- The iPhone 8 and Series Two Apple Watch
were not the only new hardware
Apple released last week.
They also put out a brand new Apple TV.
This is the Apple TV 4K,
and I have some issues
with what Apple did with this set-top box.
What's going on, tech squad?
Andru Edwards here, Editor-in-Chief for GearLive.com.
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Like I said, I'm gonna be talking
about the new Apple TV.
The Apple TV 4K, Apple's latest foray
into the set-top box game.
There's some good about it,
but there's also some weird decisions
that were made, that I need
to take Apple to task for in this video.
Let's get started right now.
The Apple TV 4K packs in almost everything
the last model was missing, and it's push
towards making 4K releases cheaper is noble.
But there aren't many third party apps
supporting the new format at launch,
and Apple also made some curious decisions
that might make some serious
home theater enthusiasts hold off.
At first glance, it's tough
to tell the new Apple TV apart from its predecessor.
They both have the same boxy plastic design,
with glossy sides and a matte finish on top.
There are a few small differences though.
The new model is raised up slightly
to expose the air vents,
which helps keep its faster processor,
that A10X chip, cooler.
It also doesn't have the diagnostic USB-C port on the back,
and instead it features an HDMI port,
a gigabit ethernet port instead of 100 megabit ethernet
like on the older model, and a power connection.
Most consumers likely won't notice
the omitted USB-C port, since it's mainly been used
for IT administration.
Now much has changed on the remote either.
It now has a small ring around the menu button,
and that's really the only noticeable tweak.
That change helps you recognize the orientation
that you're holding the remote when you're in the dark.
Under the hood, the Apple TV 4K
is powered by the A10X Fusion processor.
That's the same processor found
inside the latest iPad Pros.
The previous model was running the A8 processor,
so the additional power is certainly helpful
for dealing with things like huge video files,
4K streaming, HDR, and it's also something
that games and apps will also be able
to take advantage of as well.
Setting up the Apple TV is super simple.
You just plug in your Wi-Fi credentials
and enter your iCloud account.
But, if you have a recent iOS device,
like this iPhone 8, although it can be anything
I believe from five or above,
you can actually just hold your iOS device
right near the Apple TV during setup,
and your iOS device will transfer over
all the settings needed.
Your Apple ID, your Wi-Fi password, etc.,
getting you online and up and running
in just under a minute.
Now as you can tell by the name,
the big difference with the new Apple TV
is the 4K support, which is four times
as many pixels as 1080p HD.
That makes it ideal for bringing out every detail,
like individual strands of hair,
or blades of grass when your watching content.
You'll also notice the addition of HDR,
High Dynamic Range video.
And on compatible sets, HDR lets you see
more intense brightness, deeper blacks,
and a wider range of colors.
And, in my opinion, the big leap here
is actually the HDR, not the 4K.
HDR is much more noticeable than 4K resolution.
Apple wisely chose to support both HDR standards,
that's HDR 10 and Dolby Vision.
But in typical Apple fashion,
it's offering these new formats
in a slightly different way,
and this is where my problem
with the Apple TV 4K lies.
During setup the Apple TV will determine
if your television set can support 4K and HDR.
And if it does, it enables 4K HDR
throughout the entire interface,
and it's actually running 4K HDR all the time.
So even if you're watching non-HDR content,
so instead of High Dynamic Range, Standard Dynamic Range,
it's still pumping it out in High Dynamic Range mode,
even though there's no metadata telling your television
how to display all the different colors.
How to display the blacks, and the whites,
and all the different levels.
None of that metadata is there.
Apple is using the Apple TV,
and it's just guessing how those colors
should look on screen,
and more often than not, it's incorrect.
It's basically an HDR wrapper,
sending non-HDR content to your TV.
Why is Apple doing this?
They're doing it in the name of user experience.
So if you've never watched High Dynamic Range content,
you may not know this,
but when you're watching Standard Dynamic Range content,
and you switch over to HDR mode,
your TV will usually go black
for anywhere from five to 10 seconds
while it switches modes.
So you're watching regular content,
you switch over to HDR, TV goes black,
and then it comes back and it's playing the HDR picture.
When you're done, it goes black,
comes back and brings the Standard Dynamic Range
back into the forefront.
Apple thinks this is a poor experience.
They don't want the Apple TV flickering
in and out, off and on, when changing modes,
and it's not the Apple TV's fault.
It just happens to be that that's
what some televisions do.
In order to avoid that flickering,
Apple just keeps HDR mode on at all times,
even if you're not watching HDR content.
Now to some people, this might be great.
For some people, they might not even notice a difference.
But, to some people, when you're watching content
that's not HDR, you're watching it on the Apple TV,
you might just think, why does this look so dim?
Or why do the colors look so muted?
Or why do I not see any detail
with the blacks or the brights?
It's because they're doing that.
Now hopefully Apple releases a software update
of some sort, that addresses this,
but for now, I find it super annoying.
As someone who is a home theater enthusiast,
I find it annoying that they're taking this approach to HDR.
