Apple Partners With French Cable Company Canal+ to Offer Apple TV 4K as Cable Box Alternative

That’s a very smart move on Apple’s part. People will get used to the Apple TV, will purchase apps and movies, and will be more inclined to purchase Apple products so things can will work “seamlessly”.

Anyone wanting to do this on your own should look into the combination of:

* HDHomeRun boxes from Silicon Dust ('https://www.silicondust.com/'). These are boxes you can plug into your home network and stream either OTA (local) channels and/or cable to any TVs and now Amazon Fire in the home. I picked up both their Prime box (for Comcast cable programming) and their Extends (for OTA local channels & subchannels). Works great.
* The $25 Channels App ('https://getchannels.com/'). Most people look right over it because they can't imagine paying $25 for an TV app but it brings ALL of the programming from those HDHomeRun boxes together in an attractive (cable TV-like) UNIFIED, on-screen guide, merging OTA locals with Cable channels. This app allows you to put your channels in any order, set up a FAV channel list, hide any channels you don't want, etc.
* The $8/month Channels App DVR ('https://getchannels.com/dvr/')- a full-featured, traditional hardware-like DVR that brings all of those key features NOT available on virtual DVRs to any TV in the house. Your DVR capacity is then NOT limited to ANY size- just add hard drives- and the recorded programming is accessible on ANY TV or computer or mobile device.

This combo brings all of the advantages of traditional cable without cable box leases. Feed as many TVs as you like with :apple:TV as "the box." Relative to streaming service alternatives to traditional cable, all of the tradeoffs of the streamers are overcome by not completely cutting the cord.

In short: you don't have to wait for your cable company to make this happen. Look into doing it yourself.

Now that I have a 4K TV with Roku I rarely use my Apple TV.

And it's almost the opposite for me. Once :apple:TV could become THE cable box, it gets just about daily usage, sometimes for several hours... where it used to sit for upwards of days before getting any use.

TVs don't have enough HDMI ports.

That's one reason to buy yourself a great receiver. Then the TV needs as little as just ONE HDMI port.

If I were a US Cable Co looking to extend things as long as possible, I'd jump all over trying to get an exclusive with Apple for something like this.

Comcast would NEVER do this (sadly). They could charge a $10 per device access fee too. Ugh. But they’re too busy licensing out X1.

So bypass Comcast. I'm using Comcast cable service with my :apple:TV. Post #10 lays it out. Works great.

If I were a US Cable Co looking to extend things as long as possible, I'd jump all over trying to get an exclusive with Apple for something like this.

Why? Then people will rent/buy movies from iTunes and not the cable provider. Additionally, they'd also chew into their own profit margins on DVR rentals. Comcast for example charges a $10 DVR fee AND a $10 HD fee to get it on that DVR (yes, even in 2018 SMH).