Was thinking the same thing, I read on their specs page the wifi is AC MIMO, so most likely 866mbps (2 antennas) compared to 100mbps. What the heck apple
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What is really missing from the new ATV
- Thread starter darthbane2k
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How annoying and slow would that be to use, got a browser on my samsung tv and never used it, same with on the playstation 3. Terrible to even try to use
I believe Apple would do a great job on a safari browser on the apple tv. I dont like any of the browsers Ive used so far on my other devices (samsung smart tv, sony blu ray player, etc).
The specs Apple chose to go with for this Apple TV are a little odd when you look at whats coming from the TV industry this year and next year. Anyone who considers themselves an AV enthusiast knows that any modern new AV device should have the ability to play 4K resolution content. It also wouldn't hurt to have:
- Ability to play HDR graded content (support for the SMPTE HDR standard and the ability to update to support Dolby Vision HDR)
- Ability to display content in wide color gamut (DCI P3 color)
All of these features are available in the latest smart TVs. They will also be available in the coming UHD Blu-Ray players. For anyone who thinks there is not enough 4K content out right now to justify a 4K Apple TV, its coming. Every major studio is backing 4K and plans to release (or has already released) 4K content. HDR is also on the rise with big hits like Inside Out, Mission Impossible 5 and supposedly the upcoming Star Wars 7, all having HDR graded versions.
With the industry headed toward UHD and with Apple using the quite powerful A8 chip, I find it hard to understand why Apple didn't make the new Apple TV support 4K to give a little more future proofing. At this rate Apple will almost have to come out with a newer 4K enabled model next year.
- Ability to play HDR graded content (support for the SMPTE HDR standard and the ability to update to support Dolby Vision HDR)
- Ability to display content in wide color gamut (DCI P3 color)
All of these features are available in the latest smart TVs. They will also be available in the coming UHD Blu-Ray players. For anyone who thinks there is not enough 4K content out right now to justify a 4K Apple TV, its coming. Every major studio is backing 4K and plans to release (or has already released) 4K content. HDR is also on the rise with big hits like Inside Out, Mission Impossible 5 and supposedly the upcoming Star Wars 7, all having HDR graded versions.
With the industry headed toward UHD and with Apple using the quite powerful A8 chip, I find it hard to understand why Apple didn't make the new Apple TV support 4K to give a little more future proofing. At this rate Apple will almost have to come out with a newer 4K enabled model next year.
Probably explains why they put such a weak chip in it too - why on earth they couldn't swallow some $$$ the greedy ^S%S&S&S*'s and put an A8X or even A9 is beyond me , it's going to stifle any chances this thing has of being taken seriously as a gaming console , it reminds me of the wii u - everything done on the cheap...
Hope it doesn't befall the same fate
This is a set top box for the average TV user that also supports some level of games via an app store. The browser is the biggest missing piece (although that gets tricky without a mouse). To get near desktop features, one needs e-mail, web surfing, Facebook, and a few other areas also MIA.
dear people complaining about the 10/100 port: while i'd also like the biggest numbers for everything in the world, aka 10/100/1000 ethernet port, i'd like you to go measure how much bandwidth your streaming media *actually* uses and post here with your findings. you'd be surprised to know that most, if not all users will never even touch the 100mbps cap. on top of that, it's my guess that most people will be using wifi anyway.
so while i understand that the lack of an extra zero offends you, it's like complaining that a car's top speed is 100mph as opposed to 500 when you're never taking it above 70.
so while i understand that the lack of an extra zero offends you, it's like complaining that a car's top speed is 100mph as opposed to 500 when you're never taking it above 70.
Perhaps they were planning to put an A9 in it, and, backfitted the A8 after HEVC Advance demanded a cut of 4K streaming gross revenue. HEVC may dead at this point. Perhaps Apple is looking at VP9 (problem: it may be free, but, it is controlled by Google), or, Thor, which is being nurtured by Cisco:
Using your "streaming only" logic you would only need a 10 ethernet port because streaming from Netflix is < 10mbps unless you are streaming 4K which it does not support. Anyway, when you start to watch a movie (from iTunes download) the ATV 3 will download the entire movie while you are watching it. It is not the speed of the Stream like with Netflix. Also, with games it will only download the first 200mb when you install it and then it will dynamically download up to 2gb more for a total of 2.2gb. Then as needed it will swap out portions of the game as you play it. These features would benefit from GB Ethernet if your WAN speed is > 100mb which is becoming more and more available at a reasonable cost. Back to games, if would be nice to download the entire maybe 15gb game to your MAC and pull the game from there. Why download over and over again. Of course you could use GB Ethernet between your ATV and your MAC.
