What’s a TV?

I really hate to turn this blog into nothing but commentary on every article on Marco.org, but that guy is on a roll with interesting topics lately. Today, it’s the idea of an Apple HDTV, which I have some thoughts about.

What defines a TV? The common perception is of a big display that takes in a video source and displays it on the screen, along with a couch-potato-friendly UI. If you remove the display from the equation, though, then it becomes something that Apple already sells for $99. Apple also sells displays, too - if you want, you can buy yourself an entirely Apple-made, very nice-looking 27” TV for about $1098, when you include the Apple TV.

Yes, that’s a ridiculous idea, but it’s also probably the best 27-inch TV you could ever buy, specs and connectivity issues aside. It just feels weird because we’re used to TV’s being all-in-one devices. Why do we assume the TV and the display have to be one and the same? HP and Apple both make all-in-one PC’s, but we don’t think any less of the standalone towers and Mac Minis for being separated from the screen.

For that matter, consider this: if you hook up a Mac Mini to a cheap 19-inch LCD, you’ll say “That’s a Mac.” Hook it up to a Cinema Display and you’ll still say “That’s a Mac.” Hook it up to a 42-inch TV and you’ll say “That’s a Mac… attached to a TV.” Why does this make sense to everyone?

True, that TV has a tuner, and a cable connection, and all sorts of other input connections, but this merely encourages the ridiculously disintegrated home entertainment experience that exists today. An Apple-inspired setup would be a screen, an Apple TV, and speakers. Clean, simple, user-friendly and well-integrated, just the way Apple does things. No Blu-ray nonsense, no cable box, nothing that Apple thinks you don’t need.

Really, Apple already makes all the TV it wants to, and the fact of the matter is that our perception of a TV has been skewed by the fact that for fifty years companies have been sandwiching TV’s and displays together.

Apple could theoretically also sell displays for that TV, but displays are commoditized - the margins on them are razor-thin. Apple’s strengths are in design, of both software and hardware, which they use to increase the value of their products without increasing the per-item cost. With displays, there is not much software and hardware to design that would result in anything substantially better than what the competition would bring, so Apple gains very little from making low-to-mid-range displays.

Therefore, as with the Mac Mini, Apple is perfectly happy to let you attach someone’s crummy monitor to your Apple TV, and someone else’s speakers to it. They’ve already made the real TV: the part that they can profit from and innovate with.