An Apple TV that competes with Roku and Amazon could be on the market by year-end. According to reviewer Ming-Chi Kuo in a tweet, Apple will launch a new Apple TV “that enhances cost structure” in the second half of 2022.
Currently, Apple sells three Apple TV models. Its 4K Apple TV arrives in 32GB and 64GB capacities and retails for $179 and $199, respectively. That’s a good value for what you gain from the 4K Apple TV.
Separated from Nvidia’s Shield lineup, no set-top box has the same support for a wide range of home theater standards and formats as the Apple TV 4K. As a result, it’s the gold benchmark for professional home theater installers and is wildly applauded for its EDID capabilities.
Extended Display Identification Data, EDID tells your set-top box, Blu-Ray player, or another device, what sort of display you’ve plugged it into. Devices that do wrong EDID handshakes may try and recreate HDR content when your TV can’t support it or, more alarming, think your TV is incapable of HDR and refuse you that sweet dynamic range you probably paid for.
Roku, Amazon, and many other set-top boxes can be pretty lousy at those handshakes and give your TV the best grade signal it can endure from any given streaming source. Apple pins it.
But while the better budget-friendly Apple TV HD shares the exact crackerjack EDID handling, it lacks all the other goodies that complete the 4K a must-buy for home theater nerds. For example, it only supports up to 1080p, and at $149, it’s a terrible buy. Like, you’re more suitable off saving your money kind of terrible deal.
The company wants to market its services to you, including Apple Fitness (which only operates on Apple devices) and Apple TV Plus. It’s performed diligently with other set-top box providers and TV makers to get those products on their devices, but that’s not enough to compete with Roku and Amazon. Each has set-top boxes that start well beneath $50 and have most of the same stuff as the $149 Apple TV HD.
An Apple TV stick that begins at $99 or lower with AirPlay 2 support, perfect EDID handling, and the ability to embark on Fitness would be much more appealing. That’s more comparable in price to the sticks offered by Roku and Amazon. It would still be more costly, but at least it would be under $100.
But any more affordable Apple TV device would still leave us amazed — what the heck is the issue of the Apple TV HD then? To just part money from the purses of people who aren’t delivering attention?
With its high price and lower resolution output, it doesn’t complete much sense as a product at its current price. It could get a price drop to under $100, and a new device with 4K support could take its place in the middle.
Kuo’s tweet doesn’t clarify where this new device would sit in the Apple TV lineup, so anyone’s guess. It could even substitute the Apple TV HD altogether.
Whatever this probable new product ends up being, let’s wish it’s more affordable than the current offerings and contains a better name. Instead, we’ve got Apple TV Plus, Apple TV 4K, Apple TV HD, and the Apple TV Up Next app; if we count Apple TV Stick or whatever to the lineup, we genuinely worry about Google’s search algorithm when people google “Apple TV.”
The Apple TV app, also comprehended as Apple TV, is a line of media player software programs created by Apple Inc. for considering television shows and films yielded by Apple to consumer electronic devices.
It can stream scope from the iTunes Store, the Apple TV Channels a la carte video on demand benefit, and the Apple TV+ original content subscription service. In addition, iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches, and Apple TVs can also index and access content from connected apps of other video-on-demand services.
The app was released in the United States in December 2016 for iOS and tvOS Apple devices and was rolled out to other nations starting in late 2017.
During 2019 and 2020, it was brought to Mac and the third generation Apple TV and gradually, with certain feature omissions, to non-Apple devices: post-2015 Roku and Amazon Fire TV models and some newer television models on the Roku TV, Fire TV Edition, Samsung Tizen, LG webOS, and Vizio SmartCast intelligent TV platforms, with select new Sony Android TV models gaining access in October 2020.
Content from the TV app may also be streamed via Apple’s AirPlay 2 protocol from a device supporting the TV app to particular brilliant television sets from Sony, Vizio, LG, and Samsung.