Apple Seeds Second tvOS 18 Public Beta

[MacRumors]

Apple today released the second public beta of tvOS 18, giving the general public a chance to try out the new features ahead of the software's fall launch. The second beta comes a week after the first.

Public beta testers can download the tvOS 18 beta by opening up the Settings app on Apple TV, choosing the Software Updates section under System, and then toggling on the Get Public Beta Updates option. Signing up on Apple's public beta website is required to get the option to show up.

tvOS 18 isn't as feature rich as some of Apple's other updates, but it brings a new InSight feature to the Apple TV app. InSight is similar to Amazon X-Ray, providing real-time information about actors, music, and more in Apple TV+ shows and movies.

The Enhanced Dialogue feature uses computational audio and machine learning to better boost vocal clarity over background noise and music, plus it works with built-in TV speakers, AirPods, and other Bluetooth devices. Subtitles have been tweaked to show up automatically when relevant, such as when the TV is muted.

Apple added new screen savers and made it easier to swap between them, plus there's 21:9 aspect ratio support for projectors and an option for Live Captions during FaceTime calls.

tvOS 18 is limited to public beta testers and developers right now, but it will see a public launch this fall.


Article Link: Apple Seeds Second tvOS 18 Public Beta

 

[gcmexico]

trying to download this on my a tv but only option is 18 public beta, will it say public beta 2? how do you know if you are getting tv os beta 2?

 

[jwdsail]

Apple today released the second public beta of tvOS 18, giving the general public a chance to try out the new features ahead of the software's fall launch. The second beta comes a week after the first.

Public beta testers can download the tvOS 18 beta by opening up the Settings app on Apple TV, choosing the Software Updates section under System, and then toggling on the Get Public Beta Updates option. Signing up on Apple's public beta website is required to get the option to show up.

tvOS 18 isn't as feature rich as some of Apple's other updates, but it brings a new InSight feature to the Apple TV app. InSight is similar to Amazon X-Ray, providing real-time information about actors, music, and more in Apple TV+ shows and movies.

The Enhanced Dialogue feature uses computational audio and machine learning to better boost vocal clarity over background noise and music, plus it works with built-in TV speakers, AirPods, and other Bluetooth devices. Subtitles have been tweaked to show up automatically when relevant, such as when the TV is muted.

Apple added new screen savers and made it easier to swap between them, plus there's 21:9 aspect ratio support for projectors and an option for Live Captions during FaceTime calls.

tvOS 18 is limited to public beta testers and developers right now, but it will see a public launch this fall.


Article Link: Apple Seeds Second tvOS 18 Public Beta

I really hope that a future AppleTV hardware and OS update allows for this feature to work on all apps using on-device AI features... Let's put some of that 128GB of storage to good use keeping a local copy of IMDB (Now Amazon owned so maybe not - would Amazon license it?) or Rotten Tomatoes on device to pull data from.

That would be an exciting feature.

As an AppleTV+ exclusive feature?

I guess for the one or two months I renew every year to bings things it may be handy from time to time...

 

[ignatius345]

So far pretty decent? I'm not really getting the subtitles to pop on rewind very reliably, and I found that turning on Enhanced Dialog completely destroys audio played over AirPods.

If I could roll back I probably would but I really rushed into this impulsively. Oh well.

 

[Jetson]

After the latest update, when I go to watch a purchased movie, it starts right away without the description screen with all its options. I read to disable the quick start option, but I believe that’ll also affect playback quality.

Yes, after the iOS 17 update when they retired the TV and Movie apps, the AppleTV app does not present the description screen for movies anymore.

To be more precise, from the Library when you click on a movie the app quick-starts the movie, bypassing the description screen. In Settings you used to be able to disable "quick-start", but all references to that feature have been deleted.

The description screen is displayed as expected when in the Store or Search, just not from your Library. TV shows with episodes display a description screen from the Library. And *some* movies (very few) do display a description screen first. There is no consistency here.

I much prefer the way that the old TV app worked in regards to this. I want to have the opportunity to view the description of the movie, watch the preview, etc. before launching the movie. This is especially useful for guests.

I had hoped that the beta may have corrected this problem but so far no one has mentioned it.

 

[dorsal]

Does the enhanced audio play through the HDMI connection? I connect my ATV to my receiver.

 

[nathansz]

I really hope that a future AppleTV hardware and OS update allows for this feature to work on all apps using on-device AI features... Let's put some of that 128GB of storage to good use keeping a local copy of IMDB (Now Amazon owned so maybe not - would Amazon license it?) or Rotten Tomatoes on device to pull data from.

That would be an exciting feature.

As an AppleTV+ exclusive feature?

I guess for the one or two months I renew every year to bings things it may be handy from time to time...

amazon uses imdb for it's own app, doubtful they would license to others

 

[jwdsail]

amazon uses imdb for it's own app, doubtful they would license to others

Agreed that it isn't likely, unless Amazon sees a way to make more money licensing the data to Apple and then others who want to implement similar features on their devices/software that makes spreadsheet sense (make more money off what we already have) if not product marketing sense (keep this to ourselves to sell maybe 5% more of our streaming devices that we really don't make much money from)?

Perhaps Apple could compile their own DB of this type of data for local AI use on the AppleTV in the future?

Again, I doubt we'd see either until Apple is ready to make major updates to both the hardware and the software to make it work.

But, *that* would be the killer feature. InSight working on any service/app running on the AppleTV.

Hell, in the future add sports stats for all sports you may be watching on any app/service, even motorsports! (and maybe stop referring to races as games ffs)...

And, again, all local/private processing for privacy would be a huge selling point as well.

 

[RJ_Online93]

My Apple TV library content is empty. Anyone had the same issue?