Future 4K support

[400]

Apple's tipping point probably has a few conditions.

It would appear that the big manufacturers have equal or greater selection of 4K TV sets on their line up. Just a quick look at four big makers web sites TV sections. One has double the number of 4K available over HD and struggled to find a HD set on another.

However, I have tried the Apple TV in store and it is a nice bit of kit but the pricing put me off, I have enough on Netflix to keep me occupied so there would have to be something great to suck me in on the 4K side, a future box dealing with HDR on the output seeing as the native Netflix is a bit lacking, perhaps I would.

 

[peppespizzapie]

so i am going to start off by saying I didn't see this topic recently.

Being that the ATV4 has superior specs than a 2015 Fire TV, do you see Apple providing us with a future update for 4k support? Yes, it only has HDMI 1.4, but so does the FireTV. The A8 is more than capable of 4k.

Thoughts?

When the rest of the world is using 8K everywhere, you can expect Apple to wake up. Apple hasnt been "renewing" since Steve died.

 

[cynics]

When the rest of the world is using 8K everywhere, you can expect Apple to wake up. Apple hasnt been "renewing" since Steve died.

The ATV3 was released post Jobs. And I feel 4K today is where 1080p was in 2008-09 when I bought my first 1080p set.

Nothing is new here regardless of Steve Job.

 

[Vermifuge]

When the rest of the world is using 8K everywhere, you can expect Apple to wake up. Apple hasnt been "renewing" since Steve died.

Because 15% - 20% is "everywhere"

 

[Beerstalker]

I've said it before, but I'll say it again here. I highly doubt 4K will happen with the AppleTV 4. The movie and TV studios require 4K content to be protected by HDMI 2.0/HDCP2.2. The Apple TV 4 does not have that hardware. So they only 4K content the Apple TV 4 could output would be your own home movies or game apps. I don't think that Apple would bother to update the firmware just to support 4K for those things and cause more confusion for consumers on how it can support 4K for some stuff, but not other stuff.

My guess is 4K support will come with the Apple TV 5 and we will probably see 4K movies added to the iTunes Store at the same time (I don't think they will bother adding 4K movies for just the iPhone/iPad/Mac).

 

[Spankey]

While 4k support would be welcome, if 4K is going to be added HDR and Dolby Vision need to be part of that equation. The added resolution does not make that big of a difference alone on my set but HDR and Dolby Vision is where the wow factor lies.

 

[NotJamesCameron]

Unlikely. I know it has been suggested a software update could "unlock" this feature but the fact is the A8 found inside the Apple TV would never deliver an acceptable experience.

The Apple TVs A8 is likely very similar to that found inside the iPhone 6/6 Plus. This holds the answer to this question. The iPhone 6 Plus's 1080p display causes performance to lag behind that of the iPhone 6. When it comes to pushing pixels the A8 found inside iPhone 6 Plus was about 20 slower than the iPhone 5s in synthetic tests.

If you apply that to the Apple tv that currently pushes 2.1 million pixels. A 4K TV's 8.3 million pixels would likely cause the current A8 to grind to a halt. It's possible an Apple TV 4th gen could drive the display but offering little in the way of interactivity, let alone play games. Sure it's possible Apple could have done a custom job on the GPU found inside the Apple Tv A8. Or just used a more powerful variations on the A9/x but that's not what we got. Apple has a history of optimizing product performance to the lowest common denominator (at a set price point.)

Currently only about 15% of homes in NA and less in western Europe have a 4k TV. these numbers are set to rise fast approaching 40 - 50% by the year 2020. Just in time for apple to relate a new variant of the Apple TV.

The AppleTV 4 has an A8 GPU instead of an A9 (or A9X) because it was originally meant to be announced at WWDC 2015, which was *before* any of the A9-powered devices were announced. Apparently they were going to give them to WWDC attendees to try to get as many developers on board as possible (which is why they had a bunch of AppleTVs that said "Developer Kit" to give away when they finally *did* announce it), but tvOS wasn't ready, so they had to delay.

As to speed, the iPhone 6+ internally renders at 2208x1242 resolution, which is then scaled down to 1080p. So *of course* it's going to have slightly worse performance than the iPhone 6, which renders at 1134x750, but has the same CPU and GPU.

The A8 has hardware h265 support, and the A8 inside the AppleTV 4 should be able to achieve higher performance than inside the iPhone 6/6+ due to having higher thermal limits (thanks to a larger enclosure) and no power limits since it's connected to building power. It might be limited to doing 4K at 30fps, though, instead of the current 1080p @ 60fps. Games would probably want to stick to 1080p.

But Apple will still probably hold off on 4K support until at least the AppleTV 5, because as someone else said, the studios are requiring HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 for their movies in 4K, which the AppleTV 4 doesn't have.

 

[StPatty33]

For those wondering, I think the times that mine has said "Direct Play" while playing an h.265 file are errors. I have a pre-roll video, and on rare occasion when someone is watching a movie on my server, it has the pre-roll video name the whole time they're watching the movie, rather than switching to what they're actually watching. I expect that the times mine has said "Direct Play" is a similar hiccup in the system, because the vast majority of the time Plex is transcoding to h.264 from the h.265 files.

Boo.