Because people may not keep their router by their TV? Your idea is incredibly short sighted.
I don't think it's "incredibly" short-sighted at all. I and many others, I'm sure, have a home theater that includes an Apple TV and guess what? An Airport Extreme. I consider it part of my home entertainment center. A lot of homes are pre-wired with ethernet these days; some add it to existing homes. We may not be the majority, but thinking that people don't have a router by their TV is short-sighted if you ask me.
1. The name Apple TV makes less and less sense. With this hardware being less about TV and more central to the home a new device with a fresh name may be announced. One that makes sense.
2. Why is this device's Home automation necessary when I'm sure Home will be available in your pocket(iPhone), in you're computers(iPad,Macs) and your wrist(?Watch).
Home being available on your iPhone makes this feature completely unnecessary.
3. If Siri integration is really planned, expect this device to get expensive and have massive features added.
Mics, a speaker, large hard drive, A8/A9 chip, possibly a new remote, etc.
This would definitely take it out of the hobby stage.
If You are not at home, how do you control the home devices (called accessories) with your watch or iPhone ... what message does Siri tell the iPhone to send to whom?
Even if you could send a message to, say, the front door lock, would you want to send that in the clear? If not, who does the decryption?
What about all the devices in your home that use different tech to communicate -- does each member of your family's: Watch, Siri, iPhone, need to be knowledgeable of Hue, Nest, Zigbee, GE, Honeywell, El Gato ... to name a few.
What makes most sense is a Hub that understands all this tech and:
interfaces each accessory according to its (the accessory's) needs and capabilities
intermingle technologies, e.g. "Downstairs lights and windows and temperature"
provides a common succinct method defining, grouping, monitoring and controlling these
whether you are there or not
... Um ... Apple calls this discipline HomeKit. To make it work a Hub is integral.
What makes most sense is a Hub that understands all this tech and:
interfaces each accessory according to its (the accessory's) needs and capabilities
intermingle technologies, e.g. "Downstairs lights and windows and temperature"
provides a common succinct method defining, grouping, monitoring and controlling these
whether you are there or not
... Um ... Apple calls this discipline HomeKit. To make it work a Hub is integral.
I don't think the Apple TV is the right "Hub" for this duty. I totally agree with you on what this Hub needs to do and Apple TV ain't it. My ATV is hooked up to my home theater for entertainment and I want to keep it that way. If I need to set up this hub as the center of my "connected home", I want to be able to do it from my Mac or iPhone or iPad, not my TV. If anything, it would make more sense to assign hub duties to an Airport Extreme. Personally, I'd like Apple to make a new device that could be attached to a router and replace existing hubs required to control many devices from different manufacturers. For now, I'll trust that Apple is going to find a simple way to do this.
What makes most sense is a Hub that understands all this tech and:
interfaces each accessory according to its (the accessory's) needs and capabilities
intermingle technologies, e.g. "Downstairs lights and windows and temperature"
provides a common succinct method defining, grouping, monitoring and controlling these
whether you are there or not
... Um ... Apple calls this discipline HomeKit. To make it work a Hub is integral.
I don't think the Apple TV is the right "Hub" for this duty. I totally agree with you on what this Hub needs to do and Apple TV ain't it. My ATV is hooked up to my home theater for entertainment and I want to keep it that way. If I need to set up this hub as the center of my "connected home", I want to be able to do it from my Mac or iPhone or iPad, not my TV. If anything, it would make more sense to assign hub duties to an Airport Extreme. Personally, I'd like Apple to make a new device that could be attached to a router and replace existing hubs required to control many devices from different manufacturers. For now, I'll trust that Apple is going to find a simple way to do this.
The AppleTV, as we know it (version 3), can walk and chew gum at the same time. Like most here the [Family Room] AppleTV is hooked up to the home entertainment center ... and will continue to be. There is no reason the computer inside the AppleTV can't handle the requirements of a HomeKit Hub without interfering with your (or my) HEC.
You will control the AppleTV for HEC functions as you do now.
You will control the HomeKit Hub function of the AppleTV with Watch, Siri, iPhone ... no need to interfere with the AppleTV HEC function.
Though, when you layout/setup your HomeKit, you might want to use the large Screen attached to the Apple TV as a display ... or you could use any Mac, iPhone, iPad with a display,
Also, while watching content on your HEC -- you might like to see an alert if the estate main gates (or the front door) open unexpectedly.
Again, the AppleTV has more than enough hardware capability to do both these functions at once -- separate or intermingled ... You pick 'em!
When I was growing up, our Fifties-era home had something like this. Latching relays controlled the lights. From the kitchen and master bedroom, you could turn every light in the house on and off.
Neat? Not really. My dad wired it into our home but never used it. Neither did my mother. Occasionally, on rainy days my siblings or I would play with it.
That's why I have trouble finding much value in HomeKit. A bedtime, for instance, you want to do a walk around the house anyway. And turning on/off home systems remotely is fraught with about as much risk as benefit.
