Next Apple TV is $99, HD 'iPhone with No Display'

Over the weekend, word got out about Apple's plans for the Apple TV platform.

Just a week or so after Google launched its TV platform, a well-timed tip to Engadget has revealed details of the next Apple TV.

The most interesting part of it all is probably the price; at $99, it's cheap, but given that it's described as 'an iPhone without a display' it's hard to imagine how they could charge any more than a hundred bucks for it.

Engadget's Joshua Topolsky reports that the device will be based on iPhone 4 architecture, which means the same Apple A4 chip as the iPad and presumably the next generation iPhone. With only power and video out, the device isn't exactly rich in the ports department and it comes with just 16GB of flash storage. However, Apple isn't trying to sell a device with tons of connectivity and room for all six seasons of Lost. The company is said to be moving away from local storage and instead going for cloud-based storage. There'll be an option to use a Time Capsule (which comes in 1TB and 2TB flavors) for the folks who can't stand the idea of cloud storage but it'll cost you.

Though it wasn't confirmed in the Engadget report, there's a possibility that apps will also be available because the whole thing is running on iPhone 4. However, scaling would provide a problem.

Don't expect to hear more about this at WWDC next week because apparently, Apple won't be announcing anything TV-related then.

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