Apple Announces New Apple TV With Siri, App Store, New User Interface and Remote

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I have two Apple TV 3's, and was looking forward to this update. Have used Apple TV since the ATV2 came out. I've jailbroken the 2's to use XBMC and Plex, then migrated to the ATV3 for the 1080p goodness.

You lost your XBMC setup when you migrated, though. Frankly, being able to use a non-hacked setup to run XBMC (now Kodi) is probably the only really compelling thing about this AppleTV. I still have a lot of content that iTunes doesn't support (notably lots of home videos in AVI I'd prefer to not convert for the loss in quality).

It would be neat if they had a web cam (or would at least let you add one) and have Skype in the living room, etc. But unless that home automation thing surfaces and a web cam with a Skype type App is supported, you can forget that too. Thus, OTHER than Kodi, I'm not sure what type of Apps we're going to see other than a bunch of Angry Bird games....

AppleTV 2 released Sept 1, 2010.
AppleTV 3 released March 7, 2012

18 months and six days.

I see you conveniently forgot to mention how long it was between the 1st Gen ATV an the 2nd Gen ATV. Perhaps that's because it doesn't support your argument??? AppleTV 1 was released on Jan 9, 2007. That's almost FOUR YEARS later. This model is over THREE years later after the 3rd model and yet doesn't improve it's video quality ONE BIT! The main reason the 3rd generation came out faster is that someone at Apple finally realized is was absolutely ridiculous to sell ANOTHER 720p device in 2010! What was that you said about ME having a "stupid argument" ??? Look in the mirror dude.

So now they're going to sell ANOTHER 1080p device in 2015, over three years after the last device and pen their hopes all on some App Store and "gaming" with a remote control. Yeah, that makes sense. Perhaps if they had gotten a cable tv package together in time; aw but other companies don't want to hand the market over to Apple. Aw.

Well, it is how the business of making computers has always been. And for that matter pretty much all consumer electronics. What you buy today is not going to be state-of-the-art in six months. If you wait a year you can probably get it in the remainders bin for 30% off or more.

You're dreaming if you think they're going to have a new unit in a year's time. It's never happened yet for AppleTV and based on their track record above, I'd say you'd be lucky to see it in three years. In the mean time, I can choose to overpay for this thing but keep my Apple ecosystem and hopefully run KODI (3rd gen was never hacked to run it) so I can finally ditch my 1st Gen "heating" units or I can just keep on waiting or buy a unit from someone else and probably lose Airplay syncing (i.e. I have a whole house system). Apple makes a miserable house wife.

While you see the only games worth playing as taking large plastic molded controllers, I don't think that is the market Apple is aiming for. Apple is the largest game system manufacturer out there, by about a factor of ten in yearly unit sales (not to mention gross revenue). And very few of those Apple game systems have what you would call "a controller" in the late-90s+ viewpoint of what a "controller" is.

You don't know what games are about, do you? They're not typically remote controlled in the TV sense.... "Siri, shoot the bad guy for me; I have no way to aim and run at the same time!!!!"

What Apple knows that you apparently do not is that you don't foster a developer community by fracturing the customer base. 5% have Controller X, 20% have Controller Y, 12% have one Controller Z and 2 Controller Qs that they want to interoperate. Etc. Yes, Apple could constrain its games to the least common denominator controllers of the consoles. Or, they can provide a baseline for their developers that says every user will have a controller with this set of capabilities.

What I know and you don't seem to know is that a controller is a controller and as long as it has a stick and enough buttons, it doesn't really matter whether you use an XBox controller or a PS3/4 controller or a damn flight stick even in many cases. Hell, a keyboard and mouse (bluetooth) would work as well. THAT is the way it is in the real world, guy. Most of us just want a nice way to play. We don't care what YOU use.

That's just the thing. Content. To me, the resolution rarely defines the content. In time, there will be compelling 4k content, by which I mean content that loses something important in translation down to 1080p etc. But that is nowhere near the case today.

