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New Apple TV 4K Packaging Has References to Original HomePod?
- Thread starter utsava
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Not strange at all they still function and are still supported by Apple.
The ”new” AppleTV (2021) doesnt have a single ”new” feature. So my guess is that the outdated packaging is because their plan was to release this in early 2019/2020 and then do a proper AppleTV upgrade in 2021.
Yeah I wonder if plans changed at some point... but in fairness, the new Apple TV does have some new (albeit lackluster) features: Higher frame rate support, HDMI 2.1, WiFi 6, and a new remote with a power button, a mute button, and improved navigation options.
Sorry, I wasnt clear. 😅 I’m getting one so I’m not slamming it. My point was that Apple is a story teller with its product releases. Everything seems to fit, but this AppleTV just feels out of place In terms where it fits into Apple’s product line.
Like you pointed out, the box showcases their own audio products on the packaging but don’t support Spatial Audio? They push Apple Arcade yet put in a 3yr old A12? AirTags come out but no AirTag built into the easy-to-lose Remote?
If this came out in 2019 (or was half the price) then I’d say its not a big deal. But with Apple’s current direction with everything then this feels more like catch-up and corrections than a modern Apple product.
Completely agree. But for the new remote, this probably would have been a "silent" upgrade.
I'm also getting one (for reasons), but it's noting going to change my experience in any way other than the remote.
Agreed. There’s something uncharacteristically disjointed about Apple’s recent products. Not so much that the individual products are bad, but they seem to increasingly exist on their own islands. AirPod Max from 6 months ago doesn’t support lossless Apple Music. New Apple TV remote doesn’t support air tag Find My features that were announced at the very same event. No way to connect an iPad or MacBook to an iMac to use it as a monitor. Seems like a lot of lost opportunities.
Actually, they do support it, it was just bad wording by Apple because of a technicality that doesn´t affect the perceived sound quality.
From the Verge
So the natural question becomes... well, what are you hearing in that scenario? Apple tells The Verge that when you play a 24-bit / 48 kHz Apple Music lossless track from an iPhone into the AirPods Max using both the cable and Lightning dongle, the audio is converted to analog and then re-digitized to 24-bit / 48 kHz. That re-digitization step is the reason that Apple can’t say you’re hearing pure lossless audio; it’s not an identical match to the source.
Is it still going to sound very good? Almost certainly. The AirPods Max sound exceptional — even with AAC over Bluetooth, and plugging in can make the experience richer. But if you’re a stickler for the technical details, this is why the AirPods Max can’t pull off lossless audio in the truest sense. It also leaves Apple in an awkward spot where other high-end headphones that do support digital audio when hard wired — over USB-C, for example — could deliver the full lossless audio that the AirPods Max can’t.
For a HDMI 2.1 user like me, sure is a nice upgrade. What features are you looking for in a streaming TV box?
What do you want in there? A A14? How do you think that would impact price? It's not like anything on the Apple Arcade even pushes a A12, my A10 ATV runs everything fine. Apple isn't positioning this to compete with a PS5 ox Xbox Series X w/ Arcade (at least in the near future). Takes a lot more than to pump out some hardware to be a player in console market.
I agree with the spatial audio, it should be included. Yeah I get the folks who say it won't make a great experience without knowing positioning of the ATV unit, but that could be "fixed" with software calibration. The find my remote feature would have been nice too. Should've been included.
The actual hardware for the majority of the consumers use cases is fine, some could say overkill when compared to Roku and FireTV hardware. We're talking about a streaming TV device.
Like most Apple upgrades, its nice but not as complete as we'd all want. The iPhone should have had 5G on the X, should had 120hz on the X, etc. That is more of the Apple way.
Fair enough.
PD: More than 16/44 is snake oil, don´t know why Apple jumped in the audiophile mumbo jumbo bandwagon by offering hi res audio. 16/44 is at the limit of the human ear capabilities.
Slight disagreement: If the recording is very good 24 bits per sample has an audible impact for me granted I am lucky to have rather sensitive hearing. But it's also nice to have more resolution and sample rate since who knows what new machine learning stuff is going to come out where the computer program can take advantage of these for human hearing inaudible information.
Yeah, a lot of people don't realize this.
Nyquist theory says that a given sample rate can perfectly reproduce half that frequency.
So, 44.1KHz = maximum reproducible frequency is 22.05KHz
Now, unless you are a child you can't hear that high anyway. A typical teenager can only hear up to 18Khz or so and that number diminishes with age.
So really, for listening there's no benefit to higher sampling rates. It's all just placebo.
The place where higher sampling rates make a difference is mixing and editing, because when you repeatedly mix and process the audio, the extra bits and samples provide an overhead so the quality isn't reduced as much.
