I'm a little surprised at the price (especially when their newly-announced HomeView is the same price, and it has a screen!).
I love this product: it's the one box I can (reasonably) trust to not be mining my viewing habits for data. I have two older ones and was looking to get something that supported 4K but waited for this to come out.
$300 might be a decent price if you use it for all of the things that it can do, but if all you're doing is launching streaming apps, $200 was already on the high end for that. $300 seems...a bit much.
Anything I'm missing here? The silver lining is that this product is almost certainly still in the "pay money then forget about it for a decade" tier, which is nice.
I'm also wondering if/how the "add up to four homepods" feature compares to "getting a soundbar". In the other thread for this someone noted that the HomePods only work with this box; so if you're running a game console that's no bueno. But apart from that, if $600 on an Apple TV + two HomePods mini delivers something comparable to a ~$500 soundbar, that's a decent value proposition.
The person in the other thread is incorrect, an Apple TV connected to HomePods can be configured to advertise HDMI Audio Return Channel so that anything your TV is displaying has its audio routed through it.
Having said that I eventually replaced my pair of HomePod Minis with a Sonos soundbar because I wanted something with a bit more oomph to it, although I'd maybe have considered getting a pair of the big HomePods and using the Minis as rear speakers had this been available at the time.
How is life in the Sonos ecosystem? I vaguely recall there being some controversy around them a few years back, and I'm generally distrustful of third party hardware companies attempting to write software.
It’s ok. Their app isn’t great, but the underlying technology is. Spotify can directly play to one of their speakers. Their local protocol is also well understood and you can do most things with it, so you can vibe code your own replacement app pretty easily. The problem is once you hit their cloud APIs the latency is way too high for something like a speaker.
Yeah, the hardware is great. I honestly couldn't tell you much about the app because I exclusively use the speaker via HDMI-ARC and AirPlay, both of which work really well.
HomeView, HomePod and AppleTV should be one device. A powerful home server + a bunch of low powered clients and receivers all over the home. No need for 8gb RAM in all of them..
Doesn't seem like it. Siri AI is not even available in all languages yet either. $429 CAD is crazy. You can get a whole mini PC and a Bluetooth remote for less and slap LibreElec on it even at today's crazy prices. And it'll be a better remote too.
$429 CAD is crazy for sure but there's a running joke in my group chats of me sending a link to an Apple TV every time someone posts about their Kodi box breaking. It's not set and forget like an Apple TV at all...
300$ yikes. I'm amazed. And this thing can't even do 120 fps. :-(
Did the old one also not have Dolby vision/HDR10/Atmos? What is this cinematic stuff? What are we missing here?
Why would I need CPU/GPU performance on an Apple TV? I'm genuinely confused. Is it to play video games? If I want to play video games, I can pay a bit more and get a used playstation I suppose. I genuinely don't understand this product anymore.
I've used Steam Link to play games from my Steam library on the Apple TV using a video game controller and it worked surprisingly well. You still might want the Playstation (or Switch or XBox). Just depends on what games you want to play.
Moonlight works really well on the ATV4K too. I stream 4K@60FPS with HDR and surround sound from my PC using the Apollo fork of Sunshine (creates a virtual display since I normally game at 1440p on my attached monitor).
I don't see the appeal unless you're already balls deep into the subscription ecosystem. $300 minipc will get you much further than this thing will. There used to be an argument at $130, but now I just don't see a reason on why one would want to be subject to paying so much across so many services that don't even benefit the original creators most of the time. There's some exceptions where netflix, etc bankrolls entire shows, but they've plumetted in quality and I haven't watched one since two years ago.
I have an AppleTV because I never want to plug my TV into the internet. I just need a box that can stream videos. Does it need to have AI? No. It really doesn’t. I wish Apple just dropped all this junk and figured out what they want that TV app to do.
> I have an AppleTV because I never want to plug my TV into the internet. I just need a box that can stream videos.
One annoyance is that the Netflix app stopped being able/allowed to stream to any device that has some kind of remote (or where you can enter a username/password in some way):
Dont want to plug your TV in to the internet but happy to plug in an Apple TV?
