Foxconn chairman: we're going to build Apple's television
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 11th May 2012 19:10 UTC
Apple The next frontier for Apple - and other technology companies - to conquer: the television market. Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn, has confirmed his company will be building a television for Apple in conjunction with Sharp. Since I bought a brand-new top-of-the-line TV late last year, I've been thinking a lot about what could be improved about the state of TV today, and as crazy as it seems, I'm actually not that dissatisfied.
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I really don't know
by Bill Shooter of Bul on Sat 12th May 2012 14:32 UTC
Bill Shooter of Bul
Member since:
2006-07-14

I was originally writing a post about how this was doomed to failure in the US, and apple must be launching in Europe only, but I took a look at wikipedia's cable card article ( In the us you'd need a pcmia card to use a non cable provider's box). It says that all of he cable boxes out there are already using cable cards, therefore the technology is mature and supported by the cable companies.

However, I can't find any cable card ready Called DCR or digital cable ready tvs available online. No one I know of has one, even my crazy money is no object friends.

Apple Tv and google tv would both be much much better if they also had cable card capability, as it could be *the* box.

So either Apple has figured out what it needs to to make this happen and is going directly to the built in DCR TV market, or I'm missing something, or Apple is not building a tv for the US market.

Reply Score: 2

RE: I really don't know
by henderson101 on Sun 13th May 2012 02:13 in reply to "I really don't know"
henderson101 Member since:
2006-05-30

I was originally writing a post about how this was doomed to failure in the US, and apple must be launching in Europe only, but I took a look at wikipedia's cable card article ( In the us you'd need a pcmia card to use a non cable provider's box). It says that all of he cable boxes out there are already using cable cards, therefore the technology is mature and supported by the cable companies.


Well, cable cards don't exist in the UK. Virgin Media (as in, yes, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Atlantic, etc) runs the countries entire consumer cable TV network. UK was late at adopting cable, it rolled out over most of the country in the late 80's and early 90's. Originally, it was regional with providers like Videotron, Nynex, NTL, etc. but the companies began to merge (lack of funds after all the investment? Not sure), and we ended up with Cable and Wireless and Blueyonder then NTL owned everything then Virgin took over.

We entirely digital cable now. It uses a variant of the European DVB standard. The basic cable box has a full system built in that allows you to stream content (catch up TV, movies, general TV series and music videos.) there's a version with a built in DVR and they launched a TIVO version box last year. Virgin only have set top boxes. There are no cable cards.

Sky are the next competitor. Digital satellite. No option for a "cable card" style adapter.

We have mainly digital terrestrial TV (transmitter over the air) with the last few analog regions going over the next year. This is DVB. All new TVs have a digital tuner built in now.

So, basically, Apple either need to pull all of this together - allow for cable, satellite and digital terrestrial to be accepted, or they will basically lose out big time. How they'll get the TV to work with the Virgin services, I don't know. Without them, it seriously limits the usefulness. If we end up with an Apple TV integrated flat Apple TV which we then need to plumb in all of the set top boxes - seriously, what is the point? You can buy reasonable TV's that do most of that already. Buy an Apple TV box, and you're done. Don't buy an Apple TV box... Err... Everything sill works.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE: I really don't know
by AnyoneEB on Sun 13th May 2012 19:58 in reply to "I really don't know"
AnyoneEB Member since:
2008-10-26

Cable cards don't seem to actually be that common. I remember seeing one TV several years ago (in someone's house) that took one. When my parents got their first HDTV a few years ago, they also got an HD TiVo, which takes 2 cable cards in order to be able to record two shows at once. It took at least three visits from cable company techs before they finally got one that could actually get a cable card working, so I got the idea that they weren't used very much. (This was in the northeast of the United States.)

Reply Parent Score: 1

RE: I really don't know
by daedalus on Mon 14th May 2012 07:30 in reply to "I really don't know"
daedalus Member since:
2011-01-14

Hmmm... I have an official cable decoder box from my provider which has a cable card in it - take the card out and you don't get any channels.I'm in Ireland, where we have a cable monopoly and a hideous service from NTL, but it seems that everyone here has an NTL card, so maybe we'll be able to use the Apple TV like that. Then again, being NTL, they'll probably block that sort of thing and you'll be still forced to use their under-powered, unstable and generally cruddy decoder box with your new TV...

Reply Parent Score: 1

RE[2]: I really don't know
by zima on Fri 18th May 2012 23:56 in reply to "RE: I really don't know"
zima Member since:
2005-07-06

take the card out and you don't get any channels

That's really hideous with satellite decoder boxes ...they're technically perfectly capable of receiving many free-to-air channels (TV and radio), but you can watch them only as long as "valid" card is inside.

Reply Parent Score: 2