I'm a little surprised at the price (especially when their newly-announced HomeView is the same price, and it has a screen!).
I love this product: it's the one box I can (reasonably) trust to not be mining my viewing habits for data. I have two older ones and was looking to get something that supported 4K but waited for this to come out.
$300 might be a decent price if you use it for all of the things that it can do, but if all you're doing is launching streaming apps, $200 was already on the high end for that. $300 seems...a bit much.
Anything I'm missing here? The silver lining is that this product is almost certainly still in the "pay money then forget about it for a decade" tier, which is nice.
I'm also wondering if/how the "add up to four homepods" feature compares to "getting a soundbar". In the other thread for this someone noted that the HomePods only work with this box; so if you're running a game console that's no bueno. But apart from that, if $600 on an Apple TV + two HomePods mini delivers something comparable to a ~$500 soundbar, that's a decent value proposition.
> it's the one box I can (reasonably) trust to not be mining my viewing habits for data.
It's mind-blowing how one of the most advanced technology forums on the internet can take privacy for granted just because the marketing of a for-profit corporation with previous histories of privacy violations (there's even lawsuits) claims their closed source device connected 24/7 to the internet, is private.
My question is what do you connect this TO that doesn't spy. I get you can use a Smart TV and switch to HDMI input but there's no guarantee the TV is not spying on you in some way, if not today then tomorrow these things will come with eSIM support to upload ACR data even when 'disconnected' or connect to your smartphone over some ad tech protocol to do the same.
If you want privacy (or anything for that matter), the only way you're going to get it is by user choice. A device that doesn't let you install your own apps is not going to deliver what you want.
I don’t trust them for privacy. I like them for the lack of annoyance. All their competitors seems to want to hinder any activity I want to do. Ads, nagging, notifications, … It’s basically a mental tax.
I purchased the 2021 ATV just before the 2022 was released. It struggles with AV1 and VP9 (Infuse really struggles, VLC is better but still a problem). I just wanted the faster CPU (for software decoding AV1 and VP9). Almost bought the 2022 version in 2024 for that but didn't want to buy a 2 year old product.
Didn't expect to have to wait 4 years, and now the price is more than doubled. I can afford it but refuse to do so, especially since I don't use any of the onboard storage for anything.
The new CPU (A19) should have hardware decoding for both AV1 and VP9. Apple doesn't advertise the latter, but Safari supports VP9 on the A17 Pro and newer. You shouldn't have to rely on software decoding with the new Apple TV, though it might depend on your apps supporting it.
Yeah I think this is the price for my soul, I'll keep using the data mining LG TV. Perhaps I ought to just throw it on a vlan that i turn off whenever i dont watch the tv.
Go back a year and 8GB of RAM would cost around $30. Today, it's going to be $120. Apple really wanted to increase the amount of RAM from 4GB to 8GB to support on-device Siri AI, but RAM isn't cheap at the moment.
The move to the A19 also meant that they couldn't go with LPDDR4X RAM and instead had to use more expensive LPDDR5X (IIRC).
It is crazy. I expect the new Apple TV to be a flop because $300 is just a lot. The problem is that Apple is a little boxed in on this device. Apple wants to re-use the A19, but that locks them into expensive DDR5 RAM. They want to push Siri AI, but that locks them into 8GB RAM. Unlike the iPhone, there aren't as many other opportunities with the App Store, Apple Pay, search engine placement revenue, etc.
Storage has also gone up a lot and Apple is no longer selling a 64GB model. Most streaming sticks have 4-16GB of storage and it's usually really slow/cheap storage. The new Apple TV has 128GB of storage and the price for that has probably gone from around $25 to $50.
You say that it's fine from "$200 to $300", but that's not really true. It's gone from $250 to $300 when you look at the 128GB model. I still think it's crazy that it went from $150 to $300 in the same year, but the outgoing 128GB model was already $250 after the price hikes earlier this year.
The problem is that Apple didn't want to reign in their product for the current market and I somewhat get that. What's the point of a new Apple TV if it's just "we updated the processor." For me, the point would be AV1 and VP9 decoding, but Apple wanted to push Siri AI.
Other high-end TV devices have also seen big increases in price. The Fire TV Cube went from being $110-140 to now $200 - and with the Fire TV Cube you're getting Cortex-A73 processor cores from 2016, 2GB LPDDR4X, and 16GB storage. At least Apple is giving you 8GB LPDDR5X and 128GB of storage and a processor that is way better.
The Google TV Streamer is $150 now with 4GB RAM and 16GB storage, but with LPDDR4 RAM and Cortex-A55 cores - and it's still $150.
A Roku Ultra is 2GB RAM and 4GB storage with Cortex-A55 cores and costs $150.
I think we're seeing that there's still some really old stock out there that's cheap, but we're seeing the prices climb on competitors too. Google raised its price 50%. Amazon has raised its price 40-80%. Apple raised its price 54-67% on the same-model and launched the newer model with double the RAM, more expensive RAM, a processor that's 4 years newer, etc.
I think it's likely that Google, Roku, and Amazon simply don't upgrade their streaming devices during this parts shortage. I think a lot of people will be fine with a 12nm Cortex-A55 based TV streamer with limited RAM and storage (and slow RAM and storage). I love how fast my Apple TV is. It's amazing the difference in UI lag. But I think most companies aren't going to prioritize that premium experience, especially during a parts shortage.
Doesn't seem like it. Siri AI is not even available in all languages yet either. $429 CAD is crazy. You can get a whole mini PC and a Bluetooth remote for less and slap LibreElec on it even at today's crazy prices. And it'll be a better remote too.
Last time I tried the Media PC thing it ended up being somewhat of a nightmare. Had to spend significant amount of time setting up MadVR with my video player and get HDMI passthrough working, but it was always very flaky. Occasionally an Nvidia driver update would break it completely. Dolby Vision wasn't even an option.
I really wanted to make it work, but it ended up being an annoying hassle. I got a Shield TV and it has been a much better solution.
Not sure if things have changed since then (~5 years ago).
$429 CAD is crazy for sure but there's a running joke in my group chats of me sending a link to an Apple TV every time someone posts about their Kodi box breaking. It's not set and forget like an Apple TV at all...
My Apple TVs have not been set and forget. Apple's aggressive storage saving makes it so that it resets storage for, I get logged out of, apps that I don't use frequently. It'll also randomly need a reboot to solve the problem of some videos not playing correctly.
It's definitely not the most troublesome player I've dealt with, but rebooting and logging back into apps randomly can be frustrating.
I think the only problems I've had on mine were network related and I would have had the same problems with an ATV since it can't magically fix DNS or my NAS being off.
If you want a privacy focused solution it's probably the most private. Yeah, admittedly harder to use but I'm not recommending it to my parents.
I have an Apple TV exactly to not deal with any Smart TV feature and to avoid connecting a TV to the internet, mine is the first gen 4K from 2017 and is still chugging along fine.
I don't plan on upgrading it to this new version yet so I'll probably get 10+ years of use out of it, great value overall.
> Siri AI is not even available in all languages yet either.
Siri AI is increasingly looking like a product that's exclusively for Americans. An unfortunate side effect of the EU attempting to become a regulatory superpower but failing to export its rules to the rest of the world.