I could see some benefit in what a energy management firm I once worked for sold. A computer system monitored inside and outside temperatures and taking into account the temperature inertia of the building. Turned on and off heating and cooling on a schedule.
It was smart enough to calculate, based on inside and outside temperatures, just the right moment to turn on the heating or cooling for an office building for it to just the right temperature when workers arrived. And at the end of the day, it'd turn off the heating or cooling so it went into the uncomfortable range just after they left. Add in a knowledge of the weather, say a cold front moving it, and it would save money without adding complexity.
You can get normal switches that will turn your individual lights on and off, but that also have a wireless component, so when you go to bed to can check to make sure the lights are all off. The ones i have are also dimmable so you can set the default dim level. This also gives me the ability to auto turn on some of my lights on when I unlock the door and its past sunset or set up a schedule to turn a light on and off when you are away. I also have mine setup so if my nest protect goes off it turns a bunch of lights on.
also its great that i cant turn off my kids light when they fall asleep with out going into their room
That's why I have trouble finding much value in HomeKit. A bedtime, for instance, you want to do a walk around the house anyway. And turning on/off home systems remotely is fraught with about as much risk as benefit.
What about the value of "do[ing] a walk around the house" when you are away from home, 1,000 miles away?
There should be little, or no, risk with a hub, even if you are away from home ... You set defaults, e.g. all windows and doors locked until told different, randomly turn lights no/off to simulate someone at home, monitor doors, windows, security cameras for unscheduled activity ...
People are really underestimating the capabilities of HomeKit -- it is one of the most robust systems systems I've seen from Apple.
The biggest misnomer is calling it HomeKit ... it can easily be applied to a warehouse, restaurant, hospital, hotel/motel, SMB, Computer Stores ...
The AppleTV, as we know it (version 3), can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Yet it's limited to streaming 16-bit audio. Anything above 16-bit is down sampled. So much for the "computer inside the AppleTV. /s
But, you seem to be OK with that for your HEC (as am I) ... the HomeKit hub functionality detracts nothing from 3rd-generation AppleTV function.
I suspect the New AppleTV will have h.265 and and better audio (more RAM and Flash storage) -- likely, around $149.
In my case, I'll get a New AppleTV for the [shared] HEC in the family room -- and move the gen 3 AppleTV upstairs to to one of the bedrooms ... already have planned to do this.
But, you seem to be OK with that for your HEC (as am I)
Actually, I've NEVER EVER been OK with it. That's why I have a Mac mini as part of my HT. I play all my ripped CDs (aiff) using Audirvana Plus instead of iTunes. The mini is connected to a separate DAC via USB which is connected to my receiver. My music sounds much better.
First of all, Netflix somehow does it for 24mbps, and as I just said, i get 100mbps, which is not the highest available in my area. 250 is. I could stream 8k.
Also, you could easily put in 32gb (or 48 or 64) of onboard memory to store and not need to compress it. Btw, you know that h265 is twice as good as 264, right?
Think A LITTLE man
Yes, and they compress the crap out of it; so what's the point.
Most people don't get 100mps, not even close. Here its $57 for 25mbs and I'm in a 4.5M pop metro area.
The very fact most people don't have a 4K TV worth shit in the first place (Netflix doesn't even support most of them), or would sit way too far to make a difference for the size of TV they can afford, just compounds everything.
Finally, unless your can garantee you have no slow down between you and Netflix, I think even 4K at their rate is pushing it in many situations (unless you buffer quite a bit) Because net neutrality mean your god damn traffic shares the road with everyone.
BTW, you're incredible condescending for someone who is so far up his own ass.
In future Apple TV will evolve into much more than streaming device and it's name will change too. It will be home-living control and entertaining HUB.
1. The name Apple TV makes less and less sense. With this hardware being less about TV and more central to the home a new device with a fresh name may be announced. One that makes sense.
2. Why is this device's Home automation necessary when I'm sure Home will be available in your pocket(iPhone), in you're computers(iPad,Macs) and your wrist(?Watch).
Home being available on your iPhone makes this feature completely unnecessary.
3. If Siri integration is really planned, expect this device to get expensive and have massive features added.
Mics, a speaker, large hard drive, A8/A9 chip, possibly a new remote, etc.
This would definitely take it out of the hobby stage.
I think it makes more sense for the AirPort Extreme, express, and time capsule to be the hub(s) for homekit, or at least the gateways to outside access for controlling homekit accessories. Let the Apple TV be a content hub like its intended to be (streaming from Mac/iCloud/other, AirPlay, hopefully games soon). With as small and portable as the Apple TV is, I'm likely to take it to a friends house. What if I wanted to control my stuff at the house? The express/extreme/capsule are not likely to leave the home and are already gateways to/from the internet so in my mind this would be a better "hub" for home automation. Also, if you didn't have an express, extreme, capsule, home automation would still work as it does today, you just wouldn't have external access without buying one to put on the network. It would be even more awesome if iCloud was the "hub", so you would just attach the HA device to your account and no physical hub needed, but this maybe just a pipe dream.
