Sounds great, ESPN on the Apple TV (and possibly the forthcoming iTV)! Until you see this quote:

“We’re a platform-agnostic content company,” Bratches, the network’s executive vice president of affiliate and advertising sales, said today in an interview. “To the extent that in the future there’s an opportunity with Apple to authenticate through the pay-TV food chain as we’re doing with Microsoft, that’s something that we will participate in.”

In other words: you’ll get access as long as you’re a cable TV subscriber…

As I’m not a cable TV subscriber, this is worthless to me.

For as much as I bitch about HBO being blind to future disruption, I continue to think that it’s ESPN that has to be the true pioneer here. They’re the one content provider that has the cable companies by the balls. No cable provider can afford not to offer ESPN. So ESPN has the most leeway to do what they want without fear of retribution. 

Josh Topolsky reports that the new iPad won’t have the oft-rumored quad-core chip, but instead will have the more recently unearth A5X, another dual-core chip — “basically an A5 on steroids”. The A6 may get saved for the next iPhone.

But, while the chip may not be quad core, the report also says the new iPad will feature more RAM than the previous models. This was a contentious point about the last iPad.

Ultimately, no normal user will care if it’s a A6 or A5X, if it’s quad-core or dual-core, or if it has double the RAM. All they’ll care about is if it’s noticeably faster. I suspect that will be the case.

I’m personally most excited for the screen and the LTE functionality. 

I’m also excited for the possibility 1080p films on the new iPad and the new Apple TV.

Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac cites “reliable sources” and has some part numbers to back it up. 

I don’t have any information about this, but it sounds right because I’d imagine Apple will want higher quality video content to show off on the new iPad’s Retina screen. That likely means upgrading current HD iTunes content from 720p to 1080p (which is still less than the new iPad’s supposed resolution of 2048x1536).

And if Apple is going to upgrade iTunes video content to 1080p, they’ll want to have an Apple TV to also take advantage of that content. The current Apple TVs are limited to 720p. 

But most interesting may be this “B82” item. Gurman believes it will be an accessory. Perhaps a new remote for the Apple TV? Touch? Voice? We’ll see soon enough. 

This is the most interesting bit about the rumored refresh of the Apple TV yet. Apple hasn’t talked a lot about the inclusion of Bluetooth 4.0 in both the iPhone 4S and the recent MacBooks, but it’s clearly there for a reason. 

What if we do see some sort of new Apple peripherals as a result? Perhaps a large Magic Trackpad for iOS games running on the Apple TV? Or, as 9to5 Mac suggests, maybe this is about Siri integration? Or maybe it’s simply about a better (faster) iPhone/Apple TV connection for using the great Remote app.

I have no real clue, I just can’t believe Apple would bother to include the new Bluetooth chip in the Apple TV if they didn’t intend to use it — and soon.

What I wrote a year ago about why I thought the then-new Apple TV made sense:

And on-demand is the big key to all of this. All of this content is going to move to the cloud. It has to for storage purposes and given how many devices we all have. Rentals just completely made the jump, but eventually purchases will too. At first, you’ll have the option to download certain movies you’ve bought to take on the go, but when you’re at your home, even movies you “own” will be streamed — they’ll simply be streamed for free. And then one day, all of this stuff will be in the cloud entirely as mobile devices will always be connected by high-speed wireless.

This is the future. It’s Apple’s future along with everyone else’s. This Apple TV is one small step in that direction, and at $99 it makes sense for now — at $229, it never did. This is a stepping stone to the cloud age. Right now it’s a mixture of the internal cloud (streaming from within your house) with the external cloud (streaming rentals from the cloud). Soon it will all be external.

That’s all sounding pretty good today. What I like most about the new iCloud-powered TV content is just how well it works. I just bought a season of The Wire on my Apple TV. I’ll simply grab it from the cloud when I want to watch it — from any device. 

While I’m clearly all for this idea (and I do continue to believe that Apple will eventually enter this market), I think a prediction of for this year sounds way too aggressive and optimistic. 

And wait, did I read “team up with a major OEM”? Yeah…

From my understanding, Apple has been pleasantly surprised by the revamped, $99 Apple TV’s reception. And I think they’re going to explore some more things there first. Things like allowing apps to beam from iPhone/iPad to the Apple TV.

The most interesting thing to me in this article is the following quote:

“blow Netflix and all those other guys away”

Of the online video models out there right now, I do believe that Netflix is the one that most intrigues Apple. And when something intrigues them…

But wait. Netflix is already on the Apple TV and iPads/iPhones/etc. Ah, true! Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

If the Apple TV gets access to HD NFL games, it’s game over for cable for at least two dozen people I know immediately. And many, many more people long term.