Are they? If I were a gambling man, I'd bet that Siri AI never comes to the EU. I think Apple saw what happened with Google's on-device AI in the EU and noped out.
The person in the other thread is incorrect, an Apple TV connected to HomePods can be configured to advertise HDMI Audio Return Channel so that anything your TV is displaying has its audio routed through it.
Having said that I eventually replaced my pair of HomePod Minis with a Sonos soundbar because I wanted something with a bit more oomph to it, although I'd maybe have considered getting a pair of the big HomePods and using the Minis as rear speakers had this been available at the time.
Dumb q but did you ever have apple tv -> tv -> sonos soundbar set up in a way where you were able to control the sonos soundbar audio from the iphone remote app?
I can confirm! I have an eARC setup with an AppleTV, 2 big homepods, a gaming PC and a projector.
I had to buy a special HDMI switch because my projector is eARC-naive, but my understanding is that a lot of modern TVs are eARC-aware and a special switch is not required. The one downside to my setup is that I have to press a button on the HDMI switch to toggle between the PC and the AppleTV, no remote control, but hey it's good to stretch your legs now and then right?
Re audio quality, I really like my big HomePods and find they fill the room quite well and have a solid low range to them. I'd also agree that the HomePod Minis are not suitable for a living room entertainment experience.
How is life in the Sonos ecosystem? I vaguely recall there being some controversy around them a few years back, and I'm generally distrustful of third party hardware companies attempting to write software.
It’s ok. Their app isn’t great, but the underlying technology is. Spotify can directly play to one of their speakers. Their local protocol is also well understood and you can do most things with it, so you can vibe code your own replacement app pretty easily. The problem is once you hit their cloud APIs the latency is way too high for something like a speaker.
Yeah, the hardware is great. I honestly couldn't tell you much about the app because I exclusively use the speaker via HDMI-ARC and AirPlay, both of which work really well.
HomeView, HomePod and AppleTV should be one device. A powerful home server + a bunch of low powered clients and receivers all over the home. No need for 8gb RAM in all of them..
If it has decent RAM and had it been cheaper, OpenAI alone will keep this product out of stock. This is Apple's love for the retail consumers that they were forced to increase the price just so that Sam would think twice before hoarding them.
It’s worth it for me because I’m still using an Apple TV 4K 2017 that I bought in 2019. It struggles with a lot of Plex content. The price tag does feel high, but taking into account post-Covid inflation and component cost increases due to the AI bubble, it makes sense. An Nvidia shield pro cost exactly the same (in Canada, at least).
My home theatre set up is through a Denon receiver. I love my gen1 HomePods for listening to music, but I can’t understand why anyone would buy four HomePods rather than a proper surround setup.
It depends on what you're looking for exactly. Some models of FireTV cube have pretty beefy processors and can handle some things the Shield can't, like Dolby Vision FEL.
Same here. I just ordered a new one because there's basically no better alternative that supports so many formats. My TV, for example, doesn't support TrueHD 7.1, but the Nvidia Shield Pro does. I guess the new Apple TV 4K is also worse in this regard.
Wow. The price went from 129 to 199 to 299. That's nuts. Also, I find it pretty hilarious because for a couple years people have been speculating that Apple would release a low cost version to compete with the sticks.
Anyway, it's now too much money for something that is just going to open Jellyfin.
I had been holding off on buying an Apple TV in anticipation of this launch, and am a bit underwhelmed. $300 just seems crazy for what is, or I guess, what it's coming from.
Does anyone know why having 128GB of storage is useful? Just for installing more apps? I've had Google TV devices in the past, and don't think I ever came close to the 32GB storage limit. Maybe there's a gap I'm missing...
I’ve been using an Apple TV since ~2014 I think. Upgraded to the 4K version on release.
Really nothing beats it, especially if you are in Apple ecosystem but even if you are not, it’s a million times better than the messy android tv with full of ads and bloat.
That being said, I don’t see a reason for us to upgrade to this version.
The reason will be that the older, less expensive Apple TV 4k will no longer be available. There's really no other reason. This is a price hike, plain and simple.
Eh Apple halfheartedly pretends like they're a gaming platform every couple years for a WWDC and then never gives any indication they're actually trying the other 364 days of the year. I'd be shocked if gaming was an influence in the storage at all.
I'd guess it's room for the AI model and future versions of it that could grow.
I have an AppleTV because I never want to plug my TV into the internet. I just need a box that can stream videos. Does it need to have AI? No. It really doesn’t. I wish Apple just dropped all this junk and figured out what they want that TV app to do.
> I have an AppleTV because I never want to plug my TV into the internet. I just need a box that can stream videos.
One annoyance is that the Netflix app stopped being able/allowed to stream to any device that has some kind of remote (or where you can enter a username/password in some way):
Netflix works fine with the device directly connected to the TV. With a long hdmi-cable (5m+) + an usbc-to-hdmi converter you can keep de phone/pad in your hands. Using a short (≤2m) hdmi-usbc cable you probably need to put the device next to the TV. I bring either when traveling to watch TV in hotels rooms.
It's been doing the same thing forever. A bunch of squares on a screen and you select one to go into whatever app. The core experience has not changed in living memory.
Dont want to plug your TV in to the internet but happy to plug in an Apple TV?
I still never understand people who are dead against giving all their personal info and data to one company but are fine with giving it to another.
Yes this is an apple thread on HN and so I am expecting to be downvoted into oblivion by the Apple fans who believe Apple is better than any other company with data and security, when they have been proved multiple times to be just as bad.
Different companies have different track records and incentives with regard to privacy. There may be companies more trustworthy than Apple, but there aren't many companies less worthy than most TV manufacturers.
Right but if you are streaming then you are happy to give all your personal info and viewing habit data to Netflix, Disney, Amazon etc to build ad profiles on you, as well as Apple who own the hardware and are feeding telemetry data into your ad profile on their system.
But for some reason Sony or Samsung doing the same on your TV is too far?
> But for some reason Sony or Samsung doing the same on your TV is too far?
The content streamers get your viewing habits by virtue of you viewing their content (like Youtube, or any web site, getting information on what you're looking at by simply logging HTTP GET requests).
There is no reason why television OEMs need to do screen captures and send them to the mothership.
It's the first- and second-party interaction: you gave money to Sony/Samsung/etc for a product, and after the exchange there is no reason for any further interaction.
You have a regular/monthly interaction with content providers: there is at least a valid reason for the content providers to have that information in the first place, and none for the TV OEMs to collect it.
You can reason it all you want, but regardless of the product type the fact remains you are happy to give your data to one billion dollar company but not another.
That is absolutely fine, but IMO it is hypocritical. That is all I am arguing.
I don't want random people listening in on me, but I don't mind the person I choose to speak to listening to me.
Does that qualify as hypocrisy too?
You can argue against dealing with any billion dollar company. But drop the hypocrisy framing, it is nonsensical and your point will be stronger without it.
> as well as Apple who own the hardware and are feeding telemetry data into your ad profile on their system.
Are they, though? Is Apple snooping into the Netflix app’s data to track what you’re watching and phone home with that info? Are there studies showing that happening? Are they selling that data to third parties like the TV manufacturers are?
