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Television Apple

RIP Apple TV HD: Apple Went All-In On 4K Yesterday (arstechnica.com) 105

Posted by BeauHD from the out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new dept.
The Apple TV HD (also called the fourth-generation Apple TV) is no longer available in Apple's US store after the addition of an updated Apple TV 4K yesterday. Ars Technica reports: The Apple TV HD debuted in 2015, and it was the first Apple TV to run tvOS, with its own App Store. Up until its discontinuation this week, it included a now-aging A8 chip (the one from the iPhone 6). By contrast, the new Apple TV 4K has the A15 chip found in the iPhone 13; it's dramatically faster. The 2015 model was also the first to introduce Apple's controversial touch-based remote, which was radically redesigned in response to user feedback in recent years.

Apple introduced the first iteration of the Apple TV 4K in 2017, but the company continued to offer the Apple TV HD alongside it in its store as a cheaper option compared to the 4K model, which currently starts at $129 -- still much more expensive than the dongles and set-top boxes most people use to stream to their TVs. At present, you can't even find the Apple TV HD in Apple's refurbished store, so this appears to mark the end-of-life for the non-4K Apple TV. It's not too surprising, though; 4K TVs have been a hit. More than half of United States households had a 4K TV as of last summer, and the percentage has been growing substantially year over year.
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RIP Apple TV HD: Apple Went All-In On 4K Yesterday More

RIP Apple TV HD: Apple Went All-In On 4K Yesterday

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  • It's not as if you can't plug an Apple TV 4K into your 1080P television.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Ditto. If the HDTV ever dies or breaks, then it will be a 4K!

    • What hosed me when I tried that was their removal of the Toslink and coaxial audio outputs. If you have a standalone A/V receiver and speakers, as I do, you can't use an Apple TV 4K. Courage!

      (Yes, you can screw around with 'audio extractors', but those are the flakiest things on Earth and basically don't work with the AppleTV 4K unless you enjoy looking at high-definition snow.)

      • It's a pathetic little machine anyways, with or without. I stayed in a hotel that has one -- what a POS. Even their supposed "improved" remote is total crap, and the UI is laggy as hell. Why anybody buys these is a mystery to me. Nvidia's shield is the only streaming box that hasn't managed to frustrate the crap out of me so far.

        • Why anybody buys these is a mystery to me.

          Probably because most streaming services are equally as obnoxious to use. I'm almost a year in to my free Paramount+ subscription that I got through T-Mobile and I'd still rather just hit rarbg than deal with their crummy app. Haven't had Netflix since they pulled everything my partner and I liked watching, and HBO Max (or whatever they're calling it this week) can go screw itself for lack of decent content.

          The only UI that doesn't frustrate the crap out of me is Kodi. It runs just fine on a Fire Stick,

      • If you have a standalone A/V receiver and speakers, as I do, you can't use an Apple TV 4K.

        Even the Black Friday bargain basement crap TVs that I typically buy have optical output and HDMI ARC. Heck, I have a 40" 1080p Best Buy Dynex TV that I still use which has CCFL backlighting (remember those?) and that relic of a television has optical audio output.

        • It takes courage to remove toslink

          • It takes courage to remove toslink

            Um, Apple TV HD is HDMI-only.

            That was introduced seven years ago(!)

            How long were you going to wait to be outraged?

            My nearly ancient LG 1080p TV from 2012 has TOSLink out and ARC. HDMi in, TOSLink out.

            Been working that way with my Apple TV HD for years without a hitch.

        • That wasn't the case when my Sharp Aqous came out several years ago.

          I'm not going to upgrade a perfectly good TV because Apple wanted to save 50 cents on S/PDIF connectors.

          • So let me understand your problem. You do not have an A/V receiver that has HDMI which would make it ancient. Nor do you have a TV that has HDMI and a toslink which would also make it ancient. So you cannot use the newest AppleTV then.
            • Many even somewhat newer A/V receivers cannot handle 4k passthrough. So you have to connect the 4k signal directly to the TV, then route sound separately.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

                Many even somewhat newer A/V receivers cannot handle 4k passthrough. So you have to connect the 4k signal directly to the TV, then route sound separately.

                Actually, 4K (as part of HDMI 2.0) has been working just fine for hte past 5+ years now.

