What are U looking for with new TV4k

[narenh]

Multi-channel unprocessed bitstream out. Apple positions this device as some kind of home theatre leviathan yet it can't even pass an unmolested digital bitstream out to an AVR for external processing. Also I resent the price-tiered partitioning of ethernet for those who use a wired LAN. Most likely it'll be erased completely before long.

UGH feel you. 128GB is so wasteful for people who don't game.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I resent the price-tiered partitioning of ethernet for those who use a wired LAN. Most likely it'll be erased completely before long.

So do I

What a waste of extra storage I don't want or need, just to retain wired networking

If they do ever nuke Ethernet, I'm done with ATV's

 

[narenh]

The awful part is there isn't an alternative that isn't riddled with ads. Even on Apple TV, the latest YouTube update has its own "screensaver" with a really short timeout (less than the 10 min for my Apple TV screensaver) that of course prevents the native screensaver from appearing and I'm sure will very soon be showing ads.

 

[turbineseaplane]

The awful part is there isn't an alternative that isn't riddled with ads. Even on Apple TV, the latest YouTube update has its own "screensaver" with a really short timeout (less than the 10 min for my Apple TV screensaver) that of course prevents the native screensaver from appearing and I'm sure will very soon be showing ads.

Jeez .. really?

I’m a little disappointed to hear Apple allows that

 

[mhmercer]

I'd like FRL 6 lane, and audio passthrough.

 

[Timpetus]

Honestly I just want it to be a Mac Mini, but make it capable of running AppleTV software as a default, starts-when-you-boot package. Give me an app tile that takes me to the MacOS desktop, so when I want to use the Mac side of it I can access it easily. Let it still work with the AppleTV remote and boot the TV and wake up the Mini with the same one button press.

I still have my old Mac Mini but when we bought an AppleTV 4K it moved to the office and became just a file/Plex server, now headless instead of being plugged into our TV.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Honestly I just want it to be a Mac Mini, but make it capable of running AppleTV software as a default, starts-when-you-boot package. Give me an app tile that takes me to the MacOS desktop, so when I want to use the Mac side of it I can access it easily. Let it still work with the AppleTV remote and boot the TV and wake up the Mini with the same one button press.

I still have my old Mac Mini but when we bought an AppleTV 4K it moved to the office and became just a file/Plex server, now headless instead of being plugged into our TV.

Front Row returns after a 14 year hiatus!

 

[burgman]

OK, I'm not going to have this debate again as it is the same one against AppleTV going 4K before they did and 1080p before they did. Again, hardware must lead. If your first 2 bullets were universally addressed in the iTunes Store tonight, no one could make a nickel from any 8K content without some 8K hardware to play that content. First hardware, THEN software. Or at best, hardware and some software together.

There are 94 8K televisions available on Amazon right now. There are 16 8K TVs available at my local Best Buy. 8K TVs have been available for YEARS now. I don't know how we can assume "none in the wild" if they've been for sale for so many years and are abundantly available. I have some friends with 8K TVs so I know for certain that there are "some in the wild." All these companies are not rolling out new models each year to sell none of them.

We barely have 8K monitors because Apple hasn't rolled them out for us, still clinging to 5K or 6K choices. That's simply a matter of embracing 8K or- Apple being Apple- 9K or 10.5K or whatever it will be. Select new Macs have the added hardware to output to 8K monitors- a useless feature if we can only judge based on monitors available from Apple... and yet Apple put that hardware upgrade in there anyway.

One can edit 12K video on a 4K monitor if they like. Yes, they won't see every pixel but they can edit, then render the file at 12K or 8K of whatever they want. We can edit all the 4K video we shoot on iPhones on their NOT 4K screens too. It doesn't require an 8K or higher monitor to edit 8K video any more than it requires a 4K monitor to edit 4K video.

iPhone 15 rolled out with spatial video capability long before anyone could buy a single Vpro to watch those videos. So it's not unheard of for Apple to adopt a new standard even before 1 person can watch it. 8K is not a new standard. It's existed for years now. Select Samsung phones have been able to shoot it since 2020. I bet those people would love an efficient way to get it to an 8K TV if they have one. I have to assume some of them do and are presumably hooking the phone to the TV to watch their 8K home movies. I bet they'd jump on an Apple box that could get those videos there.

I have a 4K TV as my main one myself. I wouldn't run out to buy an 8K TV even if an 8K AppleTV launched tomorrow with all iTunes content in 8K and a new iDevice launched to shoot in 8K. Instead, I'd immediately add that 8K AppleTV because added hardware horsepower can easily work with less demanding screens... like new Macs able to output 8K working with 6K, 5K, 4K or lower resolution screens. So my new 8K AppleTV would downconvert any content shot in 8K for my 4K TV.

