Apple, along with the other “over-the-top” services, has been trying to negotiate to gain access to local content for years. Today, the cable companies pretty much have a lock on live local channels and make it a key part of their offerings. To be fair, Sling TV is offered on other devices such as Roku, Amazon Fire, Chromecast and Android TV too, but you do not have Apple’s large offering of apps and the 1,300 channels that are delivered on Apple TV.įor Apple TV to displace a cable box completely, it must also provide local content. But with Sling TV, customers now also get access to many live TV stations, exactly as they are delivered via a cable service, but over the Internet instead. Most of the offerings or channels on Apple TV are video-on-demand. Sling TV is now on the latest Apple TV, providing live over-the-top channels like ESPN, CNN, and The Disney Channel for $20/month and up. Thanks to a partnership with Sling TV, Apple is a step closer to making this a reality. More importantly to users would be the delivery of unbundled services that would also give them hundreds of new choices in channels well beyond what the cable companies can offer today, along with thousands of TV-based apps.īut the real power in making Apple TV a cable box buster will only be evident when Apple is able to deliver live and local television.

If you look closely at Jobs’ comments and things Apple has said about Apple TV, it is hard to miss an underlying theme: Replacing your cable box. After it opened Apple TV to developers, thousands of new apps have made it one of the most powerful external TV boxes on the market. Apple keeps adding new video channels each month. At last week’s WWDC conference, Apple executives said that there are now 1,300 video channels, 650,000 movies and TV episodes on demand and 6,000 native apps on Apple TV. Apple CEO Tim Cook and Senior Vice President Eddie Cue have emphasized that apps are key to Apple TV’s future.

Channels on sling tv on apple tv