You seem to be missing a major point. You have signed up to streaming services and they are 100% selling your data and viewing habits to 3rd parties to build ad and tracking profiles. How come you are happy for Disney and Netflix to do this but not Samsung or Sony?
As far is Apple is concerned, they have been caught lying about this many times before. I jujst cant get my head around why any person can trust a billion dollar corporation to be 'good'.
It's possible this is a distinction without a difference, but Disney and Netflix provide a service and the data they are selling is integral* to providing that service, meaning they're going to have that data regardless. If you're okay with anyone selling any of your data, it probably makes sense for Netflix to sell data about what you watch on Netflix.
Samsung or Sony sell a physical product that does not need internet connectivity, or microphones, or telemetry, or any of that. They jam that stuff in there to increase profits and make it economically infeasible to sell what I think 80% of people on HN would buy if given the opportunity - a large flatscreen TV with no built-in connectivity whatsoever. So anything I can do to make me less profitable to them, I will do.
This is obviously the line where we disagree, and thats fine. You are arguing that you are happy to give your data to a company if its integral to the service they provide. My opinion is that if you are giving your data to one billion dollar company that is building an ad profile and selling it to 3rd parties, then why have scruples about giving it to another? The ad companies are getting your data one way or another, cherry picking a single device on your home network to ringfence against that seems crazy in my opinion.
I also dislike that my data is being transacted willy-nilly by content providers, it's a very different ballpark when TVs have hidden microphones recording my house, screen capturing if I'm showing personal photos on the screen, and sending that data to the manufacturer. That's a much worse privacy invasion.
I got an AppleTV because the modal experience of using webOS on my TV was having my toddler scream "WATCH TRASH TRUCK" while watching a loading spinner. Garbage computer experience. I never disconnected it from the network though. I was watching the NBA Playoffs on broadcast (so no internet involved in the content delivery) and I got an overlay in webOS system fonts suggesting I order delivery food through my TV. I saw it again when watching the World Cup through the Peacock app on the Apple TV.
So I watch like a total of 2 hours of sports in Summer 2026 and my kid gets an hour of TV while he eats lunch and webOS works its hardest to make those both suck ass, and the Apple TV Just WorksTM and we can put our weekly Facetime with Grandma and Grandpa on there. Absolute no brainer better experience.
They didn’t not respond. They unambiguously said they are not participating or even aware of the existence of such a program. That goes a hell of a lot further, and would have opened them up to a hell of a lot of issues if it was false.
I would invite you to read all the investigations that have been done on how much various smart TVs surveil households and exfiltrate all kinds of personal data.
Then find investigations where Apple TVs are proven to do the same, of which there are none.
You’re chalking this up to fanboyism but this is just people making informed choices. In today’s streaming era “just don’t connect anything to the internet” isn’t possible.
A practically e-waste mini-PC running an ordinary Linux distro paired with an airmouse remote is a much better TV box. You don't need streaming apps when you are free to use a Web browser, something Apple won't allow for obvious reasons. No surveillance, no crapware, no ads. It can even double as a console for GOG/Steam.
> The Washington Post indicated that "98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft"
> Apple: "We have never heard of PRISM" "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order."
Yeah, they said the same thing about giving out all your push notifications to the government, before they were caught and admitted they had to keep it secret due to NDAs. Seriously, why do people trust billion dollar corporations to look after the little guy?
"In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information," the company said in a statement. "Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests."
Im really not chalking this up to Fanboyism. The same can be said for anyone using a streaming device to avoid plugging their TV into the internet, be it Nvidia or google etc.
I am well aware of the recent LG controversy. However In my opinion if you are happy to sign up to Netflix and Disney+ and use a streaming box to give them all your personal data and viewing habits to allow tracking and ad profiles then its pretty hypocritical to target a single company in the chain and call them out for it.
You really don’t think there’s a difference between a company collecting data about the usage of their own video library and another company tracking audio with microphones, sniffing local network devices, monitoring all video output and selling all of the above to third parties?
Genuinely curious: is there any company caught “tracking audio with microphones”?
And what does it mean? Is it about eavesdropping on users or identifying the content being watched?
LG TVs transcribe conversations you’re having in the room and store them locally. While they haven’t been caught sending that data anywhere AFAIK, there are known vulnerabilities that lets attackers read these transcriptions.
Personally I think when you sign up to Disney+ and you give them things like your DOB, bank details, address, phone number, IP address, its a much bigger base for those companies to start building your ad profile much more accurately. If you have kids you then make a family profile to protect them, but in reality all you are doing is feeding the streaming company information about your kids viewing habits to ad to the ad profiles. All of this is being sold to 3rd parties all over the world, for each streaming service you use.
This is without even looking at Apple, who own the hardware you are streaming on and have been caught lying multiple times in the past about data harvesting.
After all that, I feel that unplugging the cord on your TV is completely pointless, and it is frustrating how people gloat about it like they are getting around the system. In reality, you are only giving your data to 4 companies in the chain now, instead of 5.
You’re talking about “fans” and “gloating” and I really can’t understand why you see things that way. Like I said, people accept that streaming services are an inevitable part of their lives and they’re making informed choices to minimise their exposure. 4 companies is indeed better than 5.
Im pretty sure I never used the word "Fans" anywhere? If I did please point it out as it wasnt intentional.
If you think giving data to 4 companies instead of 5 is fine then thats fair enough, its your own data. In my opinion if you happy to give your data to one billion dollar ad profile selling company, then why squabble about another? However I understand this is subjective, and I am not trying to tell anyone they are wrong. I just dont understand it thats all!
> Im really not chalking this up to Fanboyism. The same can be said for anyone using a streaming device to avoid plugging their TV into the internet, be it Nvidia or google etc.
You literally did chalk it up to fanboyism. You blamed Apple fans for the downvotes you were going to receive, as if only those blinded by sycophancy could possibly disagree with you.
I really don't think it's fair to chalk this up to fanboyism. It's really hard to argue that a majority of the platforms natively available on smart TVs are pretty bad, and that they have made a habit of using software updates to cram in more ads. I used a TCL roku TV 10 years and recommended them to everyone looking for a decent budget TV with a good minimal interface. That same exact TV is still used on occasion; the interface has gotten awful and interactions are sluggish.
Many platforms have gone the same way: Google TV boxes are known to be broadly awful at this point, my samsung TV's built-in apps got progressively less responsive with more ads on my homescreen over the last few years. I haven't experienced it but I hear complaints about the performance and intrusiveness of LG TVs now as well.
After cycling through my options, the Apple TV is the only one that doesn't exhibit the same behavior: It is responsive, has a good interface that looks nice, has a very nice minimal remote, and it works the same today as it did yesterday (and basically as it did 2 years ago). I'm not trying to claim allegiance to any brand, it just seems that somehow Apple is the only one not participating in enshittification, at least not to the same degree. If that changes the Apple TV will be out the door and I'll probably need to roll my own out of some sort of mini PC on an open-source platform.
And as one last note, for the time being Apple still has some credibility in terms of privacy. They have revenue streams that work for them without completely ruining their product, and it's my hope they continue with that because as far as I can tell they are the only ones left among the big players.
Relax. Apple's AI is basically GPT-2 duct-taped to a voice model, at best. Even if they tried to collect your data, it couldn't do it reliably. They're so incompetent on this that their AI isn't actually worrying.
