AppleTV 4K and Apple Video Services.

If any NowTV subscriber enables their Developer options on their ATV 4K the HUD playback overlay will clarify what the video and audio streaming codecs and bitrates used for audio are (which may differ from the output format - as ATV 4Ks usually decode to PCM multichannel rather than bitstreaming compressed audio formats)

Does this only work on Apple TV 4K - tried it on my Apple TV 4 (HD only) and it doesn't come up on Xcode.

You may need to connect an ATV 4 to a Mac via a USB-C cable - not sure if the non-4K version appears over WiFi - though I thought it did.

The ATV 4K doesn't have a visible USB-C port - though apparently there is a hidden one inside the Ethernet port - so has to connect to Xcode via WiFi.

Instructions to connect the two are below - at least for WiFi.

https://www.howtogeek.com/409201/how-to-unlock-detailed-streaming-statistics-on-the-apple-tv/

It has been reported that the free extension of AppleTV+ subs until Feb 2021 has been further extended to Jun 2021, presumably due to C19 production delays.

(various sources - not seen anything from Apple directly though)

IMMEDIATE UPDATE .....
Just Checked my Subscription information in my Apple id account, it is indeed correct, my next payment date is now extended out until 16 JUL 2021.

Good news, although one wonders who actually is paying for it. A significant percentage of viewers have to be still on free trials.

Somehow I think Apple might be able to take the hit.

It’s a big hit, not just losing the subscription income itself, but effectively not having a means of recouping the production costs of the shows that they’ve produced (the Morning Show alone apparently at $150m).

Sure, they can take that hit, they are a very successful company when it comes to their core business of hardware and software. How long before their shareholders decide they’d rather have that money as a dividend rather than written off on a service that no one is paying for and isn’t really top of people’s reasons for buying an Apple product?

While all that is true, it is also the case that launching a streaming service is a very long term plan. Nobody doing so would expect their service to be profitable for a good number of years. So while I doubt they they 'pandemic' as one of the headings within that plan, delaying some parts of that by six months might not be such a catastrophe.

I'm sure Apple TV+ is a loss leader for Apple in a way that Prime Video is a loss leader for Amazon, I can't imagine many people pay the £5.99 a month for solely Prime Video when for an extra £2 a month, you get all the other Prime benefits.

I suspect in time, the Apple One subscription will what Apple pushes more than their individual subscription services.

This article's interesting for stats on how few users are paying for it and how few will pay for it when their trial eventually runs out. I get the sense that this free trial may keep going until something takes off and drives numbers, they can't risk big shows that get watched by no one, another Quibi but with more stakes and watchable content.

This bit potentially points to its future:



So it could well exist primarily as a benefit rather than a proper competitor to Netflix and Disney. I'm surprised they don't push the free year more in their hardware ads but maybe they're waiting for the content to be beefed up a bit more.

Apple One is just something I can't really see taking off here. It's not value for money for anyone who wants to keep Spotify for example and iCloud is so cheap on its own that I don't really count it as something I'm bothered about being bundled with something else.

https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/apple-tv-plus-freeloader-problem-percent-free-1234890385/

Look back in the thread, the addition of third party linear channels looks possible in the near future, using it's backbone. That could become a game changer.

There's also been recent publicity around Apple acquiring MGM to add their content library to the service in parallel to marketing their content via Apple Services. Doing so would lift the service significantly and the $5Bn price doesn't seem excess either.

There's a major onsell of the service beyond Apple products too to add to the mix.

Out of interest - what backbone for linear channel distribution does Apple currently have that third parties could use? AFAIK Apple don't currently operate any linear channels themselves? The linear channels available via third party apps are leveraging existing third-party distribution/CDN streaming set-ups (iPlayer, All4, ITV Hub, Eurosport Player, Amazon Prime Sport etc.) rather than using an Apple distribution system?

Or are you suggesting that Apple are in the process of implementing their own backbone/CDN?

Or by 'backbone' do you mean platform (i.e. integration within the tvOS UI - rather than backbone in the more formal sense of 'distribution network')