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arthur_tuxedo
Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2003
- Messages
- 842
A new Apple TV is rumored almost every year and almost never materializes, but the rumors for 2025 seem more persistent and it’s been 3 years since the last update. If a new one comes out, will it just be a minor refresh or will it bring some major new capabilities like the jump to 4K in 2017? Here are some things I’d like to see, personally:
1. Wi-Fi 7. Old, thick walls and neighborhood congestion makes wi-fi spotty in our house. It’s fine for videos that have a buffer, but anything real-time like Steam Link has massive lag spikes, and there’s no easy access to Ethernet in that part of the room.
2. Better upscaling. My 2021 TCL QLED is a great TV in most respects, but with a terrible upscaler. SD content looks like trash. An A18 processor is more than powerful enough to upscale better than any TV on the market, including the newest Sony’s. In fact, I’m sure the SoC would be powerful enough to output and upscale to 8K if Apple wanted to.
3. Better frame interpolation. Similar to #2, TV’s do this, but most of them don’t do it very well. I don’t see any reason an A18 can’t make 24 FPS look butter-smooth and take advantage of high refresh rates.
4. SDR -> HDR. Another one that some TV’s can do, but not very well. Wouldn’t it be nice if the colors in old content could pop like modern HDR content, and still look accurate? I know an AI will never do it as well as a professional colorist, but the more I watch shows like The Mandalorian in HDR, the harder it is to go back to flat, lifeless colors.
Put 2, 3, and 4 together and you have a device that can potentially play old or low-quality content at 4K120 with HDR, and do it a lot more justice than the wimpy processors in a modern smart TV.
Things a lot of people care about, but I don’t:
1. Price. I don’t really care about a lower price, because the price of continuing to use my 2017 ATV 4K is zero, and I can always get a cheap used or refurbished 2022 model if the new one is underwhelming. Trying to compete with the Amazons and Rokus of the world on price would be a mistake on Apple’s part, IMO. The ATV is a premium streaming device, and the focus needs to be on quality first. Leave the cheap stuff to built-in TV apps and other brands.
2. Gaming. Until Apple shows a willingness to work with developers on things like Vulkan support, there’s no reason to get excited about the ATV’s gaming capabilities, even if it ends up thereotically capable of PS5-level graphics. Apple’s gaming division knows how to make a lot of money from iPhone games, but ATV and Mac gaming are going nowhere due to Apple’s control-freak tendencies and refusal to adopt industry standards. iPhone gaming succeeds in spite of this because it has a massive userbase that is more willing to spend money than their Android counterparts. Mac and ATV markets are tiny, but Apple still expects devs to rewrite their games in Metal and jump through hoops, and then wonders why there are so few games.
3. Apple Intelligence. Tim Cook recently had to fire the AI leadership and undertake a serious reorganization of the division. Jobs probably would have done it years earlier. Until competent leadership has been in place long enough for their decisions to bear fruit (usually takes about 3 years), any implementation of an LLM is going to subtract value from the experience, not add it.
What do you guys think? Is my wishlist something that Apple can feasibly do in 2025, will it happen later than that, or are these pipe dreams that will never make sense for the ATV? What do you want to see from future streaming devices from Apple or another company?
1. Wi-Fi 7. Old, thick walls and neighborhood congestion makes wi-fi spotty in our house. It’s fine for videos that have a buffer, but anything real-time like Steam Link has massive lag spikes, and there’s no easy access to Ethernet in that part of the room.
2. Better upscaling. My 2021 TCL QLED is a great TV in most respects, but with a terrible upscaler. SD content looks like trash. An A18 processor is more than powerful enough to upscale better than any TV on the market, including the newest Sony’s. In fact, I’m sure the SoC would be powerful enough to output and upscale to 8K if Apple wanted to.
3. Better frame interpolation. Similar to #2, TV’s do this, but most of them don’t do it very well. I don’t see any reason an A18 can’t make 24 FPS look butter-smooth and take advantage of high refresh rates.
4. SDR -> HDR. Another one that some TV’s can do, but not very well. Wouldn’t it be nice if the colors in old content could pop like modern HDR content, and still look accurate? I know an AI will never do it as well as a professional colorist, but the more I watch shows like The Mandalorian in HDR, the harder it is to go back to flat, lifeless colors.
Put 2, 3, and 4 together and you have a device that can potentially play old or low-quality content at 4K120 with HDR, and do it a lot more justice than the wimpy processors in a modern smart TV.
Things a lot of people care about, but I don’t:
1. Price. I don’t really care about a lower price, because the price of continuing to use my 2017 ATV 4K is zero, and I can always get a cheap used or refurbished 2022 model if the new one is underwhelming. Trying to compete with the Amazons and Rokus of the world on price would be a mistake on Apple’s part, IMO. The ATV is a premium streaming device, and the focus needs to be on quality first. Leave the cheap stuff to built-in TV apps and other brands.
2. Gaming. Until Apple shows a willingness to work with developers on things like Vulkan support, there’s no reason to get excited about the ATV’s gaming capabilities, even if it ends up thereotically capable of PS5-level graphics. Apple’s gaming division knows how to make a lot of money from iPhone games, but ATV and Mac gaming are going nowhere due to Apple’s control-freak tendencies and refusal to adopt industry standards. iPhone gaming succeeds in spite of this because it has a massive userbase that is more willing to spend money than their Android counterparts. Mac and ATV markets are tiny, but Apple still expects devs to rewrite their games in Metal and jump through hoops, and then wonders why there are so few games.
3. Apple Intelligence. Tim Cook recently had to fire the AI leadership and undertake a serious reorganization of the division. Jobs probably would have done it years earlier. Until competent leadership has been in place long enough for their decisions to bear fruit (usually takes about 3 years), any implementation of an LLM is going to subtract value from the experience, not add it.
What do you guys think? Is my wishlist something that Apple can feasibly do in 2025, will it happen later than that, or are these pipe dreams that will never make sense for the ATV? What do you want to see from future streaming devices from Apple or another company?
