I do however see it as a means for all the start up shows and products on YouTube to migrate to a pay model, where they can chage for content and ads.

I also think that its important to recognize the slowing in flat screen sales. This doesn’t look like the right time to start marketing an Apple tv set, very few will be interested I replacing their current flat screen, just to watch low bandwidth Internet TV with D grade content.

iTV is not highly anticipated. It may be for a small group of fanboys, but it is a product outside the Apple market.

Apple has made its tens of billions in the past decade on fashion devices. Small portable devices (and the store that sells additional content to them). Apple users want the social currency of carrying a “hip” product. During the past decade, Apple has failed miserably on the computer desktop. Their Mac Pros are, by some, 18 months late for an update. Apple TV was a complete flop, even though it is the only cheap Apple product considering the hardware you buy. Apple has been trying and failing to make that failure work for five years now.

iPods, iPhones, iPads, Macbooks, Macbook Airs, MacBook Pros. These have all fuelled Apple sales for the past decade. Most of the time, stripping hardware and features for smaller and lighter portable fashion products.

So how many of those teens and twentysomethings are going to flood the stores to buy a TV with the same content they already get? A TV that they can not show off in public to improve their social standing in their peer group. One that requires them to invite their friends (if they have any real friends to start with) to their neglected residence to watch normal shows. You are asking hipsters who live at the local starbucks to hang up their lifestyles and put on a pair of slippers for a relatively solo life in front of a TV.

Not to mention that most of these teens and twentysomethings ca only afford their iPhone on a 24 month contract. You will lose a notable percentage to start with by forcing them to get enough credit (or ready cash) to purchase a $2000 TV.

THEN you need to see it from the Networks POV. After viewing what Apple did to the music industry. Forcing lower returns for producers of content once Apple were the sole gatekeepers. Since Networks make healthy profits now, why do a deal with a company that will use your own content to go into direct price competition with your current revenue streams? You would need to have no brains whatsoever to agree to any sort of deal with Apple. Apple has a track record of playing dirtier than Microsoft ever did.

The difficult part for HBO and other content providers will be making the transition without alienating their current customers – Time Warner and Comcast.