                The absolute latest HDMI 2.1 however, did have issues in 2020 and 2021, but everything in 2022 has either been updated or recalled to work properly with HDMI 2.1. HDMI 2.1 features are primarily for gamers offering things like variable framerate and 120Hz framerate.

                HDMI

              • I think you are referring to the HDMI 2.1 issue where A/V manufacturers found issues with the chips that limited the 4K signal to 60Hz or slower. Being a hardware issue, it was not something that could be fixed easily via firmware update.

          • > That wasn't the case when my Sharp Aqous came out several years ago.

            I'm using HDMI passthrough to optical on my Sharp Aquios D64U from 2007.

            If your Aquios from "several years ago" doesn't have it, I guess Sharp had courage.

      • Re:Okay, so what? (Score:4, Informative)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Thursday October 20, 2022 @05:20AM (#62982315)

        What hosed me when I tried that was their removal of the Toslink and coaxial audio outputs. If you have a standalone A/V receiver and speakers, as I do, you can't use an Apple TV 4K. Courage!

        (Yes, you can screw around with 'audio extractors', but those are the flakiest things on Earth and basically don't work with the AppleTV 4K unless you enjoy looking at high-definition snow.)

        Perhaps it's time to get a new A/V receiver from this decade, or even two decades with HDMI inputs. They even make ones with 4K inputs, too, which not only can handle the new AppleTV 4K, but the gamer-friendly features of the new PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles and latest graphics cards, like 4k120 or 8k.

        Optical and Coax only handle 2 channel 44.1/48kHz 16-bit audio. Extensions are defined for 20 bit audio but most devices ignore the 4 extra bits. Sure you can "surround sound" using encoded formats like Dolby Digital and DTS, but modern streaming services are using Dolby Digital+ to get higher quality audio at similar bitrates, and that requires HDMI.

        • I'm frankly baffled. A TV with ARC and/or a receiver with HDMI switching have been utterly standard gear for the past 15 years or more. Somehow this person managed to find the only 4k TV without ARC, is still using a receiver that doesn't support HDMI, and is unwilling to upgrade either one. But it's easier to complain that the latest greatest Apple TV is designed around modern home theaters.

        • DD 5.1 works fine on my current setup, thanks. It was a $7K system when purchased, and would cost about the same to replace with comparable equipment today. Sending perfectly good gear to the landfill because Apple can't be bothered to support the I/O options I need doesn't fly around here... although it's obviously a key part of Apple's business model. Gotta keep the landfills in business.

      • > What hosed me when I tried that was their removal of the Toslink and coaxial audio outputs. If you have a standalone A/V receiver and speakers, as I do, you can't use an Apple TV 4K. Courage!

        Works fine for me. I use the HDMI passthrough with the TOSLINK on the TV.

      • Simple:

        Apple TV HDMI -> TV -> TV Optical out -> A/V Receiver -> Speaker cable to speakers

      • If you have literally any standalone A/V receiver made in the last 10 years, it has HDMI input on it that also accepts a higher bitrate audio stream than TOSLINK is capable of. And anything that works properly with HDMI audio probably also supports a whole lot of audio codecs than anything with only optical / coaxial digital audio input - not that it matters since Apple basically refuses to allow proper audio pass-through support and transcodes everything to AC3 5.1...

        Yes, it's annoying that they got rid o

    • > It's not as if you can't plug an Apple TV 4K into your 1080P television.

      And at the same price as the HD, while getting much more processor and memory.

  • I bought a Firestick for $30 last Christmas. Works fine. Even runs Kodi.

    • Apple tax, as always.

      I also got Firesticks because of the price. And also, at the time, because it had a remote (the Chromecast didn't, but the new one does).

    • Yeah they're almost good. Almost. Too bad the UI is a shit show and shoves pay per view crap into your face.

  • The new AppleTV only has wifi on the base model, and you have to pay more for the 128GB version to get ethernet.

    • Good. We do oughta have a tax on pricks who want to deal with wired BS.

      • You need to have the courage to spend more to get less complicated hardware.

      • What a bizarre comment. How much does it cost including a ethernet port on a device that's got plenty of space to include it? Less than a few dollars probably at the volume Apple would buy. Besides using wired ethernet is always superior to using Wi-Fi on a device that's typically in the same position for the majority of it's life. This is especially true if you're using the AppleTV as a Home Bridge hub. I've got to plug the power cable and HDMI cable into the AppleTV already so what's one more cable for et

      • Re:No ethernet port on the base model (Score:4, Insightful)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday October 20, 2022 @03:30AM (#62982177)

        Good. We do oughta have a tax on pricks who want to deal with wired BS.

