Apple Pitching Set-Top Box For Cable TV

It seems to say Apple is stepping up its game in the television market. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple is in talks with a few of the biggest cable operators to provide a set-top box to provide live cable television channel, rather than competing against paid TV providers with their own IPTV service.  We assume that some of the biggest cable provider include Comcast and Time Warner.

As of right now, Apple has not reached a deal with any of the cable operators. One possible reason is that the cable operators does not want to let Apple get their foot into the television market. Reports are saying that Apple has some pretty high demands, which include a 30 percent cut on “certain transactions,” the exclusive provider of the set-top boxes,  as well as some sort of IP technology (which is currently unknown as of right now). We guess that the IP technology of some kind can be used to remote schedule and record shows, control the device over the network with a portable device of some kind, other forms of receiving content like Netflix, or even a IPTV service of some sort. Though this sounds like a bad idea for cable providers, allowing Apple to be the main supplier for the set-top boxes instead of requiring the cable provider to purchase the boxes themselves and leasing them to the customers.

Even though Apple has not reached a deal with the cable operators, we can guess that the device will have a cable card or act similar like Boxee and use a DLNA-controlled high definition digital transport adapter, it can possibly have some form of schedule and record and streaming like feature, and it is likely to have some way to mix internet based content with traditional television.