As widely anticipated, consumer electronics king Apple announced yesterday evening that it is having another crack at selling a TV device to its burgeoning fan base.

Previous attempts at getting the public to buy the concept of "Apple TV" have proved relatively unsuccessful for a company that has had a string of wildly successful product launches this century.

Apple's first set-top box was released almost four years ago and enabled media content stored on a computer to be displayed on a TV. The new version, announced at an Apple "music event" on 1 Septermber, will dispense with built-in storage and instead will stream content on the fly to the TV. As well as streaming content from Apple's own money-spinning iTunes store it will also be able to deliver content from Netflix, the video rental and streaming company.

Apple founder and chief executive officer Steve Jobs said that switching to streamed content was the way to go. He said most people "won't want to manage storage" and suggested that synchronising the device with content on a computer was "too complicated."

The device is expected to go on sale in the US at the end of the month and will be priced at $99 a pop.

Apple also announced a revamp of its iPod portable media player product line at its music-themed event.

Meanwhile, the company that kicked off the portable media player revolution, Sony, announced earlier this week that Qriocity (pronounced Q-riosity), a music and video streaming service, would launch in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain this year. The service has been available in the US since April.

The subscription based service will offer standard definition and high definition content from major film studios such as 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount, Walt Disney and Warner Brothers, plus, of course, Sony Pictures. It will also offer "millions of songs," the company pledged.

Sony said content could be "rented at the touch of a button" via a number of Sony's products, such as Bravia televisions, Blu-ray players, and VAIO PCs, though the main delivery hub is expected to be the Playstation 3.

"Eventually this will be open to third-parties who can deliver a variety of high-quality digital content to Sony customers and others," said Fujio Nishida, Sony's president for Europe.

Broker KBC Peel Hunt said the twin announcements this week from pioneering giants of the consumer electronics world show that the concept of internet TV is gathering momentum.

Recently the Korean firm LG "also announced Smart TV, and internet-connected TV, which finds & manages open internet content," the broker noted. "Amazon and Google are also known to be seeking content agreements for TV services," the broker added.

"This all raises the question of what the future is for cable, satellite and telco Pay TV operators? They have the content, including some exclusive content, the subscribers and the bandwidth, but they do now need to add more of this flexible open internet functionality. Over the next 1-2 years this is likely to be positive for [set top box maker] Pace as innovation will have to speed up. Longer term, it is a more difficult call and will depend on where studios channel their content or indeed who ends up owning those players. It also raises the question whether the connected home concept will indeed develop as a managed service or will just be cloud-based," the broker speculated.

The Apple announcement should also be "very positive" for chip designers ARM and Imagination, KBC added.

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Pace (PIC) share price
Imagination Technologies Group (IMG) share price
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