Apple will release the HDTV under its own brand by the name of iPanel in the fourth quarter of this year, reports AppleInsider citing an analyst Peter Misek with Jefferies & Co.

First it was assumed that this gadget will be released under the name iTV. However Misek says that the new product being a universal multimedia center, Apple would prefer a more general name. Moreover, the expert notes that the trademark ITV is owned by British television network of the same name, and it would have led to additional complexities.

According to Misek, iPanel will be priced in the range of about 1250 dollars and TV sales would increase the interest of buyers in other devices from Apple, as it will add new people to the ecosystem, developed by the company.

Experts have long predicted that Apple is developing its own TV model, but officially this information has not been confirmed yet. However, over time more and more analysts are inclined to believe that such Apple is developing such a device.
At the moment, the company has a digital media receiver called Apple TV which is a small form factor network appliance designed to play digital content originating from the iTunes Store, Netflix, YouTube, Flickr, MobileMe, MLB.tv, and others or any Mac OS X or Windows computer running iTunes on HDTV screen. In the fourth quarter of 2011, Apple sold 1.4 million of these receivers.

Rumors about TV from Apple got strong backing last fall after the release of Steve Jobs’ biography in which he has expressed desire to make a device that could change the TV just as the iPod has changed the audio records industry.

According to one of the ideas of Steve Jobs, having bought the movie and started watching it on a mobile device, the user does not need to take additional steps to continue watching it on big screen.
Let’s wait and watch, when finally Apple’s iPanel will see light of the day.

TV from Apple will be called iPanel, not iTV as earlier presumed/image via CultofMac