I still never understand people who are dead against giving all their personal info and data to one company but are fine with giving it to another.
Yes this is an apple thread on HN and so I am expecting to be downvoted into oblivion by the Apple fans who believe Apple is better than any other company with data and security, when they have been proved multiple times to be just as bad.
I got an AppleTV because the modal experience of using webOS on my TV was having my toddler scream "WATCH TRASH TRUCK" while watching a loading spinner. Garbage computer experience. I never disconnected it from the network though. I was watching the NBA Playoffs on broadcast (so no internet involved in the content delivery) and I got an overlay in webOS system fonts suggesting I order delivery food through my TV. I saw it again when watching the World Cup through the Peacock app on the Apple TV.
So I watch like a total of 2 hours of sports in Summer 2026 and my kid gets an hour of TV while he eats lunch and webOS works its hardest to make those both suck ass, and the Apple TV Just WorksTM and we can put our weekly Facetime with Grandma and Grandpa on there. Absolute no brainer better experience.
Different companies have different track records and incentives with regard to privacy. There may be companies more trustworthy than Apple, but there aren't many companies less worthy than most TV manufacturers.
Right but if you are streaming then you are happy to give all your personal info and viewing habit data to Netflix, Disney, Amazon etc to build ad profiles on you, as well as Apple who own the hardware and are feeding telemetry data into your ad profile on their system.
But for some reason Sony or Samsung doing the same on your TV is too far?
> But for some reason Sony or Samsung doing the same on your TV is too far?
The content streamers get your viewing habits by virtue of you viewing their content (like Youtube, or any web site, getting information on what you're looking at by simply logging HTTP GET requests).
There is no reason why television OEMs need to do screen captures and send them to the mothership.
> as well as Apple who own the hardware and are feeding telemetry data into your ad profile on their system.
Are they, though? Is Apple snooping into the Netflix app’s data to track what you’re watching and phone home with that info? Are there studies showing that happening? Are they selling that data to third parties like the TV manufacturers are?
You seem to be missing a major point. You have signed up to streaming services and they are 100% selling your data and viewing habits to 3rd parties to build ad and tracking profiles. How come you are happy for Disney and Netflix to do this but not Samsung or Sony?
As far is Apple is concerned, they have been caught lying about this many times before. I jujst cant get my head around why any person can trust a billion dollar corporation to be 'good'.
I would invite you to read all the investigations that have been done on how much various smart TVs surveil households and exfiltrate all kinds of personal data.
Then find investigations where Apple TVs are proven to do the same, of which there are none.
You’re chalking this up to fanboyism but this is just people making informed choices. In today’s streaming era “just don’t connect anything to the internet” isn’t possible.
A practically e-waste mini-PC running an ordinary Linux distro paired with an airmouse remote is a much better TV box. You don't need streaming apps when you are free to use a Web browser, something Apple won't allow for obvious reasons. No surveillance, no crapware, no ads. It can even double as a console for GOG/Steam.
Im really not chalking this up to Fanboyism. The same can be said for anyone using a streaming device to avoid plugging their TV into the internet, be it Nvidia or google etc.
I am well aware of the recent LG controversy. However In my opinion if you are happy to sign up to Netflix and Disney+ and use a streaming box to give them all your personal data and viewing habits to allow tracking and ad profiles then its pretty hypocritical to target a single company in the chain and call them out for it.
You really don’t think there’s a difference between a company collecting data about the usage of their own video library and another company tracking audio with microphones, sniffing local network devices, monitoring all video output and selling all of the above to third parties?
I really don't think it's fair to chalk this up to fanboyism. It's really hard to argue that a majority of the platforms natively available on smart TVs are pretty bad, and that they have made a habit of using software updates to cram in more ads. I used a TCL roku TV 10 years and recommended them to everyone looking for a decent budget TV with a good minimal interface. That same exact TV is still used on occasion; the interface has gotten awful and interactions are sluggish.
Many platforms have gone the same way: Google TV boxes are known to be broadly awful at this point, my samsung TV's built-in apps got progressively less responsive with more ads on my homescreen over the last few years. I haven't experienced it but I hear complaints about the performance and intrusiveness of LG TVs now as well.