        That is the dumbest comment on the internet. Please post your address so we can come and spew wide band noise in your house at 2.4GHz and knock you offline sparing the rest of Slashdot. We know it'll work well since you don't have any wired connections.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jjbenz ( 581536 )
        wireless sucks, I would take a wired connection any day.
    • No ethernet or Matter/Thread support on base model. Although streaming a full 4K UHD image over solid wifi-6 works well in Infuse, but scrubbing through movies feels just a tad snappier with one on wire with 2nd gen 4k. The 2nd gen 4K model (metal remote) is solid vs 1st gen 4k model, media really doesnt slow it down.

  • I have seen Rokus selling for about $25. I cannot imagine anything I would need with an Apple, that I cannot do with a Roku. But that's just my experience.

    • If you don't care about certain Apple integrations, yeah, you're right. It's possible to use the AppleTV as a smart home hub (that's the only way to get your video cameras to save their clips to iCloud), and it works really well for Apple Fitness+. If you have Apple Arcade or Apple Music it's really good too. And airplay 2 is far superior to Bluetooth if you want to stream something from your iPhone, whether music or video.

      So it's only useful for the other stuff that you bring to it. But for just streaming

      • AirPlay sucks just like Bluetooth because it drains battery from your phone and your phone needs to be turned on and with signal. It's also poorlely designed because the phone needs to get the content from the Internet and send it back to the TV/speakers/whatever. So twice the traffic on the WiFi.

        Chromecast and similar protocols is the proper way to stream music/video. You can turn off your phone and it will continue to play.

        The best, as always, is not to get any product from Apple. This way you don't need

        • That's not how AirPlay works... Whenever possible, it hands off a streaming link and then does a timesync to play content directly on the target device, exactly like how "Chromecast and similar protocols" work.

          • Good to know, the wikipedia article didn't make that feature clear, is that what AirPlay 2.0 is about?

            • I believe that's still supported by AirPlay. AirPlay 2 covers a bunch of related things working together, but the marquee feature was improved streaming syncs to support multiroom audio. I don't have access to an official spec, it's confidential, but there are portions that have been reverse engineered, and the core function is ultimately passing around an rtsp link. In some cases, that can be direct from a public source, in others it's a private stream initiated by the sending device. The basics are fun

        • AirPlay sucks just like Bluetooth because it drains battery from your phone and your phone needs to be turned on and with signal. It's also poorlely designed because the phone needs to get the content from the Internet and send it back to the TV/speakers/whatever. So twice the traffic on the WiFi.

          Quit lying.

          I've streamed internet HD video + audio for over 2 hours from my iPhone 8 with an aging battery to my Apple TV HD over AirPlay2 with only a 3% battery usage. That's not so bad, IMHO. Contrary to the lying Parent's claims, The phone ostensibly goes to sleep; but continues to stream just fine.

          • if the battery usage was low, it's because your phone was not sending the stream (over bluetooth or wifi) but your Apple TV was getting the stream directly from the Internet.

            The problem is that AirPlay seems to include both methods of transmission, one of which sucks.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        that's the only way to get your video cameras to save their clips to iCloud

        Really? As if I didn't have enough reasons to not buy Apple. That's pretty awful, even for them.

        • I have no idea what that comment is about. All videos I take on my iPhone show up in the cloud as soon as the phone syncs with iCloud, usually within a few hours. Maybe videos taken with other, non-Apple devices?

          • He was likely talking about security cameras that use HomeLink or whatever Apple calls their IoT integration framework. I don't use AppleTV for that kind of thing (or really any kind of thing other than a glorified Spotify and Plex client in our living room and kitchen, on a 12 year old 1080p television with an 8 year old receiver to drive the in-ceiling speakers.)

            For real video uses in the home theater, we have an Nvidia Shield Pro, which at 3 years old is still the best streaming box you can buy at any p

  • I'm assuming it will be built into an 80" LCD.

  • Apple TV 4 isn't the same as Apple TV HD, the HD was a minor upgrade from the 4. It used the same remote.

    • Apple TV 4 isn't the same as Apple TV HD, the HD was a minor upgrade from the 4. It used the same remote.

      Are you sure?

      AFAICT, "AppleTV HD" is simply the official name for the AppleTV, 4th generation.

