“Steven Troughton-Smith has been analyzing the firmware files and has discovered that the new 4K Apple TV, set to be unveiled officially by Apple tomorrow, will have very powerful internals,” Benjamin Mayo reports for 9to5Mac.
“By digging into the code, he believes the new Apple TV will be powered by an A10X Fusion chip, coupled with 3GB RAM,” Mayo reports. “This represents a big increase in power and may signal a larger direction beyond 4K movies and TV shows.”
“Troughton-Smith notes that the A10 series may have been required to play 4K 60FPS content, which users will be able to shoot with the new iPhone 8 and iPhone X,” Mayo reports. “Alongside the announcement of the new hardware tomorrow, it is expected that Apple will announce partnerships with major content providers to form an ecosystem of 4K movies and TV shows to play on Apple TV. This will include selling 4K HDR content in iTunes and getting third-party apps to update to support the new resolution, like Netflix.”
https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/907143530384117760
https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/907157144155324416
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Makes sense to make this as powerful as possible, especially if Apple continues with the two-year update cycle.
SEE ALSO:
4K Apple TV streaming requirements and native resolution revealed – September 10, 2017
I’m so pissed that Apple is releasing a 4K Apple TV after I had purchased the last update. How many of these things do they expect me to buy??
Oh wait, I don’t have a 4K TV … Nevermind nothing to see here 🙃🙃🙃
I’ve got a pair of 4K sets . .. one is a 42-inch that is the maximum that fits in a built-in above a fireplace in the living room and the other is a 75-inch in the basement family room. My observations are that the smaller set really doesn’t benefit from the extra resolution given its size and viewing distance. 1080p content looks almost as good on it, and actually the previous current generation Apple TV produces the best images it ever displays (better than Netflix 4K content). Apple’s encoding must be superior to my eyes. Now, on the 75-incher, 4K content reigns supreme. It’s mesmerizing, especially if you give it an artifact-low stream. So I guess long story short, spend your dollars wisely when you upgrade to newer sets. For my money, I wish I’d stuck to a 1080p set for the smaller one and spent a little more on the big tv. I most certainly won’t be worrying about 4K capable Apple TV for it until one of my other Apple TVs takes a nose dive, which with all solid state storage and no moving parts makes me think that’ll be quite some time. But I can’t wait to pair a 4K ATV with the big one . . . I imagine everything from the interface to the images is going to be a real step forward. Yes, it took Apple too long . . . but sometimes “right” is better than “early.”
On my 65” LG Oled I notice the difference in HDR more than 4K. I think all your points about 4K and screen size are pretty valid. And I swear I notice a difference in HDR10 and Dolby Vision, though I’ve only seen Dolby Vision via Netflix so far. With Oppo and now other UHD Blue Ray players supporting Dolby Vision I’ve been anticipating having more discs in Dolby Vision, because though streaming has improved, and I have above the needed bandwidth/speed needed, nothing yet beats physical media.
I’m more excited to see how well Apple does with both flavors of HDR and how well they can stream with their newer compression formats. If they are at least almost as good as UHD Discs and support all HDR formats I’ll be very happy to stop buying physical media (again) and Apple will become my one stop shop for Movies the way they are now for Music.
Don’t worry, a tvOS update will brick it before the hardware dies, you’ll get to buy something else soon enough!
The A10X Fusion SoC makes sense. It has the horsepower to push the pixels and is a good way to leverage the A10X production as Apple shifts to the A11/A11X for the newest mobile devices.
4K? Meh.
Everything else? Yes please!