After cycling through my options, the Apple TV is the only one that doesn't exhibit the same behavior: It is responsive, has a good interface that looks nice, has a very nice minimal remote, and it works the same today as it did yesterday (and basically as it did 2 years ago). I'm not trying to claim allegiance to any brand, it just seems that somehow Apple is the only one not participating in enshittification, at least not to the same degree. If that changes the Apple TV will be out the door and I'll probably need to roll my own out of some sort of mini PC on an open-source platform.
And as one last note, for the time being Apple still has some credibility in terms of privacy. They have revenue streams that work for them without completely ruining their product, and it's my hope they continue with that because as far as I can tell they are the only ones left among the big players.
Relax. Apple's AI is basically GPT-2 duct-taped to a voice model, at best. Even if they tried to collect your data, it couldn't do it reliably. They're so incompetent on this that their AI isn't actually worrying.
Gemini is basically GPT-2 duc... Ok, ok leaving the snark aside, I know that but the local model probably delegates to remote when it decides it needs that and the local model is not good.
Also, the tooling they provided to the model is not good either. The 3rd party AI apps by OpenAI or Anthropic can do much more than the system assistant.
There is a weird chain of wondering what is going to answer my response with Siri AI considering it could be Old Siri, New Siri (local), New Siri (PCC), or ChatGPT...
I’d argue Apple TVs were one of the few cost subsidized items they sell, as when people could get 15$ Fire TV sticks anywhere they had to at least look competitive. Now that costs have gone up significantly and it’s basically an iPhone 17 without a screen it’s tough to keep the costs down.
an iPhone 17 without a screen, with half the storage, without a battery, without FaceID, without cameras, without cellular modem, without Taptic Engine, without…
The only part that “deserves” a price increase is the storage starting at 128GB now instead of 32GB, but it’s completely out of touch to get rid of the base model when nobody has any use for all that storage (even the 32GB) for what is basically a streaming box.
Hell, even their new HomeView device, which does have a screen and FaceID, starts at same price.
I was interested in it, since I do need a certain amount of oomph out of the SoC to watch all of my videos on my Apple TV 4K (libass in case someone asks), but man that sticker shock is harsh. I don't think I can stomach it.
I own 4 ATVs, the OG 1080p one, then a 1st, 2nd and 3rd gen. I plan on replacing the oldest of those two with 2 4th gen ATVs. AppleTV is just so much better than any other option out there and I especially like the AV1 hardware decoding here. So, yes, totally worth it.
anyone else been trying the new Siri AI intelligence on their phone and been underwhelmed? It's really slow, no longer gets adding grocery items to the right lists, etc. Did I mention how slow it is to inject an LLM turn on everything? Hopefully they'll fix all that by the time it's out of beta... But it's so rough to me that it's really ruined the experience of the device. Apples voice-to-text still isn't good compared the what I used to have on my Android phone pre-2024, when I switched to Apple ecosystem....
Nowadays with ~100 bucks you can an amd64 box and a CEC adapter, which allows to use the default remote of your tv. Then you can install on it whatever you want, customize it however you prefer and have all the privacy you decide. No lock-in. As much AI as you like, zero is a valid option.
It's genuinely one of the few apple products I've had interest in but it seems like I'm in a minority. Maybe people just haven't bought a new TV recently.
TVs are getting worse not better. Except for the display. Which should be the only real concern. But the built in software is just going down hill universally.
Current rumor is Apple (Beats) may be releasing a controller soon, and with that I’d assume that + price they are testing the waters with bringing AAA to the Apple TV.
If they put Steam on it with your whole existing library we'd be talking.
"We have tomb raider and death stranding 2 for $69.99" is not an interesting proposition except for Apple fanboy dads who hope that will placate their gamer child (it won't).
I’m not actually complaining but I’m seeing an increasing number of family oriented gaming consoles. They seem like something eared towards gamer parents who don’t wan their kids going all in on a console yet.