Gemini is basically GPT-2 duc... Ok, ok leaving the snark aside, I know that but the local model probably delegates to remote when it decides it needs that and the local model is not good.
Also, the tooling they provided to the model is not good either. The 3rd party AI apps by OpenAI or Anthropic can do much more than the system assistant.
There is a weird chain of wondering what is going to answer my response with Siri AI considering it could be Old Siri, New Siri (local), New Siri (PCC), or ChatGPT...
300$ yikes. I'm amazed. And this thing can't even do 120 fps. :-(
Did the old one also not have Dolby vision/HDR10/Atmos? What is this cinematic stuff? What are we missing here?
Why would I need CPU/GPU performance on an Apple TV? I'm genuinely confused. Is it to play video games? If I want to play video games, I can pay a bit more and get a used playstation I suppose. I genuinely don't understand this product anymore.
HDR support on Apple TV is fairly hit or miss depending on the player you are using.
HDR10+ is supported in some players (infuse) but not others (plex) and will fallback to HDR10. Profile 7 DV files do not play properly on Apple TV period even though it will display the DV logo (though frankly very few devices can do this). Profile 5 and 8 DV files will play properly depending on the player and the content mapping level in the content (2.9 is well supported but 4.0 causes HDR10 fallback or black screens in some cases). Apple TV also doesn't support HD audio passthrough great.
I’m been wondering that same thing while developing tvOS app and testing across hardware. What does this new model offer the last 3 didn’t??
Eg Pixel Brite works great on all versions of AppleTV including FEL playback on 1st gen
The only thing I haven’t been able to do with the older models is upscaling content at the same fidelity levels. But the results are very subtle either way and not all that compelling IMO.
I've used Steam Link to play games from my Steam library on the Apple TV using a video game controller and it worked surprisingly well. You still might want the Playstation (or Switch or XBox). Just depends on what games you want to play.
Moonlight works really well on the ATV4K too. I stream 4K@60FPS with HDR and surround sound from my PC using the Apollo fork of Sunshine (creates a virtual display since I normally game at 1440p on my attached monitor).
I think this is one of the things that the Apollo fork[1] makes way easier. I'm not sure that I had to do anything Apollo config wise* . I just went through the Windows HDR calibration tool the first time to tune it for my TV and it was good after.
*I do have a once-per-run Moonlight glitch that may even be because I'm on an older version. The first connection just doesn't pick up on the HDR immediately. I just have to reconnect once and it's good after that.
[1]: https://github.com/ClassicOldSong/Apollo ("Built-in Virtual Display with HDR support that matches the resolution/framerate config of your client automatically")
It has a powerful CPU/GPU because those chips are what they have on hand and they can control the whole stack. It's likely cheaper for them to just shove their overpowered chips into things that don't need them than setup manufacturing for a net new lower power chip.
Their Studio Displays have an A19 in them too (A19 Pro for the XDR)
I’d argue Apple TVs were one of the few cost subsidized items they sell, as when people could get 15$ Fire TV sticks anywhere they had to at least look competitive. Now that costs have gone up significantly and it’s basically an iPhone 17 without a screen it’s tough to keep the costs down.
an iPhone 17 without a screen, with half the storage, without a battery, without FaceID, without cameras, without cellular modem, without Taptic Engine, without…
The only part that “deserves” a price increase is the storage starting at 128GB now instead of 32GB, but it’s completely out of touch to get rid of the base model when nobody has any use for all that storage (even the 32GB) for what is basically a streaming box.
Hell, even their new HomeView device, which does have a screen and FaceID, starts at same price.
Apple TV can double as Home Hub device in which it records/routes to/ cloud from your cameras. Combined with high-res content, e.g. when streaming games, it can saturate the 1GbE.
Also, just learned it's still 4k 60Hz. So forget 120Hz gaming. Game streaming is likely to become a default in near future at the hardware proces we see, so limiting to 60Hz is really cheap of them at this point.
Any use for a faster port in this device? I use gig-e on my current 4K and it’s really nice to reduce latency (compared to WiFi) but I doubt 2.5G or 10G would be that useful… unless there were an SFP+ port where I could run fiber instead.
I own 4 ATVs, the OG 1080p one, then a 1st, 2nd and 3rd gen. I plan on replacing the oldest of those two with 2 4th gen ATVs. AppleTV is just so much better than any other option out there and I especially like the AV1 hardware decoding here. So, yes, totally worth it.
I was interested in it, since I do need a certain amount of oomph out of the SoC to watch all of my videos on my Apple TV 4K (libass in case someone asks), but man that sticker shock is harsh. I don't think I can stomach it.
Does anyone wink wink know when SiriAi (this improved version) hits iPhones? I currently have a laptop acting as an always listening personal assistant but it would be nice to have my iPhone be able to tell me anything but, “I’ve found this on the web for you - check it out”.
Does every refresh need to make a case for why existing owners of the last model need to upgrade?
Most of the purchases will be from people who do have an older model that's actually getting outdated, people who want another Apple TV for another room in their house, or people who don't own one at all. You buy this one now, it'll probably be good for the better part of a decade and you won't need to think about the next refresh.
The lack of audio passthrough has been so frustrating. Apple TV would be an instant buy for me if it did. I have a pretty good 5.1 setup at home. I've been watching the LoTR trilogy with my kids and there is a big difference between DD 5.1 vs the higher quality audio streams. I use a Shield for this reason, but it's clunky and I'd much rather have something that just works. Shame that Apple has no interest in supporting audio passthrough for their devices.
Yeah, exactly. I've looked into those boxes but have steered clear for the same reasons. For now I use ProjectIvy launcher for a very clean launcher experience and I used a custom Shield script someone had posted on Reddit a while back to remove a lot of Google bloat and the Google launcher. Works well enough, but frame-rate matching still requires manual intervention (I have a button mapped to forcing it) and the Apple TV app isn't quite as smooth in playback as it should be on the Shield.
I tend to have at least one of the latest AppleTVs around, but I find myself without access to my best AppleTV 4k and am stuck using a 1st gen in my current home.
I was surprised to learn my 1st gen doesn't have a thread radio which caused some minor homekit compatability issues. I actually bought a new AppleTV 4k a couple months ago but it didn't really solve my problem, so I returned it with the reasoning that it was long in the tooth and a new model was coming out soon.
I just preordered this one but I sort of wonder if I should just go buy the last gen one for half the money or whatever. Seems like the actual buy. At the old price point, they were impulse buys. At this price point, well, it's enough to get me to stop and think about it.
8k blu-rays aren't and if they were, I don't think they would 4x the bandwidth... and even if they did, 4k blu-ray peaks at 150mbps (or so), so 4x would be 600mbps, which gigabit is still plenty for.
Commercial streamimg platforms are probably gonna allocate like 2mbps more for 8k streaming and call it a day.
8K is dead, nobody was buying 8K tvs. There will almost certainly be under a million 8K tvs sold in the next decade. There's also absolutely no content for it while not even 4K content is mainstream.
Current rumor is Apple (Beats) may be releasing a controller soon, and with that I’d assume that + price they are testing the waters with bringing AAA to the Apple TV.