You see the nice thing about having 4K on the AppleTV would have been you can watch 480p, 720p and 1080p right NOW and IF/WHEN you find a nice new movie you want to see and it has a 4K version, you can rent/buy that one and watch it in 4K immediately. You could add it to your collection NOW rather than have to buy a 1080p version NOW and then buy another 4K version at some point in the future. And no I wouldn't count on Apple giving you the 4K version for free. They never gave me the HD versions of SD Bogart movies I bought before they had an HD version available, not even a discount.

But that's the philosophical case against 4k. You are saying that Apple must support it because there are some sets, and there are some content providers, and there are some set top boxes (Bluray players at least) supporting it. It is just a crap argument.

If mine is crap, WTF is yours?

Apple will support 4k when someone can walk into the store, see that the AppleTV supports 4k, bring that

Apple will support 4k after most of the market share belongs to someone else.... Apple could have most of the smart phone market, but they chose to repeat the mistake of the 1980s and let Google play the part of Microsoft this time. It WILL bite them in the arse eventually as market share is ultimately everything in the long run. All the extra cash in the world won't keep a ship from sinking forever.

Clearly not. You would be better shopping elsewhere, I think. There are plenty of high-end audiophile and home theatre aficionado stores in the world. Find one.

What are you, then? A LOW END kind of person who ENJOYS paying HIGH-END PRICES for LOW END products. That's exactly what you are telling me you are. I'm sure you're quite proud of that argument.

 

[/dev/toaster]

I'd like to ditch my two 1st Gen units, so an App Store is the primary thing I need, assuming KODI is supported, but it's immensely disappointing for them to not support 4K when they are pushing 5K and 4K almost everywhere else including their new iPhone. It makes no sense to support 4K video recording a flipping phone, but then not be able to play it in 4K at home on the big screen television because the latest AppleTV thought 1080p woudl be good enough. Why isn't 1080p good enough for the iPhone then??? Apple needs to be CONSISTENT. You say they are about "being the best" and yet shouldn't the "best" have the "best" and latest technology (i.e. 4K) ???

4k TVs in the home are not very common currently. There just isn't enough content for it. Comcast hasn't launched 4k and DirectTV just launched 4k DirectTV says they only have on average 2 x 4k movies a week.

4k monitors are more common, but even then not a lot of people have them. 4k sets are coming down in price quite a bit. Give it another year and it will be far more common. At some point after that Apple will make a 4k AppleTV.

Don't forget also that the apps would need 4k support. You aren't going to get 60fps at 4k with current this new AppleTV.

Apple is moving things towards 4k but it takes time. Apple isn't the time of company to rush support. They will release it when its ready and they have the quality at the level we have come to expect from them.

 

[mig0]

I'm annoyed with apple in not supporting an app store on the older apple tvs but honestly if they had, this upgrade underwhelmed me sufficiently that I would completely pass. As it stands, I'd wait for an irresistible price cut (sub $120) from somewhere (bought my apple tv for $80 in 2012) but won't expect that any time soon. Unless a killer app comes out that's a must buy (kodi isn't it) I'll just see how the market develops and keep my 3rd gen atv. I don't get the 32gb of storage that isn't upgradeable aspect either. If they want to try to compete in the living room console market this thing should be able to support external memory storage but doesn't and I think that "it's in the cloud" is a lame solution.

 

[AleXXXa]

1080p? Wow. Obsolete before it's even released.

 

[ArmCortexA8]

4K standards are still in flux and this thing is dirt cheap; people will just buy another one when they actually get 4K content and a decent 65 inch and more (only sizes when it makes sense) in 3 years.é
For me. future proofing has always meant overbuilding on something useless while not delivering on something usefull right now.

Even without 4K, the fact the remote is now partially plastic, still runs an iPhone OS - just re-branded. Plus now we learn it only has 200MB App storage storage which is ridiculous.

 

[ArmCortexA8]

4K standards are still in flux and this thing is dirt cheap; people will just buy another one when they actually get 4K content and a decent 65 inch and more (only sizes when it makes sense) in 3 years.é
For me. future proofing has always meant overbuilding on something useless while not delivering on something usefull right now.

