Roger Fingas
Amid reports of a major hardware and software refresh coming later this year, Apple on Tuesday added three more app channels to the current-generation Apple TV: TED, Tastemade, and Young Hollywood.
The TED app brings that online network's 1,900-plus lectures and performances to the Apple TV. The interface is divided into front page, Talks, and playlist sections, the latter two of which let viewers browse by category, or collections under different themes, such as Black History Month, languages, or aging. The front page offers access to trending videos and random playback options such as "Funny" or "Jaw-Dropping."
The app also lets users sign in with an existing TED account, such as one created for the TED iOS app. This enables syncing a Watch List across devices, and a personalized "lean back" mode where a new video or playlist will queue up automatically once the last one is finished.
Tastemade gathers together food and cooking videos, but with a special emphasis on the culinary scenes in different cities. Young Hollywood is a music, celebrity, and lifestyle channel with some original shows, such as Amp'd Up. The app's interface lets users browse by show, performer, or genre, the last group including categories such as TV/film, music, sports, and fashion.
Apple is rumored to be working on a full-fledged subscription TV service that may debut this fall. An overhauled Apple TV with an App Store and Siri could be shown at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
Christine McKee
Stephen Silver
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10 Comments
Imagine a subscription service that gave you access to everything on iTunes! Every iOS app, every Mac app, every in-app purchase, magazine subscription, song, TV programme, film, book, audiobook and podcast. BOOM.
[quote name="Benjamin Frost" url="/t/185387/apple-tv-app-lineup-expands-with-ted-tastemade-young-hollywood#post_2697207"]Imagine a subscription service that gave you access to everything on iTunes! Every iOS app, every Mac app, every in-app purchase, magazine subscription, song, TV programme, film, book, audiobook and podcast. BOOM.[/quote] Even better, a service that also aggregates the myriad free web based video/feeds (TED, edx, etc) into an enhanced CATV-like interface that isn't Comcastic, but more Siri-fied. So now, I have 200 channels of stuff again, some traditional, some not, that I can search and schedule in a practical fashion, for a fraction of the cost of traditional cable. KABOOM (sound of cords being cut en masse)
Imagine a subscription service that gave you access to everything on iTunes! Every iOS app, every Mac app, every in-app purchase, magazine subscription, song, TV programme, film, book, audiobook and podcast.
BOOM.
And the cost?
Seems like it would take a million lawyers a million years to negotiate all the rights to
even come close to realizing this.
So you'd still have the issue of tailoring, and it might just be stupendously complicated, instead of streamlined,
to be cost-effective.
Imagine a subscription service that gave you access to everything on iTunes! Every iOS app, every Mac app, every in-app purchase, magazine subscription, song, TV programme, film, book, audiobook and podcast.
BOOM.
This scenario is unlikely to occur in our lifetimes. After all, Apple would need to negotiate rental agreements with hundreds of thousands of individual/independent content providers.
Apple's biggest challenge is broadcasting live events, particularly sports due to complicated broadcast rights issues.
It's not important for Apple to get every last indie band or self-published author in an content subscription deal. They need to focus on the heavyweights: major sports leagues, the Olympic Games, World Cup soccer, stuff like that.
All these channel additions are truly becoming unruly with the current UI. Apple really needs to do something about this before continuing to add even more channels. The really useful ones are getting lost in a frequently-increasing sea of unusable or "junk" channels. It's annoying to have to hide new additions so frequently - especially when you have multiple Apple TVs.