4K AND BEYOND
The next generation of Apple TV hits the mark
TIM COOK WAS somewhat more effusive of Apple TV at Apple’s September 2015 special event. “This is the new Apple TV,” he said, revealing the fourth–generation Apple TV, “and we believe it is the future of television.”
Through the lens of today, you’d have to agree that Apple was more on the mark: the newest Apple TV then was not only powerful enough to support 1080p content at 60fps, it also brought with it a proper App Store. And the new touchpad–equipped Siri Remote introduced voice search to Apple TV.
This wasn’t just a box for playing media: it was, at last, a TV computer, expandable, playing nicely with most streaming services, and supporting 7.1–channel audio. As the landscape changed, Apple continued to change with it. Siri integration even earned
Apple its second Apple TV–related Emmy, the first of which came in 2001 for developing FireWire.
In 2017, Apple rebranded the 32GB fourth–gen as the Apple TV HD to make room for the new Apple TV 4K — something Tim Cook called TV’s “next major inflection point”, likening it to the jump between black–and–white and color TV.
SUPER COOL STREAMER
3GB of LDDR4 tied to Apple’s A10X processor made the Apple TV 4K really fly, easily chewing through 4K footage, supporting HDR10 and Dolby Vision for the first time, and building in Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 audio output. This was now a state–of–the–art streamer. And in May this year, following Apple’s mid–term launch of its own Apple TV+ streaming service, it was superceded again by a
second–generation Apple TV 4K — both complementary to the company’s growing content offering, and ready for the next generation of home viewing. Sporting an A12 Bionic chip with HDMI 2.1 support, it’s able to deal with high frame rate footage streamed over Wi–Fi 6. It integrates with the iPhone, using its light sensor as a calibration tool. It is a streamer capable of doing what is not yet the norm.
Apple TV is on less of a definite cycle than some other products. The next version is likely far away, which isn’t a problem because the Apple TV has hit its groove. But it’s a safe bet to suggest that 8K support is in the pipeline somewhere. We’ll have to watch and see.