      Citation, please?

  • Duh, we all know that 16K is the future (Score:4, Funny)

    by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @10:49PM (#62981847)

    We will go all the way up to 640K because a wise man once said that 640K should be enough for everyone.

  • Every Pi Zero for $5 can do 4k. There simply is no technological reason for offering a seperate 2k version.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • If Apple can't do 4K for less than $129 then there is absolutely a reason to offer an HD. People with only 1080 TVs are paying a premium for nothing.

      • If Apple can't do 4K for less than $129 then there is absolutely a reason to offer an HD. People with only 1080 TVs are paying a premium for nothing.

        The new AppleTV 4k starts at $129. Significantly cheaper than the previous 4k model.

  • "If there's one thing that history teaches us is that higher resolutions are near useless without either higher bandwidth, or more efficient codecs."

  • Almost all apple iphones (and macbooks) are very fast and responsive at least at the user interface when they are released. My 2011 macbook air is more responsive and loads and shuts faster than my other 2021 M1 macbook air. Sure standard workloads like image/video processing gets faster with newer iterations but the whole user interface getting terrible with each ios/macos upgrade is a shame. Corporation greed scene gets bigger and more crowded with time. It seems time has arrived for older apple tv's to g
    • Why does that matter? Anything before 2017 isn't getting the new OS, meaning you cannot develop with it.

    • Almost all apple iphones (and macbooks) are very fast and responsive at least at the user interface when they are released. My 2011 macbook air is more responsive and loads and shuts faster than my other 2021 M1 macbook air. Sure standard workloads like image/video processing gets faster with newer iterations but the whole user interface getting terrible with each ios/macos upgrade is a shame. Corporation greed scene gets bigger and more crowded with time. It seems time has arrived for older apple tv's to get new tvos upgrades to make them feel slower and not be fun to use anymore. May be the switch from paid to free macos upgrades was completely intentional so people would not say hey we paid for this upgrade and now my macbook sucks.

      Funny, that's not what every reviewer seems to say.

  • 2K (AKA 4K for marketing reasons) is a gimmick unless you have a truly massive TV and sit too close to it. A total waste of money. So, basically a guaranteed big seller to Apple's target demographic.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      True for TV, but I also use my TV as a computer monitor when I do sit close to it and the difference from my old 1080p is very noticable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ormy ( 1430821 )
      You're right that it should really be called 2K, since previously we referred to the vertical resolution. But being a waste of money depends on the user and their needs. I have a 55" 4K screen that I sit approx 1.5m away from, with video content I can easily tell the difference between 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 output resolution. The difference between 2560x1440 and 3840x2160 is more subtle, but when I switch to any normal PC-based task like word processing, web browsing, etc the extra resolution is super

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vux984 ( 928602 )

        If "1920x1080" is a 1K screen then a 4K screen is 4x that ... which it is. It has the same resolution as 4 1080p screens, and is in fact 4 1080p screens in a 2x2 grid. The fact that the horizontal resolution is 3840 is almost 4000 is coincidence.

        4K makes perfect sense. The real problem is 8K... its like whoever came up with that didn't understand what 4K was. It should have been called 16K or "4K squared" or something since its the same size as 16 1080p screens in 4x4 grid, or 4 4K screens in a 2x2 grid.

    • This might be true for people with poor eyesight, but I can definitely tell 1080p from 2160p.

      Of course, a lot of people are watching horrible hyper-compressed streaming/cable/whatever on their 4K TV so it looks like ass anyway, but that's besides the point. With a decent source, 4K is absolutely noticable, and the display doesn't have to be that big for that to be true, although obviously it's easier to see on larger displays as the pixel size increases.

  • Good riddance! The new hotness includes Thread support for home connectivity. Lots of goodies!

    • Good riddance! The new hotness includes Thread support for home connectivity. Lots of goodies!

      Thread does seem to require the Terrestrial Ethernet version. Perhaps part of the Thread spec?

  • Honestly, this is still a fine little machine if you don't need 4K, don't need it to act as a HomeKit hub, and don't need Siri or anything else going on.

    In particular, I still use my 3rd gen "hockey puck" AppleTV as an Airplay destination for streaming audio + cover art to a TV when I just want to listen to music and it does the job perfectly well.

    While I understand getting rid of the 4th Gen non-4K stuff, I still think there's a place for a cheap HDMI-based Apple streaming box that puts Airplay front and c

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