I'd immediately shoot in 8K as soon as I could, edit & render in 8K on my 5K monitor and then watch it downcoverted in 4K on my 4K TV. In a few years, when that 4K TV conks, I'd replace it with an 8K TV and all that accumulated 8K content I've not yet seen at 8K would suddenly be watchable in 8K on my next TV. Else, if I wait until the TV is 8K in my home before shooting any content in 8K, I can't come back to now to recapture any home movies at 8K... just as I can't hop back to long before anyone had a 4K TV to reshoot home movies captured at 1080p or 720p or SD or lower.



Since this is a "what would I like to see" thread, I won't shoot down your wishes. I'd love to see those first 2 bullets you offered myself. I suspect best real chance for the gaming one would be a Front Row app revival for a Mac Mini, as M3 AppleTV pricing would probably be up at Mac Mini pricing.

I think bullet 2 has a legit chance of happening with the next release of AppleTV hardware. Or at least in the refurb store if that is not the new price.

Looks we have a few people writing novels on 8k ATV. Hurry up Apple you’ve already lost a chunk of the market. No content, no streaming infrastructure, most important no interest outside of edgy tech forums. Commonly known as the real world.

 

[burgman]

How did you both manage to equate

• Apple simply adding SUPPORT for 8K televisions and 8K content …that won’t be adopted for at least another decade by mass market buyers…
• With a 5K computer monitor that has IMMEDIATE benefit to the buyer with no value-proposition-dependency on the rest of the industry creating 5K content, because it’s not a "5K content viewer" but a computer monitor?

Like seriously! Did I need to wait for Hollywood to support 5K for me to buy an Apple Studio Display and immediately start producing work? No! Absolutely not!

You’re both conflating the argument for an Apple TV supporting 8K with an argument for an actual 8K TV—which aren't selling—and Hollywood isn't making content for. Like these are two very different things. You both don’t know which argument you’re in. They’re not analogous. At all.

Ray Tracing is something that has HUGE demand in games that have actually been shipping for the last five years and Apple is very behind the trend! So of course Apple adding hardware support in their chips is a must given that Apple uses Metal and Apple Silicon in their iPads and iPhones—two of the biggest game platforms combined. They need to support all those game developers! That’s Apple's job—to solve the chicken-and-egg problem for them! Apple make 30% off these games and Apple is catering an entire ecosystem for game devs. Is Hollywood years and years into making 8K content like gave devs are years and years into making games with Ray Tracing effects? No!

Not to mention, Ray Tracing support on the M3 is merely hardware accelerating Ray Tracing that has already had support in Metal 2.0 since WWDC 2020. Thats's 4 years ago! We're now on Metal 3.0. How is this at all parallel to the market issues of adopting 8K televisions—Which Apple TV isn't a television but a streamer with no 8K streams to be found?

And Apple is a chip maker now, playing catch up to Nvidia and AMD on ray tracing support that is well adopted in games now. Apple is competing to have those games ported to Macs, iPhones and iPads now, and for devs to take the Apple ecosystem more seriously. Completely different situation.

How did you fool yourself into thinking you were the smart one and everyone else was just dumb?

How did you get fooled into thinking these were parallel situations?

How did you fool yourself into thinking that any company would waste time on a feature unusable for a decade, according to you.

 

[6749974]

How did you fool yourself into thinking that any company would waste time on a feature unusable for a decade, according to you.

Elaborate and please make sense this time. Your vague gotchas don't follow principles of good communication.

 

[mac38728]

Nothing, why does the Apple Tv need an update. A15 is plenty fast and I guess the only thing would be a A16 and a U2 chip in the remote so I could find it.

 

[NT1440]

Just picked up a second Apple TV 4K at a pawn shop for $65. I now have no need for an updated Apple TV unless it does something radical. I’m not into home automation or anything. I just think Apple TV had the best looking UI for controlling a TV 🤷‍♂️

 

[JamesMay82]

Since I very much desire that local storage/sync to come back again, if not that prior bullet, how about building an accessible m.2 or two slot(s) inside for those who want big local storage. Then those interested could add up to 8TB-16TB inside the case, exactly as it works with mini PCs now. With 4TB m.2 down to $200 now (not Apple storage pricing of course), one could have 4-8TB in their new AppleTV for a total price of around $500.

A million percent this but also to be able to download the 4K versions and keep them locally and to be able to sync our family videos to it as well. They create all these lovely programs on Mac and amazing phones to record our family's etc but being able to play it back is still very hard I find!

I don't agree with your comment about the Blu Ray format, its superior quality to streaming but physical media has had its day and I can't see that becoming main stream again. But if you can download 4k versions above it would give you that quality back I think.