This positions them to compete directly against those
I actually waited for it. My years old Apple TV died some time ago so I had a chance to use the Android TV that comes with the TV itself. And it's so terrible. I don't understand why even YouTube app is much better on Apple TV than the Android TV one
yea, this is a non-starter for me, and that is not even considering the price bump which is too much. I do not want ANY internet connected devices in my machine with far field microphones just listening. There needs to be a hardware switch disabling them. I would settle for software settings that completely disables them though as I almost trust Apple. almost... I likely will just look for yesterdays version.
I really hope this time its different and siri doesn't suck ... but then at the end of the day when i am watching tv I don't really need a llm to assist me.
As far as I can tell its a hardware bump and some supercharging price bump.
"Turn on/off subtitles" is the primary use case for me. "Rewind a minute" is a good one as well. If it got more seamless at something like "watch Community on Peacock" that'd be on the list as well.
$299, ouch. And a heavy emphasis on voice capabilities, which my kids love but I generally hate. I don't want to have a conversation with my media.
I have had many Apple TV generations and want to love it, but I really don't get where Apple is trying to go with it. The whole "Apple TV" app really confused the hell out of me, and I wonder if this is continuing that trend. Or maybe it won't matter because this is just ridiculously expensive.
Is there a better experience out there? There are lots of cheaper sticks, but even high end TVs have crappy app launchers, the apps are usually janky, and the vendors are spying on your usage.
Has anyone used Siri AI? I upgraded to iOS 27, which is fine I guess. Tried a couple siri prompts and decided it is horseshit as it always has been. Never touched it again.
Guys maybe just let others register themselves as system agents since you are obviously not capable of creating anything related to AI. Provide the absolutely minimum effort Siri as default and be done with it.
It's comparable to the free-tier AIs from the other providers but with a decent index of your personal data in a relatively secure and private fashion. It's not completely useless is the nicest thing I can say at this time. I hope it will become good.
I was in the car the other day and asked about details of a meeting I was driving to. It wasn’t a meeting in my calendar, just some emails that mentioned it. The response was genuinely good.
Then I asked it about the status of some packages that were already being tracked in wallet and it was a dumpster fire.
You're asking the company which is famously working their hardest to lock in their users completely to their services and platforms, to "just let others"? Maybe understand what ecosystem you buy into, and agree with their approach they've had for decades now, or let the ones who like that stuff continue to enjoy it. Seems kind of self-defeatists to ask them to change ways now...
I have a pre-4K Apple TV, and I have the latest version of Apple TV 4K. I cannot at all tell the difference between the two at all. I think one even has 32 GB and I've never run out of space. That's about 10 years of "advancement" in Apple TV where it doesn't amount to anything.
And yet I have 4 of them in total because they are much better than the built in apps and I don't trust the TVs to connect them to the internet. It's basically CarPlay for my TV but does an excellent job because of the consistent interface and good apps.
When compared to $150 (occasionally as cheap as $99 for the high end model) that you could have paid 3 months ago for the previous generation, $300 seems nuts. I put off buying last gen because this gen was perpetually “coming soon”, and now I’m priced out, even out of last gen!
Apple trying so hard to make Siri relevant. I don’t think it’s worth a $299 premium (up $170 from previous gen).
I would skip this generation of Apple TV and buy previous generation on a third party marketplace when people inevitably offload the current generation.
> Siri AI is available in beta in tvOS 27.2 and requires the owner of the home in the Home app to have an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad running the latest software version and have Siri AI turned on and set to a supported language.
> Certain Apple Intelligence features that rely on server-side models are subject to daily usage limits. Expanded access to such features will be available for a fee in the future.
Not only will the TV not be "supercharged by Siri AI" on its own, as it requires some other device to actually run Siri AI (?!), you also might end up relying on it and suddenly be blocked from using it if you use it too much (?!?!). But fear not, they'll ask you to pay up, to continue to use this feature they advertise as the main feature of this new device.
I love this product: it's the one box I can (reasonably) trust to not be mining my viewing habits for data. I have two older ones and was looking to get something that supported 4K but waited for this to come out.
$300 might be a decent price if you use it for all of the things that it can do, but if all you're doing is launching streaming apps, $200 was already on the high end for that. $300 seems...a bit much.
Anything I'm missing here? The silver lining is that this product is almost certainly still in the "pay money then forget about it for a decade" tier, which is nice.
