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Rumor Suggests New Apple TV 4K With A12X Chip is 'Ready to Ship'
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HURRY UP! Ship it! Have had my finger on ordering a refurb 4K for the past week!
I much prefer how the TV app consolidates all my streaming content over browsing the different providers using Samsung/Tizen
If there isnt an obvious positive reason to buy the new product, keep an eye out for crippling of existing product that provides an incentive...😉
You can get a great 4K TV for $400. If you're an Apple consumer, you should upgrade that old 1080p HDTV. Besides, the price might not be cheaper if they have to manufacture two different hardware versions and distribute them to retailers.
I do have an Apple TV, as well as Android Xiaomi M Box S. The Xiaomi can be tweaked the way I want, Apple TV runs the official apps like a charm. Streaming from my iPad just works.
I like to play around with these boxes and get the best out of them. But (in a general sense) the general answer is NO, unless you want to run iOS things.
If you are a gamer, smoother performance, especially at 4K HDR.
If HDMI is updated to 2.1, ALLM and VRR could help bring judder and lag free gaming.
If you watch video, Apple might use the opportunity to bring AV1 codec to tvOS. Decoding AV1 demands much more from CPU, GPU, and RAM than HEVC. Support for AV1 will finally bring 4K YouTube support (Netflix and others are also adopting AV1, which is significantly more efficient than HEVC).
If HDMI is updated to 2.1, QMS will bring instant frame rate, HDR, and resolution switching and eARC will bring mandatory lip sync matching.
And hopefully, Apple may use this opportunity to do something with the controller.
Since the A12X and A12Z are basically the same die using the A12X would be a little odd. Especially if Apple is going to push the whole "games as well as last gen consoles" notion (and is hooked to Apple Arcade ) as part of the motivation as to why Apple TV costs 2x what a streaming stick does.
Is it really going to be cost saving a substantive money to "fuse off" one GPU 'core' ? Unless a giant pile of A12X that got made for iPad Pro that didn't sell, just seems odd.
Is it really going to be cost saving a substantive money to "fuse off" one GPU 'core' ? Unless a giant pile of A12X that got made for iPad Pro that didn't sell, just seems odd.
I find the Apple TV's UI to be much faster and nicer to use than a Roku or a TV's built-in apps. That's the main reason I stick with Apple TVs even though it's more expensive and I can watch all the same stuff on pretty much any streaming device.
Siri is actually amazingly helpful on the Apple TV. I would say it’s the platform where she’s most useful. That’s one feature that I love about the Apple TV.
Wow, apples and oranges comparison. First of all, Fios only offers two 4K channels. Second, if I'm going to get 4k, it's not going to be some cheap model. I'm not going to make the jump for just two 4K channels.
That would be a very arbitrary limitation with zero cost savings on the hardware front.
Eventually, WiFi 6 and newer Bluetooth formats will show up in Apple devices, but maybe next year. 
One thing I'd like is the ability to add Settings shortcuts to the home screen. We use a lot of earbuds in our family, moving from room to room, so any way to improve detection and switching, without drilling into Settings, would be helpful. Not all portals allow you to swipe down to change audio devices while you are watching- some only do subtitles and language streams. Sometimes my soundbar doesn't deactivate properly when I switch to AirPods or Beats, so I have to drill down and back out after I've started a show.
One thing I'd like is the ability to add Settings shortcuts to the home screen. We use a lot of earbuds in our family, moving from room to room, so any way to improve detection and switching, without drilling into Settings, would be helpful. Not all portals allow you to swipe down to change audio devices while you are watching- some only do subtitles and language streams. Sometimes my soundbar doesn't deactivate properly when I switch to AirPods or Beats, so I have to drill down and back out after I've started a show.
Not sure what it would offer that the current Apple TV 4/HD doesn’t already other than maybe longer support (although it sounds like they plan to support the old A8 on the Apple TV and HomePod for much longer than iOS). Honestly the price difference is so small not sure why you would get the older one anyway even if you don’t have a 4K TV.
Unless the new AppleTV brings something impressive to the table, I don‘t see a reason to upgrade from the current AppleTV. Maybe the remote will be much better and that would be an incentive, but apart from that I don’t see Apple doing anything special with the new version. I guess we will soon see.
I have a brand new Roku TV and had an Apple TV HD
The Roku interface is heinous. I have a brand new TCL 6-Series Roku TV and used to have an TV HD, so if I wanted something in 4K I had to use the Roku. I just sold my TV and bought the 4K model because the Roku interface was so bad. It's ugly, it's brutally slow, it takes forever to rewind/fast-forward, and when it finally does the audio gets out of sync. Really can't say enough bad things about it...it's unfortunate that such a great TV has such an atrocious OS.
Not very long ago, a TV set top "box" was purchased once and forgotten about.
Now it (Apple TV) requires pricey upgrades and endless firmware updates to accomplish the same thing- watch tv.
Now it (Apple TV) requires pricey upgrades and endless firmware updates to accomplish the same thing- watch tv.
A Lot Actually!
I've tried them all ... once I got the Apple TV everything else was really just slow and a horrible experience compared to it.
smart-tv UIs are terrible. also underpowered and most of them runs a garbage OS. with appletv you can easily switch between apps and everything is responsive. for example a webOS tv needs several seconds to switch from youtube to netflix, etc, basically don't have multitasking at all (read: can't run two apps and switch between them). also, OS-wise they hardly ever get updates and usually are preloaded with bull.... not to mention that no-one actually develops anything specifically for smart-tv. even android based ones are quite limited as the main interaction with the UI element is touch and you can't really efficiently do this with remotes.
i have no info on roku sticks.
