Apple TV Gains New Prominence in Apple Online Store with Valentine's Day Update [Updated]

[d21mike]

Again.. A combined Apple TV + Airport would need to be connected to a wired network to act as an 802.11 hotspot. There is nothing stopping you from connecting the existing Apple TV into the wired network and gaining the same benefits.

Again, of course it does and my 5 ATV's are all connected via Ethernet leaving the Wifi Adapters unused.

Your comment of "gaining the same benefits" means you are simply not reading my full post.

I will try one more time and then give up. We are talking about the Wifi connection of the iPhone and iPad, not the Wifi connection of the Apple TV since the Apple TV is connect via Ethernet. Again the Apple TV would be using the Ethernet Connection. Therefore, the iPhone or iPad can connect "directly" to the Apple TV (using Wifi) without having to connect to the house wifi router in the other room.

Regarding this new device costing $250 when the ATV is $99 and the Express is $99. That makes no sense. Even if you combined the two boxes into 1 box it should not cost more then $198. I happen to agree with others here that the Wifi Adapter in the ATV could be used for the hot spot (similar to the iPhone Wifi being used as a hotspot while connect over 4G) without raising the cost of the Apple TV hardware. So we are still talking about a $99 Apple TV. Again, the cost of the iPhone did not double in price when they started to allow it to be used as a hot spot.

Regarding your comment about simply adding another router next to the Apple TV. True, that would give a similar performance benefit, but then you are adding a second box with additional cost and headaches which is simply not necessary. This is similar to people caring a second box with them because they do not want to use their iPhone as a hot spot. When the iPhone has a unused wifi adapter built in.

Lastly, the purpose is to provide a direct connection from your iPhone or iPad to your Apple TV over WiFi without the need for a separate AP which is most likely in another part of the house.

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The Airport Extreme is a very poor example. First off, it's always been bigger than the Express. It's designed for longer range! Plus due to Apple's decision to share its casing with Time Capsule, the current Airport Extreme actually has a large cavity in the middle to fit a hard drive.

Exactly.

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WiFi routers require different chipsets and unique antennae components, not present in current Apple TV. The combined device would have to significantly larger, at least double of its current size. I am not even talking about 802.11ac, which currently requries significant larger components (just look at the size of Airport Extreme).

This is simply not true. You do realize that the iPhone is very small. But the Wifi Chipset in it supports exactly what we are talking about. It can be used as a client only or as a hot spot while using the LTE Adapter for the Internet Connection. Like the other person said, the Extreme is a bad example. Remember, the ATV is in the same room without any walls to block the signal, normally within 10 feet.

 

[charlituna]

Huh? Why? AppleTV is nothing more than iTunes so it's already on your iPad.

Ummm, AirPlay? That is NOT iTunes.

 

[ctyrider]

happen to agree with others here that the Wifi Adapter in the ATV could be used for the hot spot (similar to the iPhone Wifi being used as a hotspot while connect over 4G) without raising the cost of the Apple TV hardware. So we are still talking about a $99 Apple TV. Again, the cost of the iPhone did not double in price when they started to allow it to be used as a hot spot.

iPhone is not a real hotspot. It's intended use case is sharing its low-speed 4G/LTE connection, while being a couple of feet away from a client device. I.e. keeping it in your pocket while you're using a MacBook on your lap. Try using iPhone hotspot from more than 10-15 feet away - it doesn't work. Why? Because of simple physics. iPhone comes with a single antenna, as it doesn't have enough space for 2x2 MIMO, which you find in even lowest end APs, such as AirPort Express.

It also won't support more than a couple of concurrent clients, because it uses client-grade Broadcom WiFi chipset.

If you want to use an iPhone-grade hotspot to browse the Web on your iPad - be my guest, but you aren't going to have a very good experience. You'd actually be better off using your "real" AP in a different room.

 

[unconvinced]

Bandwidth decreases a lot with distance. Those benchmarks revealed the latest AirPort Extreme (802.11ac)'s bandwidth is reduced by over 65% just by going to another room on the same floor.

This would allow greater bandwidth, of course as long as the content provider can deliver high bandwidth too. If this is your primary router, you'd effectively only be limited by your raw Internet speed (unless you have >1Gbps), and latency could be reduced too.

If true, Apple may be doing this so they can provide 4K content without too much compression. Netflix said they would start airing 4K content as soon as the first half of this year.

If you already own an AirPort router, you can configure an extended network using AirPort Utility so that both routers are used at the same time to offer optimal speed and range.

What this guy is saying is dead on. Even w/ a 6th gen AC Airport Extreme at my cable modem point I can't get reliable Airplay, mirroring or video streaming to my AppleTV in the living room, iTunes will stutter & stop, videos will hang, horrendous, exasperating experience. I ended up sticking another older Airport Extreme right next to the AppleTV extending my network and streaming is seamless now. If Apple jams a wifi access point into the AppleTV this will eliminate a lot of problems.

 

[d21mike]

iPhone is not a real hotspot. It's intended use case is sharing its low-speed 4G/LTE connection, while being a couple of feet away from a client device. I.e. keeping it in your pocket while you're using a MacBook on your lap. Try using iPhone hotspot from more than 10-15 feet away - it doesn't work. Why? Because of simple physics. iPhone comes with a single antenna, as it doesn't have enough space for 2x2 MIMO, which you find in even lowest end APs, such as AirPort Express.

It also won't support more than a couple of concurrent clients, because it uses client-grade Broadcom WiFi chipset.

If you want to use an iPhone-grade hotspot to browse the Web on your iPad - be my guest, but you aren't going to have a very good experience. You'd actually be better off using your "real" AP in a different room.

Well the intended function, as we have been discussing, is for the ATV to support 1 iPhone/iPad (at a time) to stream (AirPlay) content at a distance of < 10 feet. The ATV is not in your pocket but next to the TV in plain view with no interference. However, with that said I also believe it will be able to do more then support only 1 client for internet access. Take a look at this portable Wifi 802.11ac router just announced. I do not think they need to be that large. Also, the current Wifi / Antenna in the ATV has to be able to connect to the Router in the other part of the house for streaming now and only supports 802.11N. Again, I do not believe the ATV needs to double in size and cost double to allow it to be a hot spot for this purpose. And I believe you will get much better performance then having everybody go thru the home wifi router for AirPlay Streaming.

http://reviews.cnet.com/routers/d-link-wi-fi/4505-3319_7-35833957.html

 

[Daalseth]

Start looking at OTA (Over-the-air) offerings in your area. I'm assuming you're in the US.

Thanks, I'll look into it, however I'm not in the US. I'm in Canada on an island a fair distance from the border. I'll check this out but I'm not too hopeful.

 

[Arran]

Will the internet backbone of the US even support a high number of folks streaming at 4K?

Probably not one-to-one streaming from central to each individual ATV. But what about peer to peer streaming?

If the new ATV's have a hard drive and Apple automatically distributes a broad selection of current programs to a selection of ATV's in each neighborhood - you could stream each program from one of your neighbor's ATV's. Of course you wouldn't know (or really care) which neighborhood ATV each program is streaming from: That would all be handled in the background. As would the housekeeping to delete not-so-current programs staged across the neighbourhood and replace them with more popular pograms.

The actual distribution/staging of content to each ATV could happen overnight or some other off-peak time.

And the remaining disk space on your ATV could be used as a time capsule.