I'm also wondering if/how the "add up to four homepods" feature compares to "getting a soundbar". In the other thread for this someone noted that the HomePods only work with this box; so if you're running a game console that's no bueno. But apart from that, if $600 on an Apple TV + two HomePods mini delivers something comparable to a ~$500 soundbar, that's a decent value proposition.
Having said that I eventually replaced my pair of HomePod Minis with a Sonos soundbar because I wanted something with a bit more oomph to it, although I'd maybe have considered getting a pair of the big HomePods and using the Minis as rear speakers had this been available at the time.
How is life in the Sonos ecosystem? I vaguely recall there being some controversy around them a few years back, and I'm generally distrustful of third party hardware companies attempting to write software.
Did the old one also not have Dolby vision/HDR10/Atmos? What is this cinematic stuff? What are we missing here?
Why would I need CPU/GPU performance on an Apple TV? I'm genuinely confused. Is it to play video games? If I want to play video games, I can pay a bit more and get a used playstation I suppose. I genuinely don't understand this product anymore.
One annoyance is that the Netflix app stopped being able/allowed to stream to any device that has some kind of remote (or where you can enter a username/password in some way):
* https://lifehacker.com/tech/netflix-is-killing-casting-from-...
* https://help.netflix.com/en/node/100131
It'd be nice to be able to plug in an AppleTV and use it 'just' as a dumb streaming pipe, but at least for Netflix you have to use the app on it.
> Using AirPlay with iPhone and iPad is not supported with Netflix.
* https://help.netflix.com/en/node/49
I still never understand people who are dead against giving all their personal info and data to one company but are fine with giving it to another.
Yes this is an apple thread on HN and so I am expecting to be downvoted into oblivion by the Apple fans who believe Apple is better than any other company with data and security, when they have been proved multiple times to be just as bad.
So I watch like a total of 2 hours of sports in Summer 2026 and my kid gets an hour of TV while he eats lunch and webOS works its hardest to make those both suck ass, and the Apple TV Just WorksTM and we can put our weekly Facetime with Grandma and Grandpa on there. Absolute no brainer better experience.
For privacy specifically, I'll refer you to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...
But for some reason Sony or Samsung doing the same on your TV is too far?
The content streamers get your viewing habits by virtue of you viewing their content (like Youtube, or any web site, getting information on what you're looking at by simply logging HTTP GET requests).
There is no reason why television OEMs need to do screen captures and send them to the mothership.
Are they, though? Is Apple snooping into the Netflix app’s data to track what you’re watching and phone home with that info? Are there studies showing that happening? Are they selling that data to third parties like the TV manufacturers are?
As far is Apple is concerned, they have been caught lying about this many times before. I jujst cant get my head around why any person can trust a billion dollar corporation to be 'good'.
Here have a few links:
https://www.bgr.com/2107512/how-to-prevent-apple-tv-spying-a...
https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-whe...
https://linustechtips.com/topic/1467686-apple-caught-ignorin...
https://medium.com/@michaelswengel/yes-your-mac-is-watching-...
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/11/12/apple-getting-sue...
Then find investigations where Apple TVs are proven to do the same, of which there are none.
You’re chalking this up to fanboyism but this is just people making informed choices. In today’s streaming era “just don’t connect anything to the internet” isn’t possible.
Instead, Apple sends that straight to the NSA.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
> just don’t connect anything to the internet
A practically e-waste mini-PC running an ordinary Linux distro paired with an airmouse remote is a much better TV box. You don't need streaming apps when you are free to use a Web browser, something Apple won't allow for obvious reasons. No surveillance, no crapware, no ads. It can even double as a console for GOG/Steam.
I am well aware of the recent LG controversy. However In my opinion if you are happy to sign up to Netflix and Disney+ and use a streaming box to give them all your personal data and viewing habits to allow tracking and ad profiles then its pretty hypocritical to target a single company in the chain and call them out for it.
Many platforms have gone the same way: Google TV boxes are known to be broadly awful at this point, my samsung TV's built-in apps got progressively less responsive with more ads on my homescreen over the last few years. I haven't experienced it but I hear complaints about the performance and intrusiveness of LG TVs now as well.
