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Where's the New Apple TV?
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Really? When the current Apple TV is by far the best streaming box on the market.
Still running the original 4K and had the HD before that. I treat them more like console gamers which only get an upgrade every 5 or so years, if that. Would love it if Apple one day released an ATV that was actually gameable…
Just buy a used one for now. They’re cheap. Even the 4K Gen 1 or 2 is fine.So annoying, I need it to support my new smart home, but I’m going to have to wait
Barely hanging on?
The A17Pro is almost the same Benchmarked performance as the M1.
For a tiny $130 box meant for watching TV and the most casual of casual gaming it’s overkill really, even the current A15 is more than enough.
Plus the A17 has AV1 decoding, a major improvement.
The hardware is fine, the software is fine, it's still faster than my new 77 LG G5. The problem is rather problematic applications such as Disney+ or Netflix, where "match frame rate" often doesn't work. Otherwise, I don't think we need a new Apple TV, we won't get TrueHD passthrough anyway, and personally, I don't need it, I have 4K Blu-ray for the better movies, so all in all, Apple TV is still one of the best Apple products, I just wish there was more quality control so that basic features like "match frame rate" would work on essential apps.
You mean like, no one?
Who would?
The Venn diagram of a ‘gamer’ who only owns an AppleTV with no other option for playing games isn’t even contained within any other circle…
Well at least Gurman is consistent in rarely being right. I don’t understand why that joke gets so much attention…
The only other time we had a 4 year gap between Apple TV device updates was between the 1st and 2nd gen 4k devices. Back then the 3rd gen 4k device came out only 18 months after the 2nd gen device with a 3 gen jump in CPU. I wonder if we will see the same again. The A17Pro Apple TV 4k 4th gen this coming spring and then the following year in the fall, a 5th gen based on the A20.
The Apple TV does eat a lot of storage for something, that I'm guessing is the screen savers. I have a 32 GB 2nd gen 4K model and the Settings app tells me I'm only using 3-4 GB beyond the OS, yet Infuse frequently tells me it's had to delete ~1 GB of downloadeded/cached meta data and saved shares because the OS has requested the space back. I think the screen savers at >1 GB each and there is probably 4-5 GB reserved for streaming content caching.
Perhaps the 64 GB base has fixed this, but I have no experience of this.
Its fine as long as you ignore Siri or turn her off but you probably can get a better soundbar.
Apple hasn’t UPGRADED the 4k, but it has been UPDATED with new OS versions and features.
Apple hasn't updated the Apple TV 4K since 2022, and 2025 was supposed to be the year that we got a refresh. There were rumors suggesting Apple would release the new Apple TV before the end of 2025, but it looks like that's not going to happen now.
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Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said several times across 2024 and 2025 that Apple would update both the HomePod mini and the Apple TV 4K toward the end of the year, and we also heard the same information from other sources. No announcement happened in September alongside the iPhone launch, and when Apple updated the Vision Pro, iPad Pro, and MacBook Pro in October, there was no sign of the Apple TV.
It's not clear what happened, but it's possible Apple decided to hold all home-related product announcements until spring 2026, when the smarter, more capable version of Siri will be ready in iOS 26.4.
That's right around the time when Apple is rumored to be launching its new home hub device, so we could see the Apple TV, home hub, and HomePod mini sometime in late March or April.
Rumored Features
The Apple TV isn't going to get a major design overhaul, but there are some useful updates in store. It's long overdue for a new chip, and Apple's newer chip options will bring gaming improvements.
A-Series Chip
The next-generation Apple TV is expected to get an updated A-series chip, and Apple backend code we found suggests that it'll use the A17 Pro. The A17 Pro is the chip that Apple first used in the iPhone 15 Pro models, and it would bring Apple Intelligence support to the Apple TV for the first time. The A17 Pro is built on 3-nanometer technology and it would also bring support for console-quality games thanks to much improved CPU and GPU performance. It'll be a significant improvement over the current A15 Bionic chip.
N1 Chip
Apple debuted its custom N1 networking chip in the iPhone 17 models, and rumors suggest that the N1 will also be used in the upcoming Apple TV. It adds support for Wi-Fi 7, which is not a current Apple TV feature. With Wi-Fi 7 support, the Apple TV will be able to connect to Wi-Fi networks that support the faster and less crowded 6GHz band. Users can expect faster Wi-Fi speeds and lower latency.
