveal? The price. Engadget says the new Apple TV will costs only $99. Wow.

Apple’s most useless-out-of-the-box product, the “hobby” Apple TV, has just gotten a minor update.

Don’t expect this to revolutionize (or even improve) the usefulness of your dust-catching Apple set-top. It’s an update so inconsequential that Apple couldn’t even be bothered to write up some change note for it.

That said, Apple TV users are piecing together that the update, once applied, is mainly to improve the way that the new Aperture 3 pro photo software suite shares images with the Apple TV over the local network, while bringing support for iPhoto and Aperture’s Places and Faces features.

If you don’t care about that, there’s another reason to tempt you top upgrade: users are reporting that the update seems to fix intermittent issues the Apple TV has when switching the HDMI output cable.

If you’re interested, you can update the firmware of your Apple TV to 3.0.2 through the “Update Software” option under Settings > General. Otherwise, we’ll be sure to shake you all awake when Apple finally gets serious about Apple TV.

Not all boats float on a rising tide. That seems to be the lesson Apple is learning with its Apple TV, a device analysts say has not benefited from increased sales of the company’s other products, including iMacs and iPods and even the lowly Magic Mouse. Apple TV sales rose just 10 percent in 2009, despite an upgraded Apple TV 3.0 OS.

The minor growth was likely due to 2008 being a slow year, not because the streaming device made any inroads into a hard-to-define market, NPD Group vice president of industry analysis Steven Baker said.