After cycling through my options, the Apple TV is the only one that doesn't exhibit the same behavior: It is responsive, has a good interface that looks nice, has a very nice minimal remote, and it works the same today as it did yesterday (and basically as it did 2 years ago). I'm not trying to claim allegiance to any brand, it just seems that somehow Apple is the only one not participating in enshittification, at least not to the same degree. If that changes the Apple TV will be out the door and I'll probably need to roll my own out of some sort of mini PC on an open-source platform.
And as one last note, for the time being Apple still has some credibility in terms of privacy. They have revenue streams that work for them without completely ruining their product, and it's my hope they continue with that because as far as I can tell they are the only ones left among the big players.
Also, the tooling they provided to the model is not good either. The 3rd party AI apps by OpenAI or Anthropic can do much more than the system assistant.
The only part that “deserves” a price increase is the storage starting at 128GB now instead of 32GB, but it’s completely out of touch to get rid of the base model when nobody has any use for all that storage (even the 32GB) for what is basically a streaming box.
Hell, even their new HomeView device, which does have a screen and FaceID, starts at same price.
Personally I didn't expect a new generation to be a full $100 more though...
Nowadays with ~100 bucks you can an amd64 box and a CEC adapter, which allows to use the default remote of your tv. Then you can install on it whatever you want, customize it however you prefer and have all the privacy you decide. No lock-in. As much AI as you like, zero is a valid option.
A different company could turn this hardware into a pretty serious gaming machine or a zero config NAS or something but Apple is not that company.
They couldn't think of any compelling Siri AI use cases to put in the advertising and neither can I.
"We have tomb raider and death stranding 2 for $69.99" is not an interesting proposition except for Apple fanboy dads who hope that will placate their gamer child (it won't).
That said, Apple has been attempting for years to make Apple Arcade a hit.
* 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 is audio passthrough, but DD 5.1 is _fine_.
Don't worry, the next tvOS update may fix that.
wait, the new 4K has passthrough finally? I did not see it mentioned.
New Apple TV seems to make sense if you're installing a lot of new sound equipment, and love Siri.
If neither of those are true, not sure what's on offer.
This positions them to compete directly against those
It doesn't even look like this supports 120hz, which would've been nice since my OLED TV does.
But I might be in the minority of people who don’t talk much to their TV.
As far as I can tell its a hardware bump and some supercharging price bump.
I have had many Apple TV generations and want to love it, but I really don't get where Apple is trying to go with it. The whole "Apple TV" app really confused the hell out of me, and I wonder if this is continuing that trend. Or maybe it won't matter because this is just ridiculously expensive.
It’s expensive, but is there a better option?
Guys maybe just let others register themselves as system agents since you are obviously not capable of creating anything related to AI. Provide the absolutely minimum effort Siri as default and be done with it.
I am so done.
Then I asked it about the status of some packages that were already being tracked in wallet and it was a dumpster fire.
You're asking the company which is famously working their hardest to lock in their users completely to their services and platforms, to "just let others"? Maybe understand what ecosystem you buy into, and agree with their approach they've had for decades now, or let the ones who like that stuff continue to enjoy it. Seems kind of self-defeatists to ask them to change ways now...
And yet I have 4 of them in total because they are much better than the built in apps and I don't trust the TVs to connect them to the internet. It's basically CarPlay for my TV but does an excellent job because of the consistent interface and good apps.
I am in no hurry to get this latest version.
At least according to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_TV_(device)#Technical_sp...
I would skip this generation of Apple TV and buy previous generation on a third party marketplace when people inevitably offload the current generation.
> Certain Apple Intelligence features that rely on server-side models are subject to daily usage limits. Expanded access to such features will be available for a fee in the future.
Not only will the TV not be "supercharged by Siri AI" on its own, as it requires some other device to actually run Siri AI (?!), you also might end up relying on it and suddenly be blocked from using it if you use it too much (?!?!). But fear not, they'll ask you to pay up, to continue to use this feature they advertise as the main feature of this new device.
"Sure, I can call 911 for you"