New Siri Features
With a faster chip that supports Apple Intelligence, the next-generation Apple TV will support the LLM version of Siri coming in 2026. Siri will be more like Claude or ChatGPT, which could lead to better Apple TV recommendations, the option to use voice commands to do more than before, better support for questions about actors and music in movies and shows, and much more.
Pricing
There's a possibility that Apple will cut costs for the next Apple TV, and Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has suggested that Apple is targeting a price point around $100. With the A17 Pro chip and the N1 chip, Apple might not be able to hit that price with the flagship model, but there could be a lower-end entry-level option that's more affordable. Pricing right now starts at $129.
New Launch Date
In early November, Gurman said that an Apple TV and HomePod mini "shouldn't be too far off" based on dwindling supplies of the devices at Apple retail stores. At the time, he said a post-2025 debut was a possibility, but he confirmed the products are ready to go and could launch at any time.
The HomePod mini and Apple TV will "help showcase the new Siri and Apple Intelligence features" that Apple has coming, which makes the spring timing sound even more likely.
Article Link: Where's the New Apple TV?
It’s faster and more capable than competing streaming boxes (and costs more).
I would LOVE the AppleTV remote to be upgraded and introduce more buttons. A dedicated “favorites” button and a “my stuff/library/watchlist” button and a “dvr” button and “guide” would go a long way for those using hybrid streaming services with LiveTV.
All streaming services have a menu system and none of them make it easy to navigate them. It’s possible they may be violating the ADA with their interfaces. Wish a lawsuit would test that.
I bet i just worked out that the camera is for.... advanced AI (not the Siri kind)... recognises people's position in the room, extracting their poses, and shimmers the Apple TV's liquid glass icons to suit their head movements.
No more needing to tilt your Apple TV side to side to see the icons shimmer.
No more needing to tilt your Apple TV side to side to see the icons shimmer.
I don’t understand the obsession that *every* Apple TV should have Ethernet. It’s something probably 99% of people don’t use, so it’s illogical to assume it’s a “must have.” If you want Ethernet, you have an option to get one with it. If you’re already buying an Apple TV, the extra $30 isn’t breaking the bank.
On the other hand, every Apple TV *should* include a Thread chip, and I bet that will happen with this new upgrade. With most normie consumers not understanding with Thread is, it would be wise for Apple to ensure all IoT devices that say “HomeKit / Apple Home / Matter” compatible be able to work without reading the fine print and understanding different networking protocols and whether or not their model is compatible.
Right, it took Tim Cook 15 years to finally understand why Steve Jobs acquired Siri on his death bed. He was dragging his feet on this as recently as last year until chatGPT slapped him in the face with what Steve had been talking about all along.
A HomePod mini isn't expected to replace your speakers (unless you want them to), but in the era of omnipresent voice assistants, everything will have a speaker at the very least, if not a camera and a display too. An Apple TV would either get a speaker or the speaker would get an Apple TV. I believe it's the latter.
HomePods aren't just speakers, they're equipped to sit at the centre of a smart home, as Thread Border Routers for Matter, as the place you speak to Siri, and likely with the HomePad, as a local central processor for Apple Intelligence in your home, the one you pay a little (a lot) more to enable the others to get personalized Apple Intelligence without having to send your private data out of your home.
Apple has been setting the chessboard for this for a while now. They decided they weren't going to make a TV after all so it would never work without every TV on the market having AirPlay — and that alone has taken 6 years to get every manufacturer on board. The first tv with built in Airplay was announced at CES in 2019. AirPlay 2 (with virtually zero lag), another requirement for this vision, came out the year before in 2018. They've been very methodical if you look back in retrospect.
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I've been expecting a camera in the living room since the first webcams appeared in the 1990's. I can't believe it's taken this long, and in fact, still hasn't happened. Of course the idea of big brother eavesdropping and targeting ads never crossed my mind back then.
Call me old fashion, but i don’t want an apple tv that showcases the new siri and apple intelligence.
I don’t talk to my tv, and I don’t want to. I don’t want it suggesting a bunch of stuff I am not interested in, or trying to be smart. I want to watch a show or movie, and maybe play a game.
I don’t talk to my tv, and I don’t want to. I don’t want it suggesting a bunch of stuff I am not interested in, or trying to be smart. I want to watch a show or movie, and maybe play a game.
It is already many times faster than any other streaming box. I’m not sure why it needs an upgrade, but I’m going to wait since it is this close.
We love our AppleTV. Much less ads than Roku or Chromecast. Performance is incredible. We use it as a Tailscale exit node. FaceTime alone is worth getting one of these.