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Apple TV 4K Gets A12 Bionic

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Re: Apple TV 4K Gets A12 Bionic

#311

Post by ricardobeat »

crazydoggers wrote: post #58
crazygringo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people watch TV/movies at night with headphones instead of speakers, in order not to wake up the kids, grandparents, someone who works early, etc. Especially when you want to fully experience those big loud action sequences without making the house actually rumble. This is for people when they aren't using their speakers at all. Edit in response to your edit: I think you may be misunderstanding Apple's spati…

It’s still post processing to create a sound stage to a stereo signal. Nothing wrong with that, but for instance if I’m watching a movie on an iPhone or something, I’m assuming I can’t get the true audio experience of the film. When it’s a movie I really am into, then I’m going to watch it in full surround, with discreet speakers. 7.1 to stereo headphones is always a compromise whether it’s Apple spatial audio, or Do…

> It’s still post processing to create a sound stage to a stereo signal

Your ears are a 'stereo signal' and they work fine for recognizing the sound stage coming out of a 7.1 system. The Airpods are just presenting the same audio information directly to your ears.

Besides, there is a massive difference between Dolby for headphones and spatial audio - standard surround headphones will not give you a fixed sound stage as you move your head. I think you're underestimating the effect, if you haven't tried them.

Re: Apple TV 4K Gets A12 Bionic

#312

Post by saagarjha »

stouset wrote: post #293
ihattendorf wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performance is a feature

Not for a device that rarely operates even close to its performance constraints. If you're using it for games? Sure, but I think that's still a very... let's call it "niche" market for the Apple TV. For people just using it to watch television and movies? Unnoticeable. It'll likely be more power efficient but I'm not sure that's going to be very noticeable.

The way you'll probably notice is that it will lose support earlier.

Re: Apple TV 4K Gets A12 Bionic

#313

Post by fomine3 »

tshaddox wrote: post #93
goodcjw2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sounds like natural next step. But building a game console ecosystem turns out to be 10x harder than building the hardware itself.

That's true, but Apple already has a rich and successful game ecosystem on iPhones which are roughly the same hardware as the Apple TV. They have all the ingredients, and they've even made a visible attempt by offering Apple Arcade on the Apple TV. Wireless console controllers also work on Apple TV. It's just clear that the resources and effort haven't been made to get their Arcade developers to do the extra work to…

Games on iPhone is really succeeded but I doubt it's thanks to Apple's effort.

Re: Apple TV 4K Gets A12 Bionic

#315

Post by hinkley »

wilde wrote: post #169
hinkley wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda looks like the old remotes to me. Not that I'm complaining. Anyone have a theory why it's bigger?

The current remote buries itself in the couch at the first available opportunity.

Seems to me that the color will make more of a difference than the small size increase. It's a hair thicker, a hair narrower, and half an inch longer.

Re: Apple TV 4K Gets A12 Bionic

#316

Post by nikisweeting »

tpmx wrote: post #107
nikisweeting wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want a web browser. I almost returned the thing in a fit of confused sadness when I found out it has no browser.

It should be built-in. Apple has this bizarre blind-spot where they will not ever launch anything if it doesn't have 100% UX, when sometimes, actually a 98% UX is pretty damn useful. I mean, the remote has a touch pad! I'm not arguing they should have no lower limit on UX quality (lke Android), it's just, it should be slightly, slightly lower. And just to avoid any third party apps solving this problems for users, th…

And yet, the Magic Mouse with a lightning port on the bottom exists :)

Re: Apple TV 4K Gets A12 Bionic

#317

Post by phendrenad2 »

minhazm wrote: post #295
ziml77 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nvidia Shield basically uses the same SoC as the Nintendo Switch. Yet somehow even though the chip is powerful enough to run 3D games, Android TV can't manage smooth 2D animations on it. As I said in another comment I switched to using the apps on my LG TV. That sluggishness was a huge reason why.

It's possible it's not powerful enough for a 4K tv if that's what you have. The Switch does 720p, or 1080p when docked. 4X the resolution is a big difference.

Not in 2D it isn't. Sliding some 2D textures around a 4k screen should be easy for any GPU from the last 2 decades. Problem is likely the apps do silly things like (I'm guessing) load 8k textures and draw them in a tiny box, and then try to load 100 of these boxes at once every time you thpe a character in the search box. Just guessing based on blog post deconstructions of modern games and apps I've seen.

Re: Apple TV 4K Gets A12 Bionic

#318

Post by phendrenad2 »

goodcjw2 wrote: post #18

Honestly speaking, the problem with Apple TV is that chips like A12 are such a overkill for TV box use cases. I recently purchased a $30 Roku and find it has almost 99% of the features that an Apple TV would have (including airplay2). Yes, Apple TV would have better color, visual quality, etc, but that's way into the realm of dismissed return for the investment IMHO.

I thibk the problem is, app developers tend to write inefficient apps, so Apple is just throwing hardware at the problem, to keep their edge in terms of apparent UI speed.

Re: Apple TV 4K Gets A12 Bionic

#319

Post by phendrenad2 »

jpdaigle wrote: post #275

No dual bluetooth. For some reason, the current crop of streaming devices all fail the use case of: 2 people want to watch a movie on headphones, without waking the kids. The current solution to this is airpods, where each person gets either the left or right ear. If there's one thing a premium device that costs twice what everything else does could do to differentiate itself, it would be supporting bluetooth pairing…

This is the Unix philosophy though. If you want to split the bluetooth output to two downstream devices, you need a bluetooth repeater with two outputs.

Re: Apple TV 4K Gets A12 Bionic

#320

Post by interpol_p »

softwaredoug wrote: post #105

I'm happy that they ditched the old, confusing 'touch' Siri remote for a traditional four button (up/down/left/right) one. The old Siri remote was pretty frustrating. I know some people love it, but there's so many ways it didn't. work well: 1. You breath on the thing, and it does something. It's extremely sensitive 2. It's really hard to fast fwd/rewind just a little bit. Its good at scrubbing through a whole movie,…

I know I'm probably in the minority, but as someone with little kids the Siri remote was just great

Instead of them running up and touching the TV screen to tell me which episode they wanted to watch, I could fling over to the big thumbnail and wiggle it around with my finger on the trackpad. They could easily see what was "focused" and what I was referring to on the screen

As the kids grew older they got used to just asking Siri through the remote to search for shows they wanted to watch, something they couldn't do when they were too young to type and spell

It is initially harder to use than the discrete button remote, and I agree that it's tough to scrub very fine intervals. Though you can use Siri button to "go back 25 seconds" or "what did she say?" — which goes back ~15 seconds and also turns on subtitles temporarily

This new remote looks like a good combination of trackpad + clicky buttons though

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