“Developer and Apple sleuth Steve Troughton-Smith has managed to get Apple’s tvOS Simulator to run in 4K, the same screen resolution that’s been rumored for an upcoming fifth-generation Apple TV,” Luke Dormehl reports for Cult of Mac.
“4K resolution is twice the standard HD resolution,” Dormehl reports. “Based on what Troughton-Smith has shared, tvOS appears to work fine in 3840 x 2160 resolution, with text, icons, and more scaling effectively to 4K.”
Dormehl reports, “Steve Troughton-Smith’s 4K report comes one day after code from Apple’s accidental HomePod smart speaker revealed that 4K support is on the way, and that the new Apple TV will support two of the biggest formats for super high def video.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The 4K Apple TV can’t happen soon enough!
We’re planning on using new 4K-capable Apple TV 5 units for our PlayStation Vue and Amazon Prime subscriptions, among others!
SEE ALSO:
Rivals leaving Apple behind as Apple TV remains stuck in a test pattern – August 8, 2017
Thurrott: Two years later, Apple will undo its Apple TV embarrassments – August 7, 2017
Apple’s leaked HomePod firmware reveals Apple TV with 4K UHD, 10-bit HDR and Dolby Vision – August 6, 2017
UK iTunes movie purchase receipts hint at upcoming 4K support – July 28, 2017
Belated 4K and HDR may not be enough for meh Apple TV to win the living room – February 17, 2017
Apple vowed to revolutionize television; currently prepping an unremarkable 4K Apple TV instead – February 16, 2017
Apple TV: Still not ready for prime time – February 15, 2017
Apple hires Amazon’s Fire TV head to run Apple TV business – February 8, 2017
Apple’s new TV app shows just how painfully behind Apple is – December 14, 2016
Are you ready for 4K TV? Apple TV isn’t. – November 28, 2016
Apple has no idea what they’re doing in the TV space, and it’s embarrassing – November 3, 2016
Hulu inks deals with Fox and Disney, adding ESPN, Fox News and more to forthcoming live service – November 1, 2016
Apple’s Eddy Cue: Nope, we don’t want to be Netflix – October 20, 2016
Google signs up CBS for planned web TV service to debut in early 2017; close to deal with 21st Century Fox – October 20, 2016
Apple’s Eddy Cue: Nope, we don’t want to be Netflix – October 20, 2016
Apple’s Eddy Cue alienated cable providers and networks with an assertive negotiating style – report – July 28, 2016
Here comes á la carte programming – without Apple – July 13, 2016
Apple TV 4 is a beta product and, if you bought one, you’re an unpaid beta tester – November 5, 2015
but, but, there is no discernible difference to the human eye between HD1080 and 4K!
Dr. Vacillating Weasel
The resolution of the human eye is they say 576 megapixels but only 7 megapixels matter.
The ‘bot’ is FI, Fake Intelligence. It cannot learn outside it’s limited little box. I already attempted to teach it about Ideal Viewing Distance to no avail.
That I know. He is fascinated with the dried cat turds I dropped in front of him.
Scrambled programming I suspect. It reminds me of an article out today about how to fool autonomous self-driving cars into driving and crashing through STOP signs by merely applying some printed stickers. FI FAIL.
I saw that. I hadn’t even thought of that. Seems like things like that could really screw things up if some group wanted to disrupt things.
or cardboard ears on a stop sign to make it square.
Clearly, current autonomous, self-driving car systems are still in their early alpha days. They don’t qualify as actual AI systems. Something as simple as a rain or snow storm could put them out of commission. I’m particularly leery of spinning cameras stuck on top of cars as they rely on mechanics as well as clear visuals. Where I live, they’d be useless in mid-winter. I’d also hate to see how well they’d do in any slippery situation. I remember laughing at human driven cars in Florida skidding around and crashing simply because it rained. It would be demolition derby time skidding on black ice. 😀
Great points. I think back to a road trip I made to WI, then to Troy, NY then back to San Diego. Suddenly coming into Denver, there was a whiteout situation which lasted most of the way to the Rockies. I guess you would have to drive yourself.
4 times HD resolution.
It’s actually twice the resolution per inch in either axis, but four times the number of pixels ( approximately ) compared to full HD.
MDN: “The 4K Apple TV can’t happen soon enough!”
While I agree, Thurrott had an interesting comment:
https://www.thurrott.com/music-videos/132540/two-years-later-apple-will-undo-tv-embarrassments
“What’s interesting about Apple TV today, even with its 1080p limitations, is that the picture quality often surpasses that of other, 4K-based services on my 55-inch 4K/UHD/HDR Samsung Smart TV. And this is a phenomenon that everyone in my family, including my kids with their young eyes, agree on: For whatever reason, the interface and the content usually look better on Apple TV than elsewhere.”
It comes down to how the original content was encoded and what compression method was used during transfer, which might auto-adjust given certain bandwidth limitations, a la Netflix.
I live on the outskirts town with no landline or cable options for internet service. My sole choice is a local radio transmitter of dubious reliability and with bandwidth constraints. In other words, I’ve got a shitty internet connection.
Netflix is constantly adjusting the resolution of the image so that it can continue streaming even with degraded bandwidth. But I am unable stream movies from Apple. It takes 8-10 hours to download a movie from iTunes so I can watch it.
Two possible reasons for this and I haven’t determined which one it is. 1) Apple does not have a local server farm in my area and does not pay the ISPs for for greater bandwidth usage while Netflix does. 2) AppleTV will not adjust the resolution when streaming because Apple self imposes quality controls on its content. This may explain why Apple’s 1080 content may appear to be of better quality than 4K streamed content.
The number of pixels depends on how close you are sitting to the display and what kind of content you are seeing.
Every display has a ‘resolution’ of pixels per inch (or centimeter for those living outside the arcane USA). The ‘Ideal Viewing Distance’ is the diagonal length of the display. You then judge the resolution detection of the human eye versus the display resolution at that distance. If you can’t see the added pixels, your eye doesn’t know they’re there.
And yes! The resolution of the source media dictates the resolution portrayed on the display!
As professed earlier this week, what I like about 4K displays is not the unnecessary increased resolution (unless you live in a movie theatre). It’s the improved color, contrast and frame rate. And again all of these attributes may be limited by the source media.
You see the real benefits of UHD as you get closer to the screen. At a certain distance, it all looks the same..but with UHD TVs, you can get real close and it still looks great.
Agree with the statement above above ATV content looking better by default. My TV has Amazon built in..not only is the interface crap, 4K content is not impressive enough (I honestly can’t see a difference) for me to deal with the interface. Can’t wait for the Amazon app on the ATV!! That is a game changer for me! Finally!
Not only pixels are part of what makes 4K different but color gam and dithering are better on the true 4k units.
So, could this be an TV software hack? A mere firmware reburn? Or is added hardware capacity also required?
I suspect we’ll find out soon.