 

[TracerAnalog]

Make it a gaming console with a proper controller😅

 

[kiranmk2]

Here are some things I would like to see.Some of them could no doubt be added via software to existing models, but I'm sure Apple would rather you bought a new unit.

• Act as a WiFi repeater / mesh point (possibly resurrecting the Airport brand and adding the same feature to HomePods)
  • USB/wireless camera support for Facetime and a home sentry camera (and sell iCloud subscriptions to store the recordings)
• Support dynamic lighting by mapping what is on the screen to HomeKit lights (like the Hue HDMI sync box)
• AI upscaling <4k video to 4k (expand MetalFX temporal image reconstruction) and AI dynamic range to convert SDR to HDR - these actually use AI to predict what the additional pixels look like rather than just an interpolation / scaling
  • Make the above an optional feature for the ultra-purists who don't want to use it
• 4k144 and 8k60 output support - 8k is pretty much non-existent, but hand in hand with the AI upscaling this could help out those few people who bought a Samsung 8k set over the last 6-7 years. Samsung is resorting to this to try and flog its 2024 8k sets (https://www.theverge.com/ad/18691640/samsung-8k-tvs-ai-upscaling-picture-quality)
• Ring fence app storage on a per app basis - I'm fed up with how often Infuse looses it's meta data due to low storage on my 32 GB model (presumably due to the screensavers as I have nothing else installed beyond streaming apps)
• If Apple wants to push gaming, split the line - a video AppleTV for $99 or so that retains the A-series chip and a gaming Apple TV that goes to the M-series chips (likely $249-299 depending on specs) - don't make streamers pay for horsepower they don't need
• DTS is a lower priority for me - I thought it was staging a comeback with the Disney+ IMAX range, but these seem to be dying off again.
• UWB / findmy support in the remote

 

[Wakey87433]

If Apple wants to push gaming, split the line - a video AppleTV for $99 or so that retains the A-series chip and a gaming Apple TV that goes to the M-series chips (likely $249-299 depending on specs) - don't make streamers pay for horsepower they don't need

That would just make the gaming version even more of a waste of time. Gaming devices like and die on the game library, you can have the best hardware ever but if there aren't enough great games it will flop. The Switch is a perfect example of this, it's an awfully underpowered device but it had great games. That sells units, enough units that developers are eager to work around the lack of power to make good games for it.

The problem Apple have is its game library is just phone games, and often they just don't work or look very good as they were designed for the iPhone and quickly ported to the AppleTV. The problem is to run even these games it needs to be overspeced for a TV streaming box which is its primary function and that hinders sales as it means its a lot more expensive than other streaming tv boxes and with sales being hindered its not worth developers making games for it.

If you have a gaming and non-gaming version the gaming userbase will be even smaller and hence be less appealing to developers to make/port quality game to it so you will never grow the userbase to make it more appealing for other devs to jump on board

 

[kiranmk2]

That would just make the gaming version even more of a waste of time. Gaming devices like and die on the game library, you can have the best hardware ever but if there aren't enough great games it will flop. The Switch is a perfect example of this, it's an awfully underpowered device but it had great games. That sells units, enough units that developers are eager to work around the lack of power to make good games for it.

The problem Apple have is its game library is just phone games, and often they just don't work or look very good as they were designed for the iPhone and quickly ported to the AppleTV. The problem is to run even these games it needs to be overspeced for a TV streaming box which is its primary function and that hinders sales as it means its a lot more expensive than other streaming tv boxes and with sales being hindered its not worth developers making games for it.

If you have a gaming and non-gaming version the gaming userbase will be even smaller and hence be less appealing to developers to make/port quality game to it so you will never grow the userbase to make it more appealing for other devs to jump on board

Exactly - Apple needs to make a decision on gaming. Is it in or out? If it is in in needs to put its hand in its pocket and buy some studios/exclusives to make it clear that Apple is in gaming for at least a generation. The halfway house we currently have puts off streamers due to the cost of an Apple TV, but doesn't satisfy gamers.

As we've seen from the recent AAA releases of RE Village, RE4 remake and Death Stranding, even the A17 Pro and M1 don't give great experiences (both struggle to maintain 30 fps at low settings) so a gaming focused Apple TV would need at least an M2 chip which is waaay too much for streaming.

Perhaps Apple has been waiting for the GPU performance level to catch-up. The XBox Series S has 4 tflops of GPU performance and I believe the M2 has 3.6 Tflops (according to Ananadtech). Potentially an M3 or M4 would surpass the Series S performance and 12 GB or more memory would prevent the issues the Series S has encountered, meaning it is more feasible for latest gen games to run (perhaps at 1080p) on an Apple TV.