Streaming, sure. But, see d21mike below.
Clearly, that is what Apple is thinking. WiFi for everything, and WiFi can be faster than 100 Mbps. Problem: Some of us live in locations with a lot of neighbor interference, and, use a lot of wired Ethernet anyway because it works better.
Good summary.
I like the Siri capability, but sorry to hear that it is very limited. Apparently can only answer questions about the content you are viewing, what else is available to view, and what the weather is like. Would be much nicer to have the full search capability on any topic. Anyone know why this limitation was implemented?
Yeah, I got chuckle out of that. 10/100 is fine. It's your router/switch that needs 1000.
Assuming they were streaming a UHD BD to it the fastest speed you'd need to a single device is 30MBPS. Doesn't matter what the pipe is to the premise. That leaves you with 70MBPS for the download of a 5-10 gig iTunes file, assuming they go to 4K before the next product and can somehow upgrade this product.
Total non issue unless you're streaming 4-5 movies at a time. Even then the issue is the pipe to the house and whatever routing/switching hardware you have. Your network hardware will throttle you long before the 10/100 on the ATV will.
You quoted me. But obviously based on your streaming comments that you did not even read what I said.
As with the Airtunes option, the use of RCA cables would put me back decades.
There is absolutely no incentive for me to replace my current ATV if the new one does not support optical audio. I am not going to buy a new hifi or a converter box in order to retain the same audio quality.
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I am using my telly in between the aTV and the receiver. Works marvelous. And I like my screensaver that's on, while music is playing from the optical out of the TV set.
True. A gigabit ethernet port would have been one of the few things that might have tempted me to buy the new AppleTV. I am in a remote location with slow Verizon DSL so I don't use streaming. But I have about 600 movies and 500 TV shows on a Mac Mini iTunes server. I get annoyed by the latency on the Apple TV3 (everything is hardwired on gigabit ethernet). It takes awhile for a movie to start and it can't even begin to keep up when you FF or RW.
But hopefully the 802.ac wifi will improve that a bit. I use my MBA with 802.11ac to connect to the same Mac Mini in iTunes with home sharing. Movies start right up and I can scrub back and forth while playing just like they are local files.
I read what you said, and it doesn't need gigabit for it. There is no need for it because of how your router will manage your throughput to a given device. The idea that 1gig is needed on this is a work of fiction. The only way you'd see that kind of bandwidth at the device is if you have a 1gig pipe to the premise and the modem is directly attached to the ATV and nothing else. Even then the pipe would be throttled by the device ability to read/write.
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Your assuming the network speed is the problem here. The likely problem is the minimalist capability of the ATV3. More memory from ATV4 will probably solve the issues. It's not an Ethernet port problem.
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I don't think so. The AppleTVs are on ethernet, but that tops out at about 12Mbytes/sec because it's 100baseT. The MacBook Air is on 802.11ac wifi and I have clocked that at about 60Mbytes/sec accessing the Mac Mini server on my LAN. So if it can access the iTunes server at 5x the speed of the AppleTV, obviously there will be a noticeable performance difference. There's just no way you can "scrub" through a video and have it keep up on 100baseT.
But whatever. It's not a huge deal, I just wish the AppleTV was more responsive. If you are happy with 100baseT, then that's fine.
This year's tech. Kinda crazy that they are about to release a year-old product.
Looks like you didn't understand what he said then because he made a perfectly valid case for 1GbE.
Absolutely spot on! As a typical UK resident with Sky, pretty much everything I watch is on Sky & an HDMI passthrough would make it an AppleTV that's completely integrated into my TV watching lifestyle, as opposed to just another set top box that I have to find an HDMI input for and will only really use occasionally for the odd movie & Airplay.
He didn't. There is zero need for it on a device that will never see that much data.