If they put Steam on it with your whole existing library we'd be talking.
"We have tomb raider and death stranding 2 for $69.99" is not an interesting proposition except for Apple fanboy dads who hope that will placate their gamer child (it won't).
Nowadays with ~100 bucks you can an amd64 box and a CEC adapter, which allows to use the default remote of your tv. Then you can install on it whatever you want, customize it however you prefer and have all the privacy you decide. No lock-in. As much AI as you like, zero is a valid option.
I was hoping they would finally add a camera or just let me plug in a webcam into it for facetime. Continuity camera doesn't work super well and the set up each time sucks.
It's genuinely one of the few apple products I've had interest in but it seems like I'm in a minority. Maybe people just haven't bought a new TV recently.
TVs are getting worse not better. Except for the display. Which should be the only real concern. But the built in software is just going down hill universally.
I would love to have something that can have a snappy UI. I don't even care about resolution, I'd happily keep everything at 720p as long as the UI didn't take seconds to react.
$300 is absurd. I’ve been waiting for this for a while, but it looks like I’ll have to settle for the older model at a lower price. I wonder if the high price is due to storage costs.
I used to love my apple tv, but now I have a tv and a projector at home that both come with a good enough TV OS that has all the streaming apps I need (Netflix, HBO, etc), so I no longer find myself using my apple tv. My LGTV even supports airplay from my mac/iphone, which was maybe the only feature I thought would be unique to the apple tv.
I don't see the appeal unless you're already balls deep into the subscription ecosystem. $300 minipc will get you much further than this thing will. There used to be an argument at $130, but now I just don't see a reason on why one would want to be subject to paying so much across so many services that don't even benefit the original creators most of the time. There's some exceptions where netflix, etc bankrolls entire shows, but they've plumetted in quality and I haven't watched one since two years ago.
anyone else been trying the new Siri AI intelligence on their phone and been underwhelmed? It's really slow, no longer gets adding grocery items to the right lists, etc. Did I mention how slow it is to inject an LLM turn on everything? Hopefully they'll fix all that by the time it's out of beta... But it's so rough to me that it's really ruined the experience of the device. Apples voice-to-text still isn't good compared the what I used to have on my Android phone pre-2024, when I switched to Apple ecosystem....
The fact that you cannot easily listen on headphones through you phone is a dealbreaker. With Roku you can connect your headphones to you phone, and then just start streaming the audio directly to your headphones.
With Apple TV it sounds like you need to use the remote to connect headphones directly to the Apple TV.
That's such a pain. Why can't they just make an app.
yea, this is a non-starter for me, and that is not even considering the price bump which is too much. I do not want ANY internet connected devices in my machine with far field microphones just listening. There needs to be a hardware switch disabling them. I would settle for software settings that completely disables them though as I almost trust Apple. almost... I likely will just look for yesterdays version.
The only time plex has been slow is right after one of their updates before they fix the bugs they always introduce. Faster hardware won’t fix that. Also apps need better preloading when scrolling. But again faster hardware isn’t the solution to sloppy devs.
I run Jellyfin on my Windows tower with my 4K Linux ISOs streaming from a NAS. I had to fine-tune the files to direct stream to my Google TV box. I don't remember all the details but it involved lots of ffmpeg commands and downloading external subtitle files. Worth it to see every pore in Linus's face
I’m not actually complaining but I’m seeing an increasing number of family oriented gaming consoles. They seem like something eared towards gamer parents who don’t wan their kids going all in on a console yet.
This positions them to compete directly against those
I guess I'll be using my shield till it dies. It works for the most part and has 4K/DV/Atmos for Jellyfin. Was just hoping to upgrade into an apple device to line up with phones/tablet etc for convenience but not at $429CDN+tax!
Thanks, I hate the microphones. Not for privacy reasons, but because I already have problems with HomePods answering when I want my phone to do so, or vice versa, or the one in a different room all together answering when I tell it to set a timer and then I have to go down the stairs and shout at it. And now they want me to hook up two or four HomePods with microphones up to an Apple TV with a microphone and trust that it won't be a giant pain in the ass every time I say 'Siri'?
I still don't get how Apple can claim to have a "TV" product without actually making a TV. I always expected Apple to build the entire TV, not just a box.
I actually waited for it. My years old Apple TV died some time ago so I had a chance to use the Android TV that comes with the TV itself. And it's so terrible. I don't understand why even YouTube app is much better on Apple TV than the Android TV one
I have a pre-4K Apple TV, and I have the latest version of Apple TV 4K. I cannot at all tell the difference between the two at all. I think one even has 32 GB and I've never run out of space. That's about 10 years of "advancement" in Apple TV where it doesn't amount to anything.
And yet I have 4 of them in total because they are much better than the built in apps and I don't trust the TVs to connect them to the internet. It's basically CarPlay for my TV but does an excellent job because of the consistent interface and good apps.
I really hope this time its different and siri doesn't suck ... but then at the end of the day when i am watching tv I don't really need a llm to assist me.
As far as I can tell its a hardware bump and some supercharging price bump.
"Turn on/off subtitles" is the primary use case for me. "Rewind a minute" is a good one as well. If it got more seamless at something like "watch Community on Peacock" that'd be on the list as well.
$299, ouch. And a heavy emphasis on voice capabilities, which my kids love but I generally hate. I don't want to have a conversation with my media.
I have had many Apple TV generations and want to love it, but I really don't get where Apple is trying to go with it. The whole "Apple TV" app really confused the hell out of me, and I wonder if this is continuing that trend. Or maybe it won't matter because this is just ridiculously expensive.
Is there a better experience out there? There are lots of cheaper sticks, but even high end TVs have crappy app launchers, the apps are usually janky, and the vendors are spying on your usage.
Honestly? A 2nd-hand Apple TV. That’s the competitor for this. I’ve had mine for what feels like it must be >5 years, they survived two years in a suitcase as a digital nomad, as far as I can tell they’re indestructible. My local 2nd hand site is full of them, too.
Yes, a vanilla Android TV with a semi powerful SoC.
I have the 4K and MiBox next to each other, the Apple TV is cool for a UI showcase, but beyond the oohs and aahs the MiBox is a more useful entertainment device.
I love my Apple TV, but this is nothing but a price hike. The older model already does 4k. What's the added benefit here? Siri? Give me a break. Apple Intelligence is the least capable AI of any of the big tech companies. The fact that they don't mine data like the others is a moot point when Siri isn't even good enough to answer basic queries in the first place. There's no data to mine when you end up not using it for anything.
Has anyone used Siri AI? I upgraded to iOS 27, which is fine I guess. Tried a couple siri prompts and decided it is horseshit as it always has been. Never touched it again.
Guys maybe just let others register themselves as system agents since you are obviously not capable of creating anything related to AI. Provide the absolutely minimum effort Siri as default and be done with it.
It's comparable to the free-tier AIs from the other providers but with a decent index of your personal data in a relatively secure and private fashion. It's not completely useless is the nicest thing I can say at this time. I hope it will become good.
I was in the car the other day and asked about details of a meeting I was driving to. It wasn’t a meeting in my calendar, just some emails that mentioned it. The response was genuinely good.
Then I asked it about the status of some packages that were already being tracked in wallet and it was a dumpster fire.