That's not how HDR is.
HDR is basically the movie studios
encode the HDR stream, and put it into the content.
It's a piece of metadata that your television
is supposed to read, in order to know
how best to display this content.
Not a fan of just putting fake HDR on there,
and then just calling it HDR.
Stop it.
Now, on the flip side, when you rent HDR titles from iTunes,
those are either in HDR or Dolby Vision,
they look amazing.
They're coded properly.
They're encoded with the right HDR stream,
and they look amazing.
They're fantastic.
Now the other problem I have, though,
is Apple forcing 60 hertz on content
that's supposed to be 24p.
Most movies you see, most major motion pictures,
they are at 24 frames per second,
and Apple's pushing them to your TV
at 60 frames per second.
There's no way to divide 24 by 60,
which means there's extra frames in there,
or frame skips, and things don't look as good.
It's supposed to be the native framerate,
that'll make it look best.
So hopefully we see a software update there as well.
For a box that's supposed to be
about TV and movies, you would think
that it would be optimized for the best
TV and movie viewing experience,
rather than optimized for the experience
of not having your TV flicker,
when it's going into our out of HDR mode.
Now one thing I have to applaud Apple for,
is the way they're handling pricing on HDR content.
First of all, if you've ever bought an iTunes movie,
and that movie becomes available in 4K,
you automatically own the 4K version of that movie.
So imagine buying a blu-ray disc at 1080p,
and then they release a 4K blu-ray,
then they automatically just mail that to your house.
That's pretty much what Apple's doing here.
They're just giving people upgrades to 4K.
No other service has done this.
That's a big deal.
Number two, if you wanna buy new movies,
they're actually selling the 4K version
at the same price that they were selling
the 1080p version for.
So roughly 15 to 20 bucks to buy a movie,
and you can get the 4K version.
Other competing services were selling 4K movies
at around 30 bucks for the digital version.
Apple's cutting that almost in half,
by 50 percent to 33 percent off of those prices.
So I have to give them credit for that,
because obviously others are gonna follow there, as well.
And also, maybe you don't wanna buy a movie,
but you wanna rent it,
a lot of HDR rentals were six, seven,
or even eight bucks on other services.
Apple is doing the same pricing
as their other movies.
So it's between three dollars and six dollars
to rent a movie in 4K HDR.
So, big shout out to Apple on pricing.
They're bringing the price down
on 4K HDR content.
As I said, the movies from iTunes look amazing.
I tried Kong: Skull Island.
That ended up being the ideal 4K HDR demo
on an OLED TV that I have here.
It features scenes with plenty
of bright elements, as well as dark detailed portions,
and at times, both extreme brightness
and darkness show up at the same time,
thanks to the versatility of HDR.
Baby Driver is a brighter film than Kong,
but the color on that movie pops off the screen
with 4K HDR.
The format also helps the film's many action sequences.
There was a bit more oomph as every gun fired,
and I could make out even more detail.
There were no long chase sequences.
In fact, for Baby Driver in particular,
it looked more impressive at home
than it did at the theater.
Netflix 4K HDR titles looked great as well.
Amazon Prime video, however,
is still missing in action, despite the promise
that it was coming here in the fall.
Now fall isn't over yet.
In fact, fall just began,
but it's very telling that Apple TV 4K
didn't launch with Amazon Video,
because Amazon has a bunch of 4K HDR content.
But, soon after that launch,
we did see Amazon announce their own new set-top box,
in the Amazon Fire TV 4K,
and I assume that we're not gonna see
Amazon Video hit the Apple TV
until Amazon's new 4K set-top box hits stores,
or at least launches on Amazon.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all,
Apple TV 4K doesn't support next generation audio formats,
like Dolby Atmos and DTS:X just yet.
Apple says Atmos support is coming
through a software update, but it is still weird
that it wasn't just there at launch.
The Apple TV 4K starts at $179 for a 32 gigabyte model,
and goes up to 199 for the 64 gigabyte version.
But the 64 gigabyte model is specifically meant
for people who are downloading a lot of games.
And that new A10X processor is going to help
chew through those games,
and you may even expect to see
even better games coming for Apple TV,
here on the 4K version.
The Apple TV does everything you would expect it to do.
What's surprising is how Apple
is undercutting the competition in 4K pricing.
In a world where fewer people are buying movies,
and the current best physical media format
might not be sticking around for long,
it serves as an important role
by making 4K and HDR films more accessible.
Its just a shame that we have to wait
on fixes for the curious omissions,
like it's lack of Atmos support,
and the weird way that it's handling HDR.
So there you have it guys.
That was your look at the new Apple TV 4K.
Drop a like on this video if you enjoyed it.
Any questions about the Apple TV,
if you bought the Apple TV and have an opinion,
drop that opinion down in the comments below,
and I'll meet you there for further discussion.
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Thank you so much, as always guys, for watching.
I appreciate your support.
I'm Andru Edwards, and I'll catch you in the next video.
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