Apple will release its first premium podcast with early access available to Apple TV+ subscribers. The company made the announcement in a press release last 25 June that its first dual-language podcast, My Divo, will be the first podcast tied to an Apple TV+ subscription.

All eight episodes of My Divo will be available in English and Spanish for Apple TV+ subscribers when they connect their subscriptions to Apple Podcasts starting 1 July. Non-subscribers will listen to new episodes every week. However, they will get access to the first two episodes on launch day. Apple indicated that My Divo will serve as an example of its new business model for podcast distribution going forward, saying that "all upcoming Apple TV+ podcasts will also be made available in full to subscribers."

My Divo is a podcast about Mexican singer Juan Gabriel, also known as El Divo de Juárez (hence the title), hosted by award-winning journalist Maria Garcia as she tries to reconcile her identity with the legacy of the flamboyant Latino performer. She reexamines similarities within their Mexican heritage, including their sexualities and their upbringing in Ciudad Juárez.

Apple releasing a podcast behind an Apple TV+ paywall is similar to its plan of producing companion podcasts to Apple TV+ shows, which happened shortly after the launch of the streaming service four years ago. My Divo is the first Apple podcast not tied to an Apple TV+ show of the same name.

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Everyone may soon start to say goodbye to their DirecTV.

It may not be today or tomorrow, but it could be soon. DirecTV-owner AT&T this week admitted that it is no longer actively marketing the service, which has seen subscribers fall to 16 million from 20 million when the company purchased it for US$ 49 billion in 2015.

AT&T will continue selling DirecTV in "more rural or less dense suburban areas," John Stankey, the president of AT&T said at an investor conference. "But in terms of our marketing muscle and our momentum in the market, it will be about software-driven pay-TV packages."

Namely, the new AT&T TV, which opened nationally this week to poor reviews. "I'd recommend taking a pass," Edward C. Baig said in his USA TODAY review, due to high pricing, the need for equipment rental (for more than 1 TVand a two-year contract. Plus add some key programming that is missing, like Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and the NFL games that sports fans crave on DirecTV.

DirecTV was initially launched in 1994 as a way for rural customers to get TV entertainment in areas not covered by cable but over the years also expanded to urban centers.

The pitch: By installing a small satellite dish on the roof or outside the home, customers could get more channels and a clearer signal, with a heavy emphasis on sports. Most notably, "NFL Sunday Ticket," offering "every live game" across the country in one place. The downside: two-year contracts and equipment rental.

Phillip Swann, who blogs as the "TV Answer Man" and has covered the DirecTV woes extensively, was stunned at the new AT&T offering.

"This is everything people disliked about TV over the last 10 years," he says. "Two-year contracts, escalating prices and equipment to rent. If this was 10 years ago, maybe AT&T TV would have a shot. But not now."

The ease of streaming alternatives, of smart TVs that connect to the Internet to bring in apps like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, or cheap streaming players like the Roku and Amazon Fire TV Stick, which sell for around $25, make the need for equipment rental a thing of the past.

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Disney CEO Bob Iger has stepped down from the Apple board and it is a big statement on what the future holds. In a way, it shows the degree to which Apple is getting into Disney's business of original content, but also it signals how the content and distribution facets of the media business are converging.

The media biz has always been about how they made friends and evolving alliances which makes for tricky navigation even in quiescent times. But the current environment has been particularly marked by turmoil and the appearance of rocky reefs and shifting shoals.

In the case of Disney, the trouble comes from Apple, while with AT&T, a Wall Street firebrand and an old-fashioned carriage skirmish are to blame.

It started when the Apple Watch kept defaulting to a Toy Story motif. It made sense because Toy Story is a Pixar property (a unit of Disney), and Disney and Apple have been practically related since Steve Jobs sold Pixar to Disney for US$ 7.4 billion in 2006. The all-stock deal made Jobs Disney’s largest shareholder and took a seat on Disney’s board.

And thus began a cozy relationship between the two companies that extended up to and beyond Steve Jobs' death in October of 2011 and Iger joining Apple’s board one month later.

Disney was the first studio to sell TV shows and movies on the iTunes store for instance. Disney revamped its stores to make them look more like Apple’s. And Jobs, Iger and Tim Cook have lavished praise on each other.

With the announcement of Apple TV+ recently, a streaming subscription service with Apple-produced original movies and TV shows, Apple has planted its flag squarely in Disney’s turf. Producing original programming is not the business of a hardware company, or a software company, or a platform. It’s the business of a media company, a la Disney.

However, it is even more pointed than that. Debuting on 1 November at US$ 4.99 a month, (and, in an aggressive leveraging of its ecosystem, free for a year if you buy an Apple device) Apple TV+ comes out before and undercuts Disney's streaming service offering which arrives on 12 November at US$ 6.99.

Iger acknowledged this discomfort, but had characterized streaming conflicts mostly as a potential problem since it "has not been discussed all that much" by the Apple directors. But that changed. In this flywheel era, and as service becomes more and more important to Apple, one part of the business is increasingly connected to another, it became untenable for Iger to simply recuse himself from specific discussions.

