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Comment by petepete | Hacker News Reader

I bought an Apple TV 4K a few months ago (Google TV's ads were too much) and there's nothing here that might even slightly tempt me to upgrade.

* Siri - no thanks

* Far field microphones - no thanks

* Faster performance - unnecessary for me (I watch TV, movies and YouTube - it's never not smooth)

* Home theatre with homepods - I already have Sonos surround

* Even smarter home hub - I have a non-Apple smart home

* Facetime, Fitness+, Apple TV app - just not for me

The one thing I feel like I'm missing (and would be missing even if I upgraded) is audio passthrough, but DD 5.1 is _fine_.

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The lack of audio passthrough has been so frustrating. Apple TV would be an instant buy for me if it did. I have a pretty good 5.1 setup at home. I've been watching the LoTR trilogy with my kids and there is a big difference between DD 5.1 vs the higher quality audio streams. I use a Shield for this reason, but it's clunky and I'd much rather have something that just works. Shame that Apple has no interest in supporting audio passthrough for their devices.

This is where I'm at too, really wish Apple supported passthrough. The Shield continues to work but it's a bit sluggish now and needs a new gen.

There are comparable devices like Ugoos (am6b+ with coreelec) and Zidoo but they're a little sketch compared to the aforementioned...

Yeah, exactly. I've looked into those boxes but have steered clear for the same reasons. For now I use ProjectIvy launcher for a very clean launcher experience and I used a custom Shield script someone had posted on Reddit a while back to remove a lot of Google bloat and the Google launcher. Works well enough, but frame-rate matching still requires manual intervention (I have a button mapped to forcing it) and the Apple TV app isn't quite as smooth in playback as it should be on the Shield.

ProjectIvy is a beautiful clean interface, at least in comparison to the default ad-infested abomination that Google delivers.

I have a few Android TV devices, and as soon as I discovered ProjectIvy, I made it the default launcher on all of them.

It has the ability to decode the audio on the device and output LPCM if the playback app used supports it. The only thing you can't get is the spatial height channels from formats other than DD+ w/Atmos.

Looks like the ethernet port is back on all new models? It disappeared for the cheapest option in the previous generation.

Still no 2.5Gbps port in 2026 is disappointing.

Why would a TV streamer need 2.5Gbps? You don’t even need that bandwidth to stream raw 4K blu-rays.

8k is already here...

8K is dead, nobody was buying 8K tvs. There will almost certainly be under a million 8K tvs sold in the next decade. There's also absolutely no content for it while not even 4K content is mainstream.

8k blu-rays aren't and if they were, I don't think they would 4x the bandwidth... and even if they did, 4k blu-ray peaks at 150mbps (or so), so 4x would be 600mbps, which gigabit is still plenty for.

Commercial streamimg platforms are probably gonna allocate like 2mbps more for 8k streaming and call it a day.

This Apple TV doesn’t support 8K display output. That’s what it’s called the “Apple TV 4K.”

Gigabit Ethernet has 7x the bandwidth of a 4K UHD Blu-ray.

If an 8K Blu-ray standard were to ever exist, in what universe would it somehow 7x the bitrate to increase the pixel count by 4x? And of course that math is assuming that this new hypothetical new standard that does not exist wouldn’t use newer compression standard.

In what universe will 8K content be streamed at greater than 3x the bitrate of the average US home broadband speed? (300Mbps) 8K streamed content will almost certainly top out at 100Mbps.

The current bandwidth cost math at major CDNs for consumer use cases at that bitrate is hundreds of dollars per month, before you even pay for content.

The idea that any streamer will be bandwidth-limited by a 1Gbps network link anytime soon is absurd.

I'm not sure what bit rate and what CDN prices you used, but at these data levels I think you'd definitely want to get your own bandwidth. So even ignoring the free colocation and peering a big streaming provider can get, I see a bunch of offerings for $30-50/Gbps in the US and EU. And what percent of 8k tier users are going to be watching 8k simultaneously, maybe 10% peak? A service could use 1-2Gbps if it wanted to. There's no reason for it, but it could.

I think I would be more inclined to get it if it supported 2.5Gbs or preferably even 10Gbs.

I have Infuse app for playback on my Apple TV, and recently tried to play, from my local nas on 10Gbs link, some 4k ProRes footage. I forget if it even has the decoder for it, but just the bandwidth wasn’t even enough to play that. Honestly also from experience, playing from local network a 80GB BD remux is also kinda so-so. Random hiccups for me during normal playback. And just completely unreliable fast forward/backwards seeking.

There is only one model now.

Tell that to all the TVs that are still shipping with 100Mbps even when it starts to be a problem, because they want to save 5 cents.

But seriously, 1Gbps is plenty for any video content.

> * Faster performance - unnecessary for me (I watch TV, movies and YouTube - it's never not smooth)

Don't worry, the next tvOS update may fix that.

I tend to have at least one of the latest AppleTVs around, but I find myself without access to my best AppleTV 4k and am stuck using a 1st gen in my current home.

I was surprised to learn my 1st gen doesn't have a thread radio which caused some minor homekit compatability issues. I actually bought a new AppleTV 4k a couple months ago but it didn't really solve my problem, so I returned it with the reasoning that it was long in the tooth and a new model was coming out soon.

I just preordered this one but I sort of wonder if I should just go buy the last gen one for half the money or whatever. Seems like the actual buy. At the old price point, they were impulse buys. At this price point, well, it's enough to get me to stop and think about it.

The remote adding find my precision finding is a killer feature, but you’ll be able to buy the remote standalone.

AV1 decoding is also a good feature to have.

Pretty sure previous ATV4K had AV1 decode as well?

No, HW AV1 decoding came with A17 Pro, previous ATV4K (3rd Gen.) used A15.

> The one thing I feel like I'm missing is audio passthrough,

wait, the new 4K has passthrough finally? I did not see it mentioned.

Sorry no, I worded that badly.

I meant the one thing I'm missing from my current setup, not something that would be fixed by upgrading.

Ah, got ya. It does decode AV1 now, so if it had the passthrough, I might have actually upgraded.

Does every refresh need to make a case for why existing owners of the last model need to upgrade?

Most of the purchases will be from people who do have an older model that's actually getting outdated, people who want another Apple TV for another room in their house, or people who don't own one at all. You buy this one now, it'll probably be good for the better part of a decade and you won't need to think about the next refresh.

If the price increases, you need to consider if the value it provides is still worth the higher cost.

For me, I’m hopeful to get a good deal on the previous gen to replace my parents ATV HD.

It will be my first used ATV purchase, but $299 isn’t worth it to consider buying new in my opinion.

Even the homepods setup - anyone who wants full home theater would just get sonos or other serious surround sound.

The problem is that the apple tv + won't even output the audio formats that a real audio system can decode.

I bought a Sonos soundbar (the Ray) to dip a toe in the waters, so to speak.

I’ll never buy another Sonos product ever again. Terrible experience all around. App is trash, soundbar drops off wifi for no reason, songs will stop playing over Airplay and it’ll just disappear as an Airplay speaker for hours and then show back up randomly and work fine again.

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