 

[bozzykid]

Nothing, why does the Apple Tv need an update. A15 is plenty fast and I guess the only thing would be a A16 and a U2 chip in the remote so I could find it.

The last Apple TV 4k update was only because they stopped making the chip used in the Apple TV in any other devices (aka iPads) so they upgraded to the next lower tier chip still in production. I suspect the next update will do the same.

 

[ignatius345]

As someone who does video and film for a living, even if I had one of those few, clunky and not „industry standard“ 8k - Cameras (there is just no 8k Arri), why would I produce in that resolution, unless to produce demo-content for 8k TVs?

Only compelling argument I've heard is that shooting in 8K would let you crop in to a 4K image, giving you more editing options. I'm not an editor, but the concept seems to make sense?

 

[ignatius345]

The awful part is there isn't an alternative that isn't riddled with ads. Even on Apple TV, the latest YouTube update has its own "screensaver" with a really short timeout (less than the 10 min for my Apple TV screensaver) that of course prevents the native screensaver from appearing and I'm sure will very soon be showing ads.

Just read about this. The workaround is to set your Apple TV screensaver to trigger faster so it starts before Google's trash can activate.

I've hated YouTube's Apple TV app for a long time, just because of its horrible UI. Maybe not an ideal solution, but I tend to just AirPlay things from my phone to the TV instead.

 

[Wakey87433]

Exactly - Apple needs to make a decision on gaming. Is it in or out? If it is in in needs to put its hand in its pocket and buy some studios/exclusives to make it clear that Apple is in gaming for at least a generation. The halfway house we currently have puts off streamers due to the cost of an Apple TV, but doesn't satisfy gamers.

As we've seen from the recent AAA releases of RE Village, RE4 remake and Death Stranding, even the A17 Pro and M1 don't give great experiences (both struggle to maintain 30 fps at low settings) so a gaming focused Apple TV would need at least an M2 chip which is waaay too much for streaming.

Perhaps Apple has been waiting for the GPU performance level to catch-up. The XBox Series S has 4 tflops of GPU performance and I believe the M2 has 3.6 Tflops (according to Ananadtech). Potentially an M3 or M4 would surpass the Series S performance and 12 GB or more memory would prevent the issues the Series S has encountered, meaning it is more feasible for latest gen games to run (perhaps at 1080p) on an Apple TV.

The problem is they would need a steady stream of them. Just look at VR, while Half-Life: Alyx showed what VR can do on the gaming front it has not been the catalyst that many VR enthusiasts thought it would be. We haven't seen the influx of VR games from big developers that have taken inspiration from HL:A to provide it with the depth of the library to drive the VR userbase forward. We haven't even seen Valve carry on with the push. You need a good library to start with and to expand significantly month-on-month to encourage hardware sales. Apple would need to secure at least one exclusive on one very big game from an established franchise and then a good selection of other games ideally exclusives for at least a window of time and would have to keep cranking them out

TBH they would also probably be better not even calling it AppleTV, it causes too much brand confusion when someone buys the cheap one only to find it can't handle the games

 

[whitby]

Current ATV works perfectly for my needs. Gaming is irrelevant to me so could not care less about gaming features. I need a high quality integrated viewing experience. I suspect the streaming companies are sabotaging this and making the process of selecting and tracking programs more and more difficult. If Apple can help it would be great. The picture quality from the ATV is infinitely superior to the built in apps on my TV. To me the TV is a display device and nothing more and I will keep it that way for as long as the morons who control the streaming sources will let me. After that it is back to 4K Discs. Rarely do I find that as time goes on the experience gets worse but all the streaming companies are determined to make it much much worse. The idea of watching TV on demand from a variety of hight quality sources is being destroyed and Apple are trying hard to keep it that way. But so called progress and corporate greed will destroy this.

 

[burgman]

Elaborate and please make sense this time. Your vague gotchas don't follow principles of good communication.

No need to elaborate, it’s pretty simple companies exist for sales and profit. Not to put tingles down the legs of the self anointed intelligentsia living on tech forums. Seems you “know” you’re the smartest person here. Insulting others deemed inferior is common and pathetic on MR.

 

[6749974]

No need to elaborate, it’s pretty simple companies exist for sales and profit. Not to put tingles down the legs of the self anointed intelligentsia living on tech forums. Seems you “know” you’re the smartest person here. Insulting others deemed inferior is common and pathetic on MR.

You still aren’t saying anything.

 

[DMinTX]

I am about ready to pull the trigger and upgrade at least one of my Apple TV HD since it has a 4K TV - the other one is still a 1080p TV. Also, both my TV locations have wired GigE, which is almost enough to make me upgrade the second one a well.

The one feature the current ATV does not have I would like is wired webcam support for the FaceTime feature.

But I fear that as soon as I buy, a new one will be announced…