You're asking the company which is famously working their hardest to lock in their users completely to their services and platforms, to "just let others"? Maybe understand what ecosystem you buy into, and agree with their approach they've had for decades now, or let the ones who like that stuff continue to enjoy it. Seems kind of self-defeatists to ask them to change ways now...
Apple trying so hard to make Siri relevant. I don’t think it’s worth a $299 premium (up $170 from previous gen).
I would skip this generation of Apple TV and buy previous generation on a third party marketplace when people inevitably offload the current generation.
When compared to $150 (occasionally as cheap as $99 for the high end model) that you could have paid 3 months ago for the previous generation, $300 seems nuts. I put off buying last gen because this gen was perpetually “coming soon”, and now I’m priced out, even out of last gen!
> Siri AI is available in beta in tvOS 27.2 and requires the owner of the home in the Home app to have an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad running the latest software version and have Siri AI turned on and set to a supported language.
> Certain Apple Intelligence features that rely on server-side models are subject to daily usage limits. Expanded access to such features will be available for a fee in the future.
Not only will the TV not be "supercharged by Siri AI" on its own, as it requires some other device to actually run Siri AI (?!), you also might end up relying on it and suddenly be blocked from using it if you use it too much (?!?!). But fear not, they'll ask you to pay up, to continue to use this feature they advertise as the main feature of this new device.
I love this product: it's the one box I can (reasonably) trust to not be mining my viewing habits for data. I have two older ones and was looking to get something that supported 4K but waited for this to come out.
$300 might be a decent price if you use it for all of the things that it can do, but if all you're doing is launching streaming apps, $200 was already on the high end for that. $300 seems...a bit much.
Anything I'm missing here? The silver lining is that this product is almost certainly still in the "pay money then forget about it for a decade" tier, which is nice.
I'm also wondering if/how the "add up to four homepods" feature compares to "getting a soundbar". In the other thread for this someone noted that the HomePods only work with this box; so if you're running a game console that's no bueno. But apart from that, if $600 on an Apple TV + two HomePods mini delivers something comparable to a ~$500 soundbar, that's a decent value proposition.
It's mind-blowing how one of the most advanced technology forums on the internet can take privacy for granted just because the marketing of a for-profit corporation with previous histories of privacy violations (there's even lawsuits) claims their closed source device connected 24/7 to the internet, is private.
I purchased the 2021 ATV just before the 2022 was released. It struggles with AV1 and VP9 (Infuse really struggles, VLC is better but still a problem). I just wanted the faster CPU (for software decoding AV1 and VP9). Almost bought the 2022 version in 2024 for that but didn't want to buy a 2 year old product.
Didn't expect to have to wait 4 years, and now the price is more than doubled. I can afford it but refuse to do so, especially since I don't use any of the onboard storage for anything.
The move to the A19 also meant that they couldn't go with LPDDR4X RAM and instead had to use more expensive LPDDR5X (IIRC).
It is crazy. I expect the new Apple TV to be a flop because $300 is just a lot. The problem is that Apple is a little boxed in on this device. Apple wants to re-use the A19, but that locks them into expensive DDR5 RAM. They want to push Siri AI, but that locks them into 8GB RAM. Unlike the iPhone, there aren't as many other opportunities with the App Store, Apple Pay, search engine placement revenue, etc.
Storage has also gone up a lot and Apple is no longer selling a 64GB model. Most streaming sticks have 4-16GB of storage and it's usually really slow/cheap storage. The new Apple TV has 128GB of storage and the price for that has probably gone from around $25 to $50.
You say that it's fine from "$200 to $300", but that's not really true. It's gone from $250 to $300 when you look at the 128GB model. I still think it's crazy that it went from $150 to $300 in the same year, but the outgoing 128GB model was already $250 after the price hikes earlier this year.
The problem is that Apple didn't want to reign in their product for the current market and I somewhat get that. What's the point of a new Apple TV if it's just "we updated the processor." For me, the point would be AV1 and VP9 decoding, but Apple wanted to push Siri AI.
Other high-end TV devices have also seen big increases in price. The Fire TV Cube went from being $110-140 to now $200 - and with the Fire TV Cube you're getting Cortex-A73 processor cores from 2016, 2GB LPDDR4X, and 16GB storage. At least Apple is giving you 8GB LPDDR5X and 128GB of storage and a processor that is way better.
The Google TV Streamer is $150 now with 4GB RAM and 16GB storage, but with LPDDR4 RAM and Cortex-A55 cores - and it's still $150.
A Roku Ultra is 2GB RAM and 4GB storage with Cortex-A55 cores and costs $150.
I think we're seeing that there's still some really old stock out there that's cheap, but we're seeing the prices climb on competitors too. Google raised its price 50%. Amazon has raised its price 40-80%. Apple raised its price 54-67% on the same-model and launched the newer model with double the RAM, more expensive RAM, a processor that's 4 years newer, etc.
I think it's likely that Google, Roku, and Amazon simply don't upgrade their streaming devices during this parts shortage. I think a lot of people will be fine with a 12nm Cortex-A55 based TV streamer with limited RAM and storage (and slow RAM and storage). I love how fast my Apple TV is. It's amazing the difference in UI lag. But I think most companies aren't going to prioritize that premium experience, especially during a parts shortage.
I really wanted to make it work, but it ended up being an annoying hassle. I got a Shield TV and it has been a much better solution.
Not sure if things have changed since then (~5 years ago).
It's definitely not the most troublesome player I've dealt with, but rebooting and logging back into apps randomly can be frustrating.
If you want a privacy focused solution it's probably the most private. Yeah, admittedly harder to use but I'm not recommending it to my parents.
I don't plan on upgrading it to this new version yet so I'll probably get 10+ years of use out of it, great value overall.
Siri AI is increasingly looking like a product that's exclusively for Americans. An unfortunate side effect of the EU attempting to become a regulatory superpower but failing to export its rules to the rest of the world.
Having said that I eventually replaced my pair of HomePod Minis with a Sonos soundbar because I wanted something with a bit more oomph to it, although I'd maybe have considered getting a pair of the big HomePods and using the Minis as rear speakers had this been available at the time.
I had to buy a special HDMI switch because my projector is eARC-naive, but my understanding is that a lot of modern TVs are eARC-aware and a special switch is not required. The one downside to my setup is that I have to press a button on the HDMI switch to toggle between the PC and the AppleTV, no remote control, but hey it's good to stretch your legs now and then right?
Re audio quality, I really like my big HomePods and find they fill the room quite well and have a solid low range to them. I'd also agree that the HomePod Minis are not suitable for a living room entertainment experience.
No issue whatsoever, latency is fine, but a little too high for shooters and the like—but I use headphones then anyway.
How is life in the Sonos ecosystem? I vaguely recall there being some controversy around them a few years back, and I'm generally distrustful of third party hardware companies attempting to write software.
My home theatre set up is through a Denon receiver. I love my gen1 HomePods for listening to music, but I can’t understand why anyone would buy four HomePods rather than a proper surround setup.
I'd upgrade my Shield Pro to something else but there's nothing to upgrade to that doesn't have some compromise on formats or capabilities.
What exactly can it do besides launching streaming apps?
Anyway, it's now too much money for something that is just going to open Jellyfin.