Fair enough, so now explain why it does not support HDMI 2.0, only has 200MB of in-built App store storage. Apple are going backwards.

 

[CFreymarc]

Can you provide a recent link to support that cost? I'm not going to necessarily question your knowledge, but I'm not going to readily accept this claim without proof, either.



Judging from the shear amount of home AV and tech products that have HDMI 2.0 and 4K encoder chips in them, I have my doubts.



In this neighborhood... in that neighborhood... we can play that game all day. I don't exactly live in Orange County, CA or among the 1%. Also, if we waited for everyone in the world to be on equal ISP footing, tech would stagnate. As an American, I'm accustomed to getting hosed for how much bandwidth I get versus how much I pay. But getting 25Mbps isn't a hardship. Truly.

My overall point is this. A lot of people like myself are left scratching our heads over this because Apple is more than doubling the price for the new Apple TV, and for what? A beefier A8 chip and newish OS, sure; also a new glossy (ick) remote, and the app store. Meanwhile, they take out optical, leave the hardwire ethernet at Base100, and leave out HDMI 2.0/4K support. If people want to use Apple TV for 1080p content, they still have the A5 option, which still works just fine if that's their interest.

This was a time for Apple to shine with the Apple TV in the face of heated competition with Roku and Chromecast, and blooming markets like 4K. Quite underwhelming.

You can't afford my consulting fee for that data. Grow up. Graduate. Get some product releases behind you and an IPO. Then we talk.

 

[CFreymarc]

As an FYI, the Nvidia Shield has HDMI 2.0, 4k @60FPS, includes a game controller, and is less than $200.

That is not a proper conpariosin. Apple has a much larger infrastructure to supper for such a wide developer community.

 

[MrDexx]

Agreed. I prefer your product which clearly is better. What was it again? Oh what, there's nothing?

Mic = dropped!

 

[utazdevl]

Assuming we don't get any Apple approving crap here Plex should be all that you need to play any content thru Atv

I HATE Plex. If it were the only way to stream my own content on the new AppleTV I would not upgrade and would likely quite the Apple ecosystem in protest.

 

[Basic75]

No audio output? How do I listen to music on my stereo with the TV switched off?

 

[jettredmont]

Wow, lots of FUD going on. Here we go.

First, it's absolutely inexcusable that this doesn't have HDMI 2.0. Inexcusable. Tons of TVs, AVRs, etc have HDMI 2.0 now. We've waited (what has it been, three years?) for the Apple TV to be updated and they can't even offer the latest in HDMI?

Cost. And, if they aren't going to support resolutions which require HDMI 2.0, why waste the money on it?

Second, 4K is neither expensive nor niche. Have people been to a Best Buy or such store recently? That's all you find are 4K TVs.

Sorry, but this is BS. Just last week on a message board here I linked three TVs from Best Buy, their cheapest 4k set (on sale for $100 less that week IIRC), their equivalent (same brand, same quality band, same screensize) 1080p, and a full-feature 4k TV. The low-end craptacular 4k TV was 50% more than the 1080p set, and that was with $100 off. As sizes go up, the difference gets more and more pronounced.

Exacerbating this is that there is not yet (at least, definitely wasn't in 2014, and I can't find any standard publications from the relevant bodies since) a defined standard for UHD transmission. This may not be overly important - so long as HDMI supports the higher resolutions how it gets to the cable box or set top box doesn't necessarily matter to the consumer - but it does throw a monkey wrench and not-entirely-illegitimate FUD on any 4k TV purchase today. Chances are, the eventual standards will grandfather the majority of hardware sold to-date in some compatibility mode, but chances are also quite good that some of that hardware will not be able to play standard-compliant UHD broadcasts. We already see this in the "looseness" of the UDH logo program with respect to color depth, allowing highly-inferior depth sets (color depths which are worse than what 1080p sets typically display) to still carry the same logo high-end devices do; it is fairly likely that UHD video in 2020 will assume a much higher color depth than your $400 Visio box from 2015 is capable of displaying, leading to major viewer frustration.