It should not be forgotten that with a trillion dollar market cap, Apple could easily buy Disney, (worth only US$ 247 billion) in a heartbeat. "We think a big acquisition is on the horizon," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives says about Apple. A Disney deal would be a big lift. More likely is the winding down of what had been an unusually close, business buddy act.

Not that Apple and Disney will completely disconnect. In the media world, it's bad business not to do business with everyone.

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Apple and Amazon has decided to bury the hatchet, leading to the return of the Apple TV on Amazon, and the launch of Amazon's Prime Video app on Apple TV. This has proved beneficial to both companies.

The Amazon Prime Video app had the most first-week downloads of any app in the history of tvOS.

Achieving this milestone is fairly notable, given that Amazon Prime Video only arrived on Apple TV in early December. That indicates there was a lot of pent-up demand from Amazon Prime members for this app.

The news was first reported by the site BestAppleTV.com, and TechCrunch since confirmed its accuracy with sources close to the company.

The two companies had been fierce rivals for years, which hurt both of their respective customer bases. But that changed this summer. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced Apple's plan to allow Amazon's app on Apple TV at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference in June, noting that the app would go live before year-end.

According to Apple TV App Store data provided by Sensor Tower, the Amazon Prime Video app has ranked number one in the free apps chart since its launch, and remains in the top position now in the U.S. and all other regions where it's available.

In addition, App Annie reports that the Amazon Prime Video app saw its largest week in terms of iOS downloads ever - another signal related to the Apple TV launch. While the firm isn't yet able to provide tvOS download estimates, the bump in downloads likely correlates to the Apple TV debut. That is, as people add the app to their TV where they do much of their viewing, they may add it to their mobile devices, as well, in order to continue watching shows and movies where they left off.

"Globally, Amazon Prime Video saw its largest week of iOS downloads ever during the week of December 3rd through 9th, 2017 seeing well over 550,000 iOS downloads," App Annie told TechCrunch. This represents a 45 percent increase in global weekly downloads, compared the average of the four weeks prior, it said.

"Following a large global release on tvOS on December 6th, 2017, Amazon Prime Video has also seen a strong spike in downloads of its iPhone and iPad app. This was driven both by releases in new markets like the U.K. and Germany and upticks in markets where it is already well established like the U.S.," the firm added.

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Apple TV 4K saw the set-top box leap into the same league as its rivals. However, despite getting so much right, the device still had a handful of flaws, including its one video output fits all functionality.

AV enthusiasts cried foul, and it seems Apple heard their wails. According to the latest tvOS developer beta, Apple TV 4K will soon automatically switch its display settings to match the native frame rate and dynamic range of a video.

Currently, Apple TV 4K auto-configures those outputs during the set-up stage. Apple claims that this helps to avoid the irksome jittering that plagues some TVs when they switch in and out of HDR modes. The company's solution is to strong-arm the best video setting for the set.

So, if the Apple TV sets to output 4K Dolby Vision HDR, it will carry on displaying that format, even if users switch to a video made for standard dynamic range and standard definition. Users can still force the Apple TV to display specific resolutions and refresh rates, but they would expect a modern (not to mention pricey) set-top box to better handle itself.

In the near future, it will. With tvOS 11.2, Apple will introduce a new "Match Content" setting within the device's audio and video menu. It will essentially put users in control of the video output, allowing them to choose to match the dynamic range and refresh rate -- although, both will be disabled by default.

There's no ETA on when the update will arrive, and Apple warns that it will only work with "compatible apps." But, as long as it fixes the issue at hand, customers should be pleased. Then, the only thing missing from the stellar device will be Dolby Atmos support.

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The current Apple TV is almost two years old. This is the primary reason why Apple has been working on a new device for a while. In the last couple of days, an upcoming build of iOS 11 for the next iPhone was leaked and contains a ton of information about unreleased products, including the next Apple TV.

A previous leak of the HomePod firmware already indicated that Apple was working on an Apple TV with 4K video support. The new device could also support various high-dynamic range standards, such as Dolby Vision, HDR10 and Hybrid Log-Gamma. The company could announce 4K videos on the iTunes Store as well as in the Netflix app.

And very recently, Steve Troughton-Smith discovered some of the technical specs of the next Apple TV. According to him, the media player is going to receive a major performance gain with a lot more computing power and RAM.

Apple first shipped the A10 with the iPhone 7 last year. The A10X is an updated version of this chip optimized for the most recent iPad Pro. It is a surprisingly fast system-on-a-chip and sometimes even faster than a MacBook.

The current Apple TV sports an A8 system-on-a-chip, the one that was developed for the iPhone 6. It is a bit hard to grasp Apple's progress when it comes to silicon. According to Geekbench, when they compare the A10X with the A8, the A10X is 1.7 times faster for single-core tasks, 2.8 times faster for multi-core tasks and 5.7 times faster for Metal-focused, GPU-intensive tasks. It is a huge improvement overall.

