Yeah, but this is the same company who told us a boombox is Hi-Fi and is "for audiophiles" quite a few times during those days.
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New Apple TV This Year Likely to Support Wi-Fi 7
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AirPlay is absolute garbage in case you weren’t aware buddy. Massive latency. Only plays 1080p, etc
There may be great reasons to upgrade to the new Apple TV but unless you have some very very unusual use for these then the WiFi 7 won't make anything better.
I still use apple's Airport Extreme router 802.11ac and it works great. But even so I still connect my Apple TV to Ethernet. Had so many different routers from Asus, Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, and many others. None of them were ever as reliable as my apple router. Being using my Apple routers for several years now and never had an issue with them. Would be pretty cool if Apple made an all one networking device that functions as router, apple tv, and time machine. Not too sure on the time machine as apple rather you pay for cloud space than physical space. But one can dream yes?
Most TV OSs are slow, bogged down with bloatware, push ads, harvest your data, and stop getting updates after 3 years (if you're lucky). And most TV apps bog down before that because TV OSs don't/can't keep up with feature upgrades and security.
Apple TV has none of those issues. And it can stream content from your Mac securely.
I always have a problem with any such all-in-ones. This includes my cable modem vs my router. I just find that for one reason or another I want to upgrade/replace one but not the other functions. This includes the notion that often you need multiple manufacturers for various devices to get the best results.
I do not have a ethernet connection in my bed rooms or living room & wifi 7 offers a better range & signal frequency compared to previous wifi versions.
Overall it should improve my signal strength & streaming.
It will be interesting to see if it helps. I assume currently you periodically see connection problems. The newer frequencies are higher ones that have a higher bandwidth, BUT don't penetrate walls well compared to the old 2.4GHz band.
If I understand correctly, TosLink (which dates from 1983) is bandwidth limited to 2-channel PCM, or lossy 5.1 channel output, so you'd probably want USB-C.
It’s more about latency than bandwidth and sheer throughput. The ATV is the only option for a hardwired Apple Home Hub as you can only use WiFi on a HomePod.
It won't although I agree it absolutely should. Tim will already be appalled that there are 2 SKUs for Apple TV so can wave goodbye to this. If it's anything other than a rumour, it'll be a way of recouping some of the cost of building a tonne of A17s that haven't sold because "Apple Intelligence" wasn't enough to create demand for iPhone 16.
Apple TV is upsampling music to 48KHz. or downsampling the hi res versions... it's a **** show...
AFAIK there isn't a single implementation of MLO that works reliably. So I am hoping Apple with firmware update could make this work. But even without the MLO, WiFi 7 with better OFDMA and 6Ghz support ( in countries which has it ) is simple so much better.
I think WiFi 7 reaches the point where it is good enough for even some high demanding users / prosumers.
The Apple TV supports a very limited range of audio codecs, and transcodes what it doesn’t support to some inferior format. It doesn’t even support DTS at all. So as long as they don’t fix that, it’ll be a useless device for me.
You're right - thanks for the correction. I live mostly in the Dolby Atmos world these days and did not realize Apple's downgrade to AirPlay.
Yes, if you are set up for it. IIRC, you go to tvOS Settings/Apps/Music and select "Lossless" under Audio Quality.
This ^^^100%. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't seem to have an interest in taking on the console industry. No Apple-branded controller and no realistic business model for attracting top shelf AAA game titles means the ATV is a non-start for serious gamers. 🙁
AirPlay does not do 4K. AirPlay is locked to 1080P.
The only way 4K is played via AirPlay is merely by signaling the device to access the internet and grab the stream itself.
Example: You AirPlay a 4K movie from your iPhone streaming app to your Apple TV 4K > the iPhone streams nothing to your Apple TV 4K, it merely tells the Apple TV to stream that from the internet directly from that app’s servers.
Example 2: You stream a 4K video you took on your iPhone via the photos app > it merely tells the Apple TV to stream it via iCloud. Nothing is streamed from your iPhone to the Apple TV.
AirPlay is limited to 1080p for any and all streams that are direct from the iPhone to another device. Period.
AirPlay is a dated and worthless standard and I’m embarrassed Apple is bad enough not to have a functioning, high bandwidth WiFi-direct solution. The same is true for Chromecast etc., though.
My guess is that cellular providers convinced these companies to limit these features so that customers would be forced into not streaming higher bandwidth via unlimited cellular plans. After all, there is nearly no reason to have WiFi if you have a good cellular connection at home and you can stream everything flawlessly in full-quality, full-bandwidth over your cellular connection. This doesn’t require Hotspot which are all very much capped to 30-50GB. The only reason to have WiFi at that point is strictly for video games due to game downloads and updates.
this is an excellent example of someone assuming that the way that they use technology is the way that everyone uses technology