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Dammit! I wanted to upgrade from my two ATV 4K but no eARC pass through audio is a no go for me (Plex).
My ATV is wired so don’t care about WiFi 6. Usually I use my iPhone as a remote anyways so I don’t care much about the remote.
My LG OLED TVs already do most of what my current ATV does in terms of apps. Games? Meh... don’t like mobile games (dedicated gaming PC + PS5).

Only thing I find ATV useful is Photos, Music, HomeKit, and some apps like FuboTV not being available on LG store yet. Still, the services that I use ATV for are used very rarely. LG apps provide better audio and picture quality at the moment. Hoping that ATV allows pass through audio as a surprise when released and fixes some picture quality issues.
 
A12 Bionic isn’t much of an upgrade compared to A10x. Considering Apple TV will have a much scarcer updates, this is lame.

They should just go with A14? Remember the current ATV 4K was released at 2017 when A10x was hot, and still being used for iPad Pros at the time.
I agree. I understand the cost would increase, but at least give us the option? What I think makes the choice of A12 only even more strange is that Apple is also pushing Apple Arcade on the Apple TV and there we now have a bunch of PC/Windows and console level games such as NBA 2K21, The Pathless, Beyond a Steel Sky and other quite demanding games – and what about coming releases?

But as long as you're happy with low graphics settings and and/or low frame rates I guess everything is fine. :(

But maybe a more powerful Apple TV is in the pipe, or will it take four more years to get one with A14 or M1? 🤔
 
It is. I am finally adding a 802.11ax AP to my home network after reading the benefits of OFDMA and while the increase in speed isn't gigantic, OFDMA is the leap we needed for homes with a lot of WiFi devices.

I have that shut off. It's a hindrance. It will outright turn off WiFi on things that should be connected at a constant... like alarm systems, IoT devices, streaming boxes/sticks, your computer as you're using it... in short, *everything* needs to support WiFi 6 for OFDMA to work properly (or maybe it'll still suck even then). But that'll be the first thing you turn off.
 
Sure, but that's easily handled manually. If you can hold up your iPhone to the TV to do calibration, you can tell your ATV in settings where it is relative to your TV. Setups don't vary that much.
Many people with a decent home threatre setup, even a modest one don’t have the Apple TV under or close to the tv. Some it’s not even in the same room.
 
Because most “smart” tvs are often quite dumb, slow with crap UIs and controllers... And 20$ sticks are worse. If you stream everything from apps, you might not notice the difference, and if it works for you great!
Obviously you’ve not had any OLEDS by LG or Sony with the Apple TV app built in it in the last 5 years...
 
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Really agree with that. The only reason that I'm using Shield TV is that it supports TrueHD audio pass-through.
Shield is much more powerful overall for people that care about true quality video AND audio in their home theatre or media room setup

I have both of them of the latest versions btw
 
I'm going to hold off until we get some real-world reports on:

audio pass through
HLG

HLG is especially annoying - can't believe i need to flip between devices because the most expensive consumer streamer can't handle a free, fairly vanilla, format
 
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Anyone know if the new ATV has increased the number of Bluetooth connections it supports over the old iteration?
 
I honestly can't wait to see if eARC is indeed supported. I was very critical with my colleagues that the AppleTV was NOT the better TV device (the 4K Roku Ultra was massively better in quality than the Apple TV 4K). With all the stats coming in, it's looking like the new Apple TV will be crazy hot!
eARC is not something playback devices support. Its sole purpose is to enable display devices to send uncompressed audio to an AV receiver or active speaker ("soundbar") through the same HDMI connection that feeds video to the display device.

High bandwidth audio means LPCM with more than 2 channels, Dolby TrueHD (with or without Atmos), or DTS-HD Master Audio (or DTS:X).

This only matters, and only ever will matter, for Blu-Ray players attached directly to a TV instead of the AV receiver or soundbar, or for playback devices that for some reason want to decode compressed audio to LPCM (or, like a gaming console, generate LPCM audio).

Online streaming, for bandwidth reasons, never will use Dolby TrueHD or DTS:X. It's all Dolby Digital Plus, everywhere, which can also encapsulate additional metadata to make it Dolby Atmos.

Apple TV can send a TV or an AV receiver (whatever it's plugged into) compressed or uncompressed audio, that has nothing to do with eARC.
 
Out of all of the announcements, the new ATV 4K with Wifi 6 is the thing I'm most interested in buying. I owned a number of iPad Pro's but never used them, the tags are pretty cool, but I don't really have any use for them. And I already have an iMac.
 
I am not sure I understand your comment. If the Apple TV connects directly to a AV receiver, why would audio pass through be needed? And if it is connected to a TV, then the TV would need to support audio pass through to the AV receiver.

I don’t see any reason for the AppleTV to support audio pass through. What am I missing?

mrno00 got in an answer before me:

But to expand a little bit. The AppleTV supports up to 7.1 Dolby Digital Plus + Atmos. The AppleTV receives a compressed E-AC-3 stream, which is then decompressed on the device and sent to the receiving device as a uncompressed PCM audio. The simple reason for this is to allow other audio from the device (Siri etc.) to be mixed into the audio stream.

The downside of this is we are limited by the choices Apple makes on what audio formats the AppleTV will support, such as no support for TrueHD. The other downside of this approach is it limits the ability for the AV receiver to perform modifications/improvements to the audio in the process of decoding.

If Apple supported audio passthrough, then it wouldn't matter what formats the AppleTV supports, and would instead be determined by the AV receiver.

What Apple needs to do is give the user the option to enable audio passthrough. This could be done with a prompt to advise the user that other AppleTV features such Siri will be unavailable.
 
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What? This doesn't make any sense. "Source" devices like the AppleTV or a Blu Ray Player don't support ARC or eARC, it's a feature of the TV.
If you pair Homepods to an Apple TV with eARC then when watching sources like Cable/Sat or OTA or Bluray on the TV the audio can be played Homepods.
 
Apple likely picked the A12 because it’s cheap and because it’s used in other products - namely the base iPad and Mini. The A13 will likely stop production when the iPhone 12S/13 is released in the fall and the regular 12 is relegated to to the lower cost option, thus discontinuing the 11. And the A14 is bleeding edge technology that is likely too expensive to manufacture for a $170-200 consumer electronic item. (I still wish they’d gone with the A14 though).
should have moved all the a12 to use a13 chips.
 
I don't see the value of $150 here. This could be a cheap streaming dongle like chromecast over a dedicated device to stream iTunes. The most expensive Roku stick is like $70 and I think has more usability than this.
 
Don't really see much point upgrading tbh from existing ATV4K
Agreed. The remote is great, but beyond that HFR is the only real difference (and it looks like that might just be a software profile). As a Harmony user that’s not enough. Upgraders don’t even get the free TV+ subscription.
 
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Are there any good hdmi cables that fully support 2.1? All the ones I see on Amazon have mixed reviews for people trying to use with PS5/Xbox.
Look no further than this brand of cables : AudioQuest
I personally have this one connected between AppleTV and Marantz AV receiver and one more from the receiver to my 4K Samsung TV :


And yes (after testing back and fourth multiple times) you most definitely can see the difference in better (like sharper and more vivid) image and colour reproduction on screen. Never had any stuttering with this cables, after many others just failed ! Ok, it sure is quit pricy but well worth the investment and it's also future proof if you ask me, for years to come. Even the cheapest one (those from the Pearl series) knocks out most other cables in quality and data throughput.

Hope this helps you
 
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