Does anyone know why having 128GB of storage is useful? Just for installing more apps? I've had Google TV devices in the past, and don't think I ever came close to the 32GB storage limit. Maybe there's a gap I'm missing...
Really nothing beats it, especially if you are in Apple ecosystem but even if you are not, it’s a million times better than the messy android tv with full of ads and bloat.
That being said, I don’t see a reason for us to upgrade to this version.
I'd guess it's room for the AI model and future versions of it that could grow.
One annoyance is that the Netflix app stopped being able/allowed to stream to any device that has some kind of remote (or where you can enter a username/password in some way):
* https://lifehacker.com/tech/netflix-is-killing-casting-from-...
* https://help.netflix.com/en/node/100131
It'd be nice to be able to plug in an AppleTV and use it 'just' as a dumb streaming pipe, but at least for Netflix you have to use the app on it.
> Using AirPlay with iPhone and iPad is not supported with Netflix.
* https://help.netflix.com/en/node/49
It's been doing the same thing forever. A bunch of squares on a screen and you select one to go into whatever app. The core experience has not changed in living memory.
I still never understand people who are dead against giving all their personal info and data to one company but are fine with giving it to another.
Yes this is an apple thread on HN and so I am expecting to be downvoted into oblivion by the Apple fans who believe Apple is better than any other company with data and security, when they have been proved multiple times to be just as bad.
But for some reason Sony or Samsung doing the same on your TV is too far?
The content streamers get your viewing habits by virtue of you viewing their content (like Youtube, or any web site, getting information on what you're looking at by simply logging HTTP GET requests).
There is no reason why television OEMs need to do screen captures and send them to the mothership.
It's the first- and second-party interaction: you gave money to Sony/Samsung/etc for a product, and after the exchange there is no reason for any further interaction.
You have a regular/monthly interaction with content providers: there is at least a valid reason for the content providers to have that information in the first place, and none for the TV OEMs to collect it.
That is absolutely fine, but IMO it is hypocritical. That is all I am arguing.
Does that qualify as hypocrisy too?
You can argue against dealing with any billion dollar company. But drop the hypocrisy framing, it is nonsensical and your point will be stronger without it.
Are they, though? Is Apple snooping into the Netflix app’s data to track what you’re watching and phone home with that info? Are there studies showing that happening? Are they selling that data to third parties like the TV manufacturers are?
As far is Apple is concerned, they have been caught lying about this many times before. I jujst cant get my head around why any person can trust a billion dollar corporation to be 'good'.
Here have a few links:
https://www.bgr.com/2107512/how-to-prevent-apple-tv-spying-a...
https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-whe...
https://linustechtips.com/topic/1467686-apple-caught-ignorin...
https://medium.com/@michaelswengel/yes-your-mac-is-watching-...
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/11/12/apple-getting-sue...
Samsung or Sony sell a physical product that does not need internet connectivity, or microphones, or telemetry, or any of that. They jam that stuff in there to increase profits and make it economically infeasible to sell what I think 80% of people on HN would buy if given the opportunity - a large flatscreen TV with no built-in connectivity whatsoever. So anything I can do to make me less profitable to them, I will do.
* For certain definitions, anyway.
I also dislike that my data is being transacted willy-nilly by content providers, it's a very different ballpark when TVs have hidden microphones recording my house, screen capturing if I'm showing personal photos on the screen, and sending that data to the manufacturer. That's a much worse privacy invasion.
Yes.
So I watch like a total of 2 hours of sports in Summer 2026 and my kid gets an hour of TV while he eats lunch and webOS works its hardest to make those both suck ass, and the Apple TV Just WorksTM and we can put our weekly Facetime with Grandma and Grandpa on there. Absolute no brainer better experience.
For privacy specifically, I'll refer you to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants...
Then find investigations where Apple TVs are proven to do the same, of which there are none.
You’re chalking this up to fanboyism but this is just people making informed choices. In today’s streaming era “just don’t connect anything to the internet” isn’t possible.
Instead, Apple sends that straight to the NSA.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
> just don’t connect anything to the internet
A practically e-waste mini-PC running an ordinary Linux distro paired with an airmouse remote is a much better TV box. You don't need streaming apps when you are free to use a Web browser, something Apple won't allow for obvious reasons. No surveillance, no crapware, no ads. It can even double as a console for GOG/Steam.
> Apple: "We have never heard of PRISM" "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order."
"In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information," the company said in a statement. "Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests."
https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/governments...
I am well aware of the recent LG controversy. However In my opinion if you are happy to sign up to Netflix and Disney+ and use a streaming box to give them all your personal data and viewing habits to allow tracking and ad profiles then its pretty hypocritical to target a single company in the chain and call them out for it.
Gamers Nexus had a viral video about them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA
This is without even looking at Apple, who own the hardware you are streaming on and have been caught lying multiple times in the past about data harvesting. After all that, I feel that unplugging the cord on your TV is completely pointless, and it is frustrating how people gloat about it like they are getting around the system. In reality, you are only giving your data to 4 companies in the chain now, instead of 5.
If you think giving data to 4 companies instead of 5 is fine then thats fair enough, its your own data. In my opinion if you happy to give your data to one billion dollar ad profile selling company, then why squabble about another? However I understand this is subjective, and I am not trying to tell anyone they are wrong. I just dont understand it thats all!
You literally did chalk it up to fanboyism. You blamed Apple fans for the downvotes you were going to receive, as if only those blinded by sycophancy could possibly disagree with you.
Many platforms have gone the same way: Google TV boxes are known to be broadly awful at this point, my samsung TV's built-in apps got progressively less responsive with more ads on my homescreen over the last few years. I haven't experienced it but I hear complaints about the performance and intrusiveness of LG TVs now as well.
After cycling through my options, the Apple TV is the only one that doesn't exhibit the same behavior: It is responsive, has a good interface that looks nice, has a very nice minimal remote, and it works the same today as it did yesterday (and basically as it did 2 years ago). I'm not trying to claim allegiance to any brand, it just seems that somehow Apple is the only one not participating in enshittification, at least not to the same degree. If that changes the Apple TV will be out the door and I'll probably need to roll my own out of some sort of mini PC on an open-source platform.
And as one last note, for the time being Apple still has some credibility in terms of privacy. They have revenue streams that work for them without completely ruining their product, and it's my hope they continue with that because as far as I can tell they are the only ones left among the big players.
Also, the tooling they provided to the model is not good either. The 3rd party AI apps by OpenAI or Anthropic can do much more than the system assistant.
Did the old one also not have Dolby vision/HDR10/Atmos? What is this cinematic stuff? What are we missing here?
Why would I need CPU/GPU performance on an Apple TV? I'm genuinely confused. Is it to play video games? If I want to play video games, I can pay a bit more and get a used playstation I suppose. I genuinely don't understand this product anymore.
HDR10+ is supported in some players (infuse) but not others (plex) and will fallback to HDR10. Profile 7 DV files do not play properly on Apple TV period even though it will display the DV logo (though frankly very few devices can do this). Profile 5 and 8 DV files will play properly depending on the player and the content mapping level in the content (2.9 is well supported but 4.0 causes HDR10 fallback or black screens in some cases). Apple TV also doesn't support HD audio passthrough great.
