Apple is reinventing TV.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

According to a new report, the company is actively courting media content companies and others as it moves forward on the late co-founder Steve Jobs' vision for that category.

According to a story in Monday's Wall Street Journal, Apple executives have been meeting with several large media companies in the last few weeks, as it works toward putting together the pieces for a new Apple TV set. The Journal cited unnamed "people familiar with the matter."

Voice, Gestural Control

The vision that is being discussed by Apple, according to the Journal and others, is a high-definition TV that has a new kind of user interface, can be controlled from iPhone and iPads, and receives Net-based content wirelessly.  

 The new interface could include control via viewers' voice and gestures. Apple executives, according to the Journal, have also discussed the ability of watching a program on the Apple TV set, and then continue watching it, from the point left off, on an iPhone or iPad . This functionality might incorporate the recently launched iCloud , Apple's cloud -based storage  service.

While Apple has reportedly been working on TV development for some time, Jobs told author and journalist Walter Isaacson, during the interviews for Isaacson's recently released biography, that he and his team had "finally cracked" the problem of smart TVs.

Smart TV is a growing market, but one without a clear winner yet. Google, for instance, has launched its own Google TV without great success to date. Other major hardware companies, such as Sony and Panasonic , offer Net-connected TVs, and Microsoft and Sony have been attempting to create a more TV-like experience via their gaming console-oriented channels.

Ross Rubin, executive director of connected intelligence at the NPD Group, noted that the "state of the advanced, smart TV market today looks very much like the smartphone market did before Apple entered it."