New Apple TV, HomePod Mini, and More Reportedly 'Coming Soon' With These New Features

[OGdrknight]

You heard it here first!
New Apple TV 4K accessory: 2026 USB-C iSight Cam/Mic.

It’s like reliving 2003 all over again!
Bring that bling back!

 

[ignatius345]

Disney / Star Wars use their “Volume/StageCraft” system instead of green-screens - I don’t know if they’re 8K screens, but they are huge and very high resolution. So that’s one of the few use cases where there’d be a need for 8k.

Oh yeah, I've read about these! Pretty amazing tech. Yeah, they have to be super tight pixel density so they don't show in capture -- and especially I would think to head off any moiré effects.

 

[ChazSch]

Hubitat, Homebridge or Home Assistant (starting with easiest to most complex) are all really great options for bringing devices into the Apple ecosystem that are not natively Homekit compatible.

All three solutions are very reliable, have healthy and supportive communities, dont have subscription fees, and support wired LAN connectivity and dont require 'the cloud'. Once added as a bridge, devices operate like native Homekit devices.

Would highly recommend recommend. The latter two are free and will run on nearly anything.

Turns out Alexa works just fine. Fumble Apple

 

[ChazSch]

On Macs and iPads. If we want a movie night, we set up the projector, but it and the screen are not set up.

We used to travel a lot ( for life and work not just holidays ). No were more settled, but were still stuck in the habit of thinking about tech, especially work tech, being portable.

Getting a big TV always ends up being low down the list of stuff we need to get / upgrade / generally spend extra money on.

I get that. Cheers

 

[erihp]

Turns out Alexa works just fine. Fumble Apple

eeesh. everyone makes choices!

using alexa/amazon for home automation is not one i would make!

 

[ElBerserko]

Most premium HiFi. And even though the current ATV has an HDMI port that is eARC capable it’s output is limited to 48 kHZ 16-bit.

What brands/models of "premium HiFi" can do uncompressed 5.1 PCM over optical? Not trying to be difficult, I am genuinely curious.

You wanted an optical port for the expressed use with higher bandwidth audio. The bandwidth is there with HDMI. If Apple needs to make sound improvements, they should be doing it with HDMI and not investing in optical.

From Wikipedia:

Unlike an HDMI connector cable, a TOSLINK optical fiber connector does not possess the bandwidth capacity to carry the uncompressed audio signals of Dolby TrueHD and of DTS-HD Master Audio; nor carry more than two channels of PCM audio.

 

[Oblivious.Robot]

Does it act flakey when you use the remote app?

So with the remote it definitely gives out ghost buttons, back and forth.
I've disconnected the remote and kept it away while using the iPhone remote app, the ghost calls have stopped but tv struggles to turn on at times. Like I'm really having to use the actual "TV" remote to recheck the hdmi source and simultaneously try to play a Spotify song with airplay and then finally the no signal sign goes away and Apple TV appears.

I really think I'm going to have to upgrade next weeks update or get the 3rd gen 4k.
I had the 2nd gen, and I've double check the hdmi, no issues there. Even went so far as to reset and join beta with 26OS. One of the very few apple devices that have actually died on me.

 

[erihp]

So with the remote it definitely gives out ghost buttons, back and forth.
I've disconnected the remote and kept it away while using the iPhone remote app, the ghost calls have stopped but tv struggles to turn on at times. Like I'm really having to use the actual "TV" remote to recheck the hdmi source and simultaneously try to play a Spotify song with airplay and then finally the no signal sign goes away and Apple TV appears.

I really think I'm going to have to upgrade next weeks update or get the 3rd gen 4k.
I had the 2nd gen, and I've double check the hdmi, no issues there. Even went so far as to reset and join beta with 26OS. One of the very few apple devices that have actually died on me.

could be a flaky hdmi port on tv or apple tv side, or a bad cable one. also could be a software issue, a dfu restore may be a good idea.

How to Put Apple TV 3 (2012-2013), Apple TV 4/HD (2015) and Apple TV 4K (2017) into DFU

The title says it all. In this article we'll explain the steps required to put the listed Apple TV models into DFU mode. These Apple TV models are based on the A5, A8, and A10X chips that are susceptible to the checkm8 exploit and checkm8-based extraction with iOS Forensic Toolkit 8, and DFU mode is

blog.elcomsoft.com

a saving grace, it can still act as a home hub for Homekt with no TV connected, hardwired near your router.

 

[Will Co]

What brands/models of "premium HiFi" can do uncompressed 5.1 PCM over optical? Not trying to be difficult, I am genuinely curious.

You wanted an optical port for the expressed use with higher bandwidth audio. The bandwidth is there with HDMI. If Apple needs to make sound improvements, they should be doing it with HDMI and not investing in optical.

From Wikipedia:

HDMI does have higher bandwidth, I agree, but my Denon AVR will happily handle 24/192kHz input for example. Many manufacturers have implementations that exceed the original spec. If you read that Wiki article closely it does state this. The reason for wanting optical is for galvanic isolation between devices and that’s not possible with HDMI. My own use case, as I said at the top, is listening to premium audio. Not 5.1 or other extended formats. Two channels of high bitrate audio is what I’m after, and with isolation.

 

[philstubbington]

ATV needs to provide higher audio bandwidth, a non-borked audio transcoding capability and ideally an optical output port. Give people who have a really good HiFi in their lounge, where their ATV is situated, the option to stream the really high quality audio streams available from Apple Music.

The Eve Play works very well via our HiFi and optical output.

 

[tong_si_nan_pei]

If the new Apple TVs have the ChatGPT integration and allow that to be used with the current HomePods paired with said Apple TV, I will upgrade.

 

[erihp]

If the new Apple TVs have the ChatGPT integration and allow that to be used with the current HomePods paired with said Apple TV, I will upgrade.

if I can opt out, sure whatever.

 

[dcingie]

Give us an Apple TV in Apple white! That would look so clean 🧼

 

[erihp]

Give us an Apple TV in Apple white! That would look so clean 🧼

not a bad idea! I can see where thatd be a nice option.

probably wont happen though, maybe they'd go silver like the minis/studios?

granted, thankfully they are small enough to just hide, id prefer to not see it at all

 

[dcingie]

Give us an Apple TV in Apple white! That would look so clean 🧼

Yeah, probably won’t happen, you’re right. I’ve been asking for it on these forums for years and apparently Tim keeps ignoring my request!

Silver or stainless would honestly look really classy, that’s a good idea I hadn’t even thought of.

 

[jedawa]

Dear Lord that is a fugly product. And no decent color options to at least slap some lipstick on that pig.

 

[Blakjack]

no thanks!

Why not. Educate me. I sincerely want to know.

 

[erihp]

Why not. Educate me. I sincerely want to know.

not a fan of wireless video. it means favoring compression for convenience that I dont need. wired connection all the way, network and video.

i would also prefer to have the speakers separate from the video decoder so the cost stays low when buying multiple speakers.

plus, where I'll be watching most often I dont need the video box to have speakers!