Eg Pixel Brite works great on all versions of AppleTV including FEL playback on 1st gen
The only thing I haven’t been able to do with the older models is upscaling content at the same fidelity levels. But the results are very subtle either way and not all that compelling IMO.
[0] https://pixelbrite.site
*I do have a once-per-run Moonlight glitch that may even be because I'm on an older version. The first connection just doesn't pick up on the HDR immediately. I just have to reconnect once and it's good after that.
[1]: https://github.com/ClassicOldSong/Apollo ("Built-in Virtual Display with HDR support that matches the resolution/framerate config of your client automatically")
Their Studio Displays have an A19 in them too (A19 Pro for the XDR)
That's crazy
The only part that “deserves” a price increase is the storage starting at 128GB now instead of 32GB, but it’s completely out of touch to get rid of the base model when nobody has any use for all that storage (even the 32GB) for what is basically a streaming box.
Hell, even their new HomeView device, which does have a screen and FaceID, starts at same price.
AFAIK you’d be hard pressed to hit 150mbps with your own local media.
And any streaming services will use way less - Netflix and Hulu recommend a mere 16Mbps at 4k for example.
Also, just learned it's still 4k 60Hz. So forget 120Hz gaming. Game streaming is likely to become a default in near future at the hardware proces we see, so limiting to 60Hz is really cheap of them at this point.
Personally I didn't expect a new generation to be a full $100 more though...
* Siri - no thanks
* Far field microphones - no thanks
* Faster performance - unnecessary for me (I watch TV, movies and YouTube - it's never not smooth)
* Home theatre with homepods - I already have Sonos surround
* Even smarter home hub - I have a non-Apple smart home
* Facetime, Fitness+, Apple TV app - just not for me
The one thing I feel like I'm missing (and would be missing even if I upgraded) is audio passthrough, but DD 5.1 is _fine_.
Most of the purchases will be from people who do have an older model that's actually getting outdated, people who want another Apple TV for another room in their house, or people who don't own one at all. You buy this one now, it'll probably be good for the better part of a decade and you won't need to think about the next refresh.
There are comparable devices like Ugoos (am6b+ with coreelec) and Zidoo but they're a little sketch compared to the aforementioned...
I was surprised to learn my 1st gen doesn't have a thread radio which caused some minor homekit compatability issues. I actually bought a new AppleTV 4k a couple months ago but it didn't really solve my problem, so I returned it with the reasoning that it was long in the tooth and a new model was coming out soon.
I just preordered this one but I sort of wonder if I should just go buy the last gen one for half the money or whatever. Seems like the actual buy. At the old price point, they were impulse buys. At this price point, well, it's enough to get me to stop and think about it.
Don't worry, the next tvOS update may fix that.
Still no 2.5Gbps port in 2026 is disappointing.
Commercial streamimg platforms are probably gonna allocate like 2mbps more for 8k streaming and call it a day.
AV1 decoding is also a good feature to have.
wait, the new 4K has passthrough finally? I did not see it mentioned.
I meant the one thing I'm missing from my current setup, not something that would be fixed by upgrading.
A different company could turn this hardware into a pretty serious gaming machine or a zero config NAS or something but Apple is not that company.
They couldn't think of any compelling Siri AI use cases to put in the advertising and neither can I.
"We have tomb raider and death stranding 2 for $69.99" is not an interesting proposition except for Apple fanboy dads who hope that will placate their gamer child (it won't).
That said, Apple has been attempting for years to make Apple Arcade a hit.
Nowadays with ~100 bucks you can an amd64 box and a CEC adapter, which allows to use the default remote of your tv. Then you can install on it whatever you want, customize it however you prefer and have all the privacy you decide. No lock-in. As much AI as you like, zero is a valid option.
You can also probably maybe do terrible things like CEC on one port and signal on another, it's mostly a bus.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2026/10/apple-unveils-...
It's so un-Apple to be stretched and in weird perspective that way
Unless your goal is to comfortably watch TV using a TV remote.
and yes I am assuming that HN crowd can program a remote.
The Beelink mini PC I bought as my router cost me $229 in 2024. The most equivalent model on sale I can find is now $349.
New Apple TV seems to make sense if you're installing a lot of new sound equipment, and love Siri.
If neither of those are true, not sure what's on offer.
If you're using wired headphones then a $20 Bluetooth dongle will do the same.
Maybe more memory could improve this, although surely there's a software issue somewhere that causes this.
Also I play back full 4k BR disk rips.
This positions them to compete directly against those
Yesterday I was watching Dark Matter on my Plex server. I asked Siri to turn on English subtitles which are there:
> I'm afraid I'm having trouble getting the available languages.
This is after Plex's big update recently...
It doesn't even look like this supports 120hz, which would've been nice since my OLED TV does.
Otherwise, there's not a thing that this offers, that's worth shelling out another 300 bucks.
I have the original 4K, and watch it all the time. I'm glad it has the double-tap Home button (swipe up to kill the app). I use that feature a lot.
>Access to Siri AI is also available on Apple TV 4K (2nd generation) or later.
But I might be in the minority of people who don’t talk much to their TV.
And yet I have 4 of them in total because they are much better than the built in apps and I don't trust the TVs to connect them to the internet. It's basically CarPlay for my TV but does an excellent job because of the consistent interface and good apps.
I am in no hurry to get this latest version.
As far as I can tell its a hardware bump and some supercharging price bump.
I have had many Apple TV generations and want to love it, but I really don't get where Apple is trying to go with it. The whole "Apple TV" app really confused the hell out of me, and I wonder if this is continuing that trend. Or maybe it won't matter because this is just ridiculously expensive.
It’s expensive, but is there a better option?
Honestly? A 2nd-hand Apple TV. That’s the competitor for this. I’ve had mine for what feels like it must be >5 years, they survived two years in a suitcase as a digital nomad, as far as I can tell they’re indestructible. My local 2nd hand site is full of them, too.
I have the 4K and MiBox next to each other, the Apple TV is cool for a UI showcase, but beyond the oohs and aahs the MiBox is a more useful entertainment device.
Guys maybe just let others register themselves as system agents since you are obviously not capable of creating anything related to AI. Provide the absolutely minimum effort Siri as default and be done with it.
I am so done.
Then I asked it about the status of some packages that were already being tracked in wallet and it was a dumpster fire.
You're asking the company which is famously working their hardest to lock in their users completely to their services and platforms, to "just let others"? Maybe understand what ecosystem you buy into, and agree with their approach they've had for decades now, or let the ones who like that stuff continue to enjoy it. Seems kind of self-defeatists to ask them to change ways now...
I would skip this generation of Apple TV and buy previous generation on a third party marketplace when people inevitably offload the current generation.
> Certain Apple Intelligence features that rely on server-side models are subject to daily usage limits. Expanded access to such features will be available for a fee in the future.
Not only will the TV not be "supercharged by Siri AI" on its own, as it requires some other device to actually run Siri AI (?!), you also might end up relying on it and suddenly be blocked from using it if you use it too much (?!?!). But fear not, they'll ask you to pay up, to continue to use this feature they advertise as the main feature of this new device.
At least according to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_TV_(device)#Technical_sp...
"Sure, I can call 911 for you"