This upgrade in particular is going to feel great when users are trying to stream 4K videos. Skipping forward and backward should feel snappy. And the videos will never buffer, even if they are trying to play 4K videos with 60 frames per second (the new iPhones should let users shoot 4K videos with 60 FPS).

In addition to a faster system-on-a-chip, Apple could also include 3GB of RAM instead of 2GB. This way, everyone will be able to cache a good chunk of the movie or TV show they are currently streaming.

Apple could announce the new Apple TV during its annual September press conference. The company could also use this opportunity to showcase some new video games running on the Apple TV as it’s quite a capable device now.

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According to Digital Trends, Apple may not have as large a presence in the streaming game as it does in the world of computers and smartphones, but the Apple TV streaming box is still a popular choice, especially for those with a vested interest in the tech giant’s patented ecosystem.

For those who who want to turn their dumb TV into a smart one, the Apple TV offers much of the same functionality as streamers like Amazon’s Fire TV and Roku‘s suite of devices — plus, it’s got iOS-specific features like AirPlay support.

It has been two years since Apple released the most recent iteration of the streaming box, however, and even then it didn’t exactly boast the best specs or the newest tech. By now, the current model is hopelessly outdated, leaving Apple devotees high and dry when it comes to features like 4K and HDR support. At long last, rumors have begun to fly regarding a brand new Apple TV model.

4K and HDR Support Imminent?
According to a report released on 24 August by Bloomberg, the rumors were true: Apple is going to unveil a new iteration of the Apple TV, one with support for 4K Ultra HD playback and HDR, finally catching up with its rivals in the streaming space.

The report suggests the tech giant plans to officially announce the new set-top streamer in September, alongside three new iPhone models and a new Apple Watch. The news comes on the heels of a report by Parks Associates, which revealed that Apple held only a 15 percent share in the streaming device market, trailing Roku (at number one), Amazon, and Google, respectively. Since the most recent Apple TV released in 2015, those companies have continually updated their offerings, adding support for 4K and other cool features, while Apple has not.

Apple will need to strike deals with 4K content creators and, according to Bloomberg, the company has been in contact with movie studios about offering 4K Ultra HD films via iTunes.

iTunes Tells the Tale
In February, reports swirled that Apple was in the process of testing a new Apple TV — one capable of supporting 4K Ultra HD resolution and High Dynamic Range (HDR). Modern televisions have all but abandoned lower resolutions, and HDR has also become commonplace in all but the lowest-priced models. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Instant Video have increasingly rolled out 4K content for those with compatible devices and TVs, making the current Apple TV look more archaic by the day.

A recent report from MacRumors suggests that 4K and HDR support may be on the way, though (and for Apple's sake, they had better be). Reader Tomas Jackson noticed that some of the movies under his "Purchased" tab in iTunes were listed as "4K" and "HDR" under the Type category. Movies like 2016's "Passengers" and "Fantastic Beasts" and "Where To Find Them" had these tags, even though users are currently unable to download any content from iTunes above 1080p HD resolution.

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The recently unearthed data strings from Apple's HomePod firmware may have provided some insight into what changes might be coming to an updated version of the venerable Apple TV. Originally spotted by developer Guilherme Rambo, the next iteration of the Apple TV will include support for streaming 4K content along with support for HDR10 and Dolby Vision.

All told, the fifth-gen Apple TV will finally enable users to enjoy 4K content with incredibly vivid colors and much improved contrast and color accuracy. Notably, this is not the first indication pointing to Apple finally hopping aboard the 4K bandwagon. Just a few weeks back, some iTunes users observed that references to 4K and HDR content curiously began showing up in their purchase history.

What's more, a Bloomberg report from earlier in the year claimed that Apple was already busy testing a 4K Apple TV in order to better compete with set-top boxes from the likes of Amazon and Roku.

At this time, it is hard to deny that the current fourth-gen version of the Apple TV is somewhat over priced when stacked up against competing devices. Specifically, the entry-level Apple TV will cost consumers a hefty US$ 149. In contrast, Amazon's Fire TV only costs US$ 89.99 while the Roku Premiere can be had for as little as US$ 69.99.

Apple's TV efforts in recent years have been lackluster at best, and embarrassing at worst. While there have been some improvements in recent years, it seems that the Apple TV is always trailing behind the competition, both in terms of affordability and features. The Siri remote that shipped with the 4th gen Apple TV, for example, was lambasted by many users for being incredibly difficult to use.

To this point, Ken Segall noted a few months back:

"The Siri Remote is a gorgeously designed object — it's just a terribly designed remote.

It's a thin slab that feels like, well, a thin slab. Its shape doesn't contribute one iota to ease of use. There are a number of remotes out there that fit the human hand nicely, and put the most-used buttons at one’s fingertips.

Lapses of this type make it difficult to defend Apple when it is accused of favoring design over function. It’s hard to think of the Siri Remote as anything but design run amok. It’s beautifully annoying."

With word that the next-gen Apple TV will finally offer some long overdue improvements when it comes to picture quality, we can only hope that some Siri remote and UI improvements will be introduced as well. One thing's for sure, though, the Apple TV at this point has nowhere to go but up.

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