This completely is reflected in the low sales for 4k sets. They are just not selling well compared to their 1080p brethren except in the very-large-screen segments. Yet. And I mean it. This is a really predictable technology uptake in a long-term durable good (TV set). I am sure that a few years from now they will be flying off the shelves, at which point penetration of 4k sets in the market will reach 10% saturation, and people will start thinking, "my next set obviously is going to be 4k". It will happen, of that I am certain. But don't delude yourself: it has not yet gotten there.

Netflix offers 4K content, so do other services. I just bought a Samsung JU7100 for $900 over Labor Day weekend and I've been watching House of Cards (Netflix). It's glorious. And so is 1080p content. I'd rather watch the content through an Apple TV, though.

Third, bandwidth is not a real limitation, not in 2015. I'm paying around $60 a month for 50Mbps. Netflix recommends 25Mbps for 4K. Getting a 25Mbps service is not exactly a hardship.

Bottom line is, there is no excuse *not* to offer HDMI 2.0. I'm putting my money back in my wallet. Disappointing is an understatement.

In most parts of the country, 25Mbps broadband is a hardship because it is impossible or prohibitively expensive to get.

Don't project the specifics of your situation on the rest of the country.

In any case, clearly you have a large investment in 4k. The AppleTV box is clearly not for you. Sometime this year there should be a Roku, and rumors are also a FireTV, supporting 4k on selected services. There is nothing for you to buy today, from any set top box manufacturer, so you are correct to put your money back in your wallet.

That said, maybe stop message-board-raging that Apple didn't give you your pony today. When you bought that Samsung set you surely did some research and knew that you'd be stuck with the built-in apps to display 4k content, right? The rumors on the AppleTV leading up to today were very solid on the lack of 4k support, so if you knew that there was an AppleTV announcement coming you should also have had a good idea it wasn't going to support your Samsung either. So, presumably, 4k using the Samsung built-in apps was okay for you over the weekend; it is just going to have to continue being okay until you can buy a set-top box or bluray player supporting UHD. Which will be after they are announced. You can't buy a cutting edge technology device and then complain that it doesn't have mainstream support.

 

[jettredmont]

The tech sites all claim the A8 is capable of 4K video already so you'd think they'd at least support 4K Netflix, but no, they want you to take your business to ROKU. Hello ROKU, you clearly want my business more than Crapple.

I'm sure ROKU will gladly sell you the device on their shelves which supports 4k and/or UHD video today.

Oh. They haven't announced a 4k device yet (just in January announced that sometime this year they would announce such a device). I guess you'll need to give them a "cute" name too. May I recommend "Croaku"?

So many hyper-entitled hissy fits here today!

 

[jettredmont]

So we should only join a forum to post only the good things about a product and just ignore the shortcomings?

I swear religions got nothing on Apple drones.

No. Clearly the AppleTV does not support 4k TV. This is really really well established by now. There just isn't anything more to say about that.

Let's discuss, you know, the actual features and possible limitations, etc. Maybe conjecture about things that are not 100% known, like how well the new device will support local content or not. There are a thousand conversations which I personally would find much more interesting than endless "WAH! THEY AREN'T SUPPORTING MY UHD TV YET!!!" tantrums.

But, free country and all. Just don't ascribe us being tired of bitching about 4k a result of us being Apple sycophants.

 

[gnrh11]

I'm sure ROKU will gladly sell you the device on their shelves which supports 4k and/or UHD video today.

Oh. They haven't announced a 4k device yet (just in January announced that sometime this year they would announce such a device). I guess you'll need to give them a "cute" name too. May I recommend "Croaku"?

So many hyper-entitled hissy fits here today!

Why is nobody mentioning nvidia shield tv it has glorious 4k better gaming and expandable memory plus kodi support already. Ditch iTunes it's locking you out of the best devices

 

[potatis]

No H.265 support, perhaps you're not allowed to stream your own media from iTunes on the computer either?

 

[BMox81]

Why is nobody mentioning nvidia shield tv it has glorious 4k better gaming and expandable memory plus kodi support already. Ditch iTunes it's locking you out of the best devices

I put my order in for one on Tuesday and will have it next week.

