“Apple has quietly revealed a few other tidbits about the next iteration of its tvOS platform – most of which are so dull it’s hardly surprising Apple didn’t bother mentioning them in the keynote,” John Archer writes for Forbes. “There is one newly revealed tvOS feature, though, which seems to me to have huge implications for the future of Apple’s now painfully outdated Apple TV product range: HEVC support.”
“For those of you not familiar with it, HEVC is a third-party video compression system capable of reducing video streaming bitrates by as much as 40 or even 50%,” Archer writes. “Apple has confirmed that HEVC will be adopted for all iOS 11, tvOS 11 and macOS High Sierra devices, but for me it’s the tvOS 11 implementation that’s the most intriguing. Why? Because it surely points towards Apple introducing a 4K-capable version of Apple TV in the near future – most likely during the brand’s traditional autumn hardware unveiling.”
“It seems all but certain that its new HEVC agreement has been done with an eye on finally joining the likes of Netflix and Amazon in the 4K streaming space,” Archer writes. “Unfortunately, though, the current Apple TV box can’t output 4K video streams to a 4K TV; it’s HDMI socket just isn’t up to the job. So if Apple wants its new 4K (and also, potentially, high dynamic range) video streams to be accessible to the customers who will actually benefit from them the most, it will need to release a new, fifth generation of Apple TV hardware.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, if you don’t need to equip some of your screens with Apple TV units right now, you might want to wait for Apple’s 5th gen. Apple TV likely coming this October.