Two new reports Wednesday added to speculation about how Apple might seek to revolutionize the television this year.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has bold TV plans of its own, involving Bing, Xbox and its Kinect voice and motion technology. as well as content partnerships with Verizon, HBO, Comcast and Bravo and others.

Piper Jaffrey analyst Gene Munster, who has been predicting Apple's entry into the TV market since 2009, laid out three broad scenarios on how it could do that.

In one, users would buy and hook up a device to their existing TV, which doesn't seem like that much of a revolution since Tivo and Google TV already have a similar setup. But Munster calls this the 'easiest and most likely option.'

The second involves Apple offering access to live TV from network channels combined with some other Web-based video services, 'appifying' the TV for content providers.

The third has Apple offering monthly subscriptions to live TV packages with content from content providers.

Munster ranks the third scenario the least likely "given existing licensing arrangements between content providers and service providers as well as the fact that it lies outside of Apple's core competencies, even in media."

The analyst says he is confident that Apple will roll something important out but, again, he has been predicting an Apple TV since long before co-founder Steve Jobs was quoted in his biography last year as saying he had "cracked" the television puzzle.

Munster says the timing is uncertain, adding, "We believe that Apple only enters mature markets with the goal of revolutionizing them, as it did with the smartphone. Without a revamped TV content solution, we do not think Apple enters the TV market."

An Apple patent application uncovered this week, meanwhile, talks about a new touch-based remote control system.

AppleInsider writes, "The remote would include a 'discovery mechanism' that would discover available appliances for it to control, negating the need for users to enter complex codes and program individual devices."

So what Jobs "cracked" was a universal remote control? That hardly seems revolutionary compared to earlier predictions that a new Apple TV would be voice-controlled a la the iPhone 4S Siri service.

Apple rival Microsoft has been rolling out a number of apps that will allow Xbox Live users to take advantage of Kinect to find content from more than 40 Xbox Live content partners. The move signals Microsoft’s big bet that -- despite the popularity of watching content on small, on-the-go devices like smartphones and tablets -- families still want to gather around a big-screen TV and watch programming at home.

Microsoft has been updating its Xbox game console to allow people to use spoken commands to surf for TV and movie content, marking the further evolution of Microsoft’s voice and motion technology.

The new Kinect-enhanced offering taps into Bing’s search technology to let Xbox Live viewers use their voice to find what they want to watch.

Microsoft also recently acquired VideoSurf, a California video-search technology startup backed by Al Gore, for a reported $70 million. VideoSurf’s technology can “see” inside videos to find content from anywhere on the web, including Hulu, CNN and Comedy Central, in a fast, efficient and scalable way.