Compared to the remote without one, yes. Compared to the TV remote, no.
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New Apple TV Still Launching This Year
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Where's the market?
When the AirPort stuff originally came out, setting up WiFi was more of a tech challenge (esp. on Windows machines) so there was a market for a plug-and-play WiFi router.
These days, most people get a plug-and-play WiFi router bundled & installed with their broadband package - and for non-tech types, sticking to that is usually the safest bet. More techy types who want a more feature-ridden router will be looking for more configurability (and hence complexity).
Not accurate enough for me. Using Find My to find the remote, it will just tell me the remote is “near” when I’m in the vague vicinity of the sofa and doesn’t really help me narrow it down beyond one side of the living room.
Using Find My to find the AirTag attached to the remote? It will tell me precisely how close it is and failing that, can even make sound to help me locate it.
What are you doing on your ATV that requires so many reboots? I've had mine for almost three years now without rebooting once, with no problems.
You’re not going to get all that for $99, which is the rumored price. And, while I can see why you might want all of those features, the truth is the vast majority of Apple TV buyers aren’t looking for them because they’re not part of the hardcore fanbase. However, perhaps a $199 Apple TV Pro could get some traction.
Mine is my Home Hub and for whatever reason that functionality stops working every a few months and requires a reboot. It's an odd one that only started in the last year for me.
Still love my plasma TV, so my old HD ATV is still fine (and still supported), but I'd like to ditch the baseboard Ethernet run (my old ATV can't connect to WPA3). I'd also like to have the feature for dialogue enhancement.
Looking forward to this being released. I've been wanting to buy one earlier this year but decided to hold out for the new version. With the new F1TV 4K support on it that will be a nice upgrade for next years season of F1.
That sucks, but could be your device. Never had any issues with any of mine going back to the ATV3
I am good with the one I currently have. I just wish TV OS was better. Give me an update all option (Or a listing of apps that need updates like on all the other OSes) and I'll be happy. Considering that is still not a feature yet after all this year is funny.
It's niche, because it's not bundled. They wouldn't bundle it, because it's niche. That's how Apple missed the TV game market, in a nutshell. But it's too late now. The Switch wiped up that market.
But no way did Microsoft spend $100M designing that controller. If anything they, spent $99M on crazy, revolutionary prototypes that amounted to nothing, then $1M on tweaking the controller they had. I mean, Microsoft Research literally spent money on inventing a dance mat to organize your email.
I did the same as gp, it is a bit bulky but for a remote that’s not really a terrible thing. My case is also bright orange, easy to find in the living room, and grippy
But will it include support for Auracast?
Would also like to see support for Google Widevine so SiliconDust HDHomeRun can stream DRM encrypted ATSC 3.0 OTA channels to the Apple TV.
Would also like to see support for Google Widevine so SiliconDust HDHomeRun can stream DRM encrypted ATSC 3.0 OTA channels to the Apple TV.
I think the new Apple TV will use the A18 SoC with 8 GB of RAM, up to 256 GB of local storage, and Apple's new WiFi chip so it supports wiFi 7 (802.11be), along with a new RJ-45 Ethernet connector with support for above 1 gigabit connections from a fiber modem or DOCSIS 4.0 cable modem.
I'd argue that newer homes (ours for example) have ethernet all over the place, very specifically where HDMI runs or television mounts (at least bracing in the walls) are located.
Maybe a new Apple-branded router that automatically calibrates/sets itself up a la Homekit accessories, and the Apple TV acts as a mesh access point... there's so much room in the Apple TV to work with, they could make it slightly thicker and add a feature like that.
After owning iPhones since iPhone 4 launch day and iPads since the original iPad launch day for some reason its taken me until about a week ago for Apple TV to really get onto my radar and I've done a week of deep diving into the Apple TV world that also took me into looking at some HomePod & HomeKit stuff (reviews, getting started, tips & tricks videos on YouTube). I'm now 100% ready to get an Apple TV but with the new version rumoured to be so close buying the current generation doesn't make sense but the wait is now killing me!
Anyway, even in that week of diving into Apple TV, HomePod & HomeKit stuff the one idea that absolutely leapt out at me was HomePod & Apple TV integration. If the next Apple TV is going to get an A-Series SoC with much more AI processing capability then having the ability for HomePods to hand off requests that can't be handled on-device to an Apple TV on the same network makes so much sense. The new HomePods are rumoured to be sticking with S-Series chips, probably important to keep the price down especially for the Mini where people might buy one for pretty much every room in their house.
Even the latest S-Series can do some basic Siri requests locally as evidenced by the current Apple Watches but having Apple TV able to catch the requests that the HomePods can't process and process those on the Apple TV would be a huge boost to Apple's overall home automation offering. It would protect user's privacy, probably speed up response times, and take some load off Apple's servers so save Apple some back-end costs as well.
If Apple is serious about capturing more of the home automation market, and the rumours of upcoming HomePods incorporating displays to complete with Amazon Echo devices makes me think that it is, then creating an ecosystem that can do really quite complex AI stuff all locally (if it ever gets its software act together) would right now give Apple quite a unique and to me very attractive offering in that market space.
If Apple was to head down that path I wonder whether that might create a space for an additional Apple TV version - maybe called the Apple TV Ultra - that packed in as much local processing power as it could for people who want to go as high-end as they can on the local AI for home automation & voice assistant capability while keeping the price at or below say $299. (I picked $299 because that's the current price of a single HomePod 2 so if someone is willing to spend that on a single speaker I would think that might be a reasonable upper bound for an Apply TV Ultra.)
Really great comment. And you're right. But I expect merely a spec bump
For me the current model is pretty much a perfect streaming box. The only thing that I really miss is audio passthrough for TrueHD with Atmos (so I could play my Blu-ray rips of titles with Atmos without losing the Atmos). A price reduction would be good as long as it doesn't mean crippling the device (e.g. I want the option of using Ethernet, which is already limited to the 128 GB version).
AV1 decode will be nice for advanced Plex users.
Now if only we could get audio pass through...
Now if only we could get audio pass through...