 

[Northgrove]

Is this the best they can do? What ever happened to all those rumours for a decade or more that the Apple Tv would be the best thing since... TV? is this it? Seriously? Is it?

Apple couldn't do what was "it" due to the industry. I think the plan was to do with not only film and TV series but also TV shows, what iTunes did to music. Unite the whole thing under one umbrella and a seamless enjoyment of the world's media. Then reality kicked in.

 

[Northgrove]

A8 Chip? 1GB of RAM? The members here will be in revolt.

I don't expect to multitask with the Apple TV, so 1 GB sounds OK enough to me. But the A8 chip surprised me a lot. Do they have heat issues in that big of a unit? What is going on? They have high CPU pressure on this device since it's supposed to be used for gaming. I don't even...

 

[snowmoon]

Please be advised that your domicile has been previously scheduled to be destroyed. All the plans are in the basement of City Hall for your review on a scheduled appointment-only basis. If you failed to schedule an appointment to review these otherwise unpublished plans, that is your fault. We apologize for pillaging your shares/domicile.

On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them. With a flashlight. The stairs were gone. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.

No audio output? How do I listen to music on my stereo with the TV switched off?

Very disappointing for all of us without a recent tuner that can split. Each generation they keep burying the basic AirPlay functionality. I'm glad I started using rPI's ( ubuntu + shairplay-sync ) for that function since I know I can always recreate another if I need to.

 

[jettredmont]

That is my question ... did they lobotomize the A8 in the new Apple TV like they did the (A5) in the ATV 3?

By "lobotomize" I assume you mean disabling one of the two cores (initial run) then producing a single-core only A5 chip (current run)?

So far as everything we have seen, Apple is marketing the chip as "A8 with 64 bit architecture". Which is exactly how they market the chip in the iPhone 6.

From an architectural / number of cores standpoint, it appears they will be the same chips. They might differ in underlying specs like amount of cache, clock speed, etc. But, if anything, I'd expect the AppleTV to potentially overclock these chips relative to the iPhone chips, given the limitless power supply coming from the outlet rather than needing to conserve every milliwatt of battery life.

 

[jettredmont]

That's both very funny and probably actually needed. Somebody is going to build a remote finder accessory to stick on it and an TV app called "find my remote." I'm barely joking.

There are already little beep-on-demand "tags" you can put on devices. I believe they are Bluetooth LE these days, but they've been around for years.

 

[morcutt11]

You sure about that? 4K TVs are cheaper than iPhones now.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B010Q...ords=4k+tv&dpPl=1&dpID=51kXCLg21iL&ref=plSrch

4k is far from mainstream and there was no point for the AppleTV to support it at this point.
http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/why-ultra-hd-4k-tvs-are-still-stupid/
http://www.techhive.com/article/2867546/we-saw-lots-of-4k-tvs-at-ces-4k-content-not-so-much.html
etc.

Sure, Apple could have put 4K in it, 4GB of RAM, the A9X, options for better gaming controllers, etc. and priced it in the range of a Mac Mini. We all know that this isn't how Apple works; Apple adds this stuff incrementally. They do this to see what direction consumers and developers take it in, as well as enabling an upgrade path. The do the same with everyone of their products. Every time they roll something out, people jump on the forums and start complaining that it doesn't have this or that like "product X" already has - ignoring the fact that product X has usability issues as a result.

The reason for the lack of 4k here is pretty obvious.

 

[BobF4321]

However, I highly doubt anything anyone streams would ever saturate the 100Mbps capability. So I don't think it makes much difference.

Even HD at 1080 with Dolby 5.1 typically uses less than 10mbps. However, gigabit ethernet has lower latency, so you might notice a difference with interactive applications such as AirPlay.

 

[BobF4321]

Can't use my harmony remote with it? No thanks.

The new Apple TV still has an IR port, probably so that it works with older Apple TV remotes, and will probably work with any Harmony remote with an IR transmitter. But it's all speculation until we get one to try it.