Comment by josephlord | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josephlord | Hacker News Reader

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It is harder than you think and it isn't a hardware issue. It is software but annoying finicky differences. DVB has a huge range of options and different settings/modes/behaviours are mandated in different markets. Even in Europe there are the DtG requirements in the UK (Ireland has similar requirements), Nordig that covers Scandanavia but even within that there are particular certification requirements for RiksTV in Norway. Italy has particular requirements including MHP support. CI (common interface) support is mandatory on European TVs. UI affecting details too such as the quantity and validity of EPG data, whether channel reordering is allowed (actually channel numbering is something that there are many different ways to broadcast).

Don't get me wrong, Apple could do this if they wanted to but it is the sort of hard gruntwork boring, almost pointless tweaking to globalise products that I think they wouldn't do. They would just give you a TV that could access sufficient IP services to be valuable rather than dilute the experience by handling broadcast.

Many people already do not connect their TV to a broadcast signal, especially in the US but in many other areas where STB based pay TV is common. It might not be as much of a showstopper as you think and if anyone can get away with it Apple can.

Then again, Apple had the same problem with the iPhone. They managed to solve it by lanching in a few countries first and working tightly with selected mobile operators.

I agree that it's hard, but they've shown the willingness to do hard and boring things before and take their time, launching in markets when they're ready (look at how long it took them to launch on Verizon).

However, the cable and sattelite providers also have a huge interest in pushing their own set-top boxes loaded with their streaming services etc. So I think the real issue isn't just software, it's politics and contract negotiations.

I don't think Apple is going to be happy with a situation where customer spend 90% of their time pushing buttons on a non-Apple remote control. So they probably won't be relying on set-top boxes unless they think they have such a compelling story on the content side that most people won't bother with the set-top box.

I mostly agree with you. It isn't impossible but I still don't think that they will as they know the profit on the table isn't all that large.

TVs aren't as bad as phones were when the iPhone launched. Browsers were rubbish, data cost pounds per Megabyte and screens were small. The iPhone was disruptive. An Apple TV which did not come with enough content available to ignore broadcast/STBs would be competitive at the high end but not disruptive. And the vast bulk of the market is low end (well under $1000). I could be wrong but I don't see the room for Apple blockbuster in that market.

If they can get the content, then an Apple STB would be game-changing. Every STB I've used has awful UI - slow, unresponsive, unintuitive, uninformative. But it has to be able to deliver the broadcast TV programmes in realish time. If it managed to do that by IP (multicast?) seamlessly, that would actually be fine.

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