All that to say, the Apple TV should/could play a part in home automation - it should be more of an interface than a hub, just as the iPhone is an interface and not a hub. It would be nice, for instance, for the Apple TV to send signal out to home automation devices such as lights - dim the lights or turn them off when a movie starts playing and turn them back on when stopped or paused.
I think it makes more sense for the AirPort Extreme, express, and time capsule to be the hub(s) for homekit, or at least the gateways to outside access for controlling homekit accessories. Let the Apple TV be a content hub like its intended to be (streaming from Mac/iCloud/other, AirPlay, hopefully games soon). With as small and portable as the Apple TV is, I'm likely to take it to a friends house. What if I wanted to control my stuff at the house? The express/extreme/capsule are not likely to leave the home and are already gateways to/from the internet so in my mind this would be a better "hub" for home automation.
What happens if I have a non-Apple router / WiFi ?
What happens if I have a non-Apple router / WiFi ?
See my edit.
Also, if you didn't have an express, extreme, capsule, home automation would still work as it does today, you just wouldn't have external access without buying one to put on the network.
Also, if you didn't have an express, extreme, capsule, home automation would still work as it does today, you just wouldn't have external access without buying one to put on the network.
Well, with it being part of Apple TV then I don't need to buy an express, extreme capsule, etc.
6 one 1/2 doze of the other probably.
(I do actually use Airport Extreme now but I know lots of people who don't.)
Well, with it being part of Apple TV then I don't need to buy an express, extreme capsule, etc.
6 one 1/2 doze of the other probably.
(I do actually use Airport Extreme now but I know lots of people who don't.)
Not everyone has an Apple TV either. I guess the ideal solution would be to associate homekit devices with your iCloud account - then there is no need to buy a hub, you just hook them up to your account. However, that would be become a pain for adding and removing HA devices as more are adopted into the home.
If there has to be a physical hub in the home, I still stand by apple putting it into their network hardware or in some third category outside of Apple TV or router.
The apple tv just doesn't make sense as a "hub" in my mind. In my opinion it would be like making a toaster and blender into one device, or even those combination DVD/VHS players to a degree.
Comments
Because people may not keep their router by their TV? Your idea is incredibly short sighted.
I don't think it's "incredibly" short-sighted at all. I and many others, I'm sure, have a home theater that includes an Apple TV and guess what? An Airport Extreme. I consider it part of my home entertainment center. A lot of homes are pre-wired with ethernet these days; some add it to existing homes. We may not be the majority, but thinking that people don't have a router by their TV is short-sighted if you ask me.
If You are not at home, how do you control the home devices (called accessories) with your watch or iPhone ... what message does Siri tell the iPhone to send to whom?
Even if you could send a message to, say, the front door lock, would you want to send that in the clear? If not, who does the decryption?
What about all the devices in your home that use different tech to communicate -- does each member of your family's: Watch, Siri, iPhone, need to be knowledgeable of Hue, Nest, Zigbee, GE, Honeywell, El Gato ... to name a few.
What makes most sense is a Hub that understands all this tech and:
... Um ... Apple calls this discipline HomeKit. To make it work a Hub is integral.
What makes most sense is a Hub that understands all this tech and:
... Um ... Apple calls this discipline HomeKit. To make it work a Hub is integral.
I don't think the Apple TV is the right "Hub" for this duty. I totally agree with you on what this Hub needs to do and Apple TV ain't it. My ATV is hooked up to my home theater for entertainment and I want to keep it that way. If I need to set up this hub as the center of my "connected home", I want to be able to do it from my Mac or iPhone or iPad, not my TV. If anything, it would make more sense to assign hub duties to an Airport Extreme. Personally, I'd like Apple to make a new device that could be attached to a router and replace existing hubs required to control many devices from different manufacturers. For now, I'll trust that Apple is going to find a simple way to do this.
The AppleTV, as we know it (version 3), can walk and chew gum at the same time. Like most here the [Family Room] AppleTV is hooked up to the home entertainment center ... and will continue to be. There is no reason the computer inside the AppleTV can't handle the requirements of a HomeKit Hub without interfering with your (or my) HEC.
You will control the AppleTV for HEC functions as you do now.
You will control the HomeKit Hub function of the AppleTV with Watch, Siri, iPhone ... no need to interfere with the AppleTV HEC function.
Though, when you layout/setup your HomeKit, you might want to use the large Screen attached to the Apple TV as a display ... or you could use any Mac, iPhone, iPad with a display,
Also, while watching content on your HEC -- you might like to see an alert if the estate main gates (or the front door) open unexpectedly.
Again, the AppleTV has more than enough hardware capability to do both these functions at once -- separate or intermingled ... You pick 'em!
When I was growing up, our Fifties-era home had something like this. Latching relays controlled the lights. From the kitchen and master bedroom, you could turn every light in the house on and off.
Neat? Not really. My dad wired it into our home but never used it. Neither did my mother. Occasionally, on rainy days my siblings or I would play with it.
That's why I have trouble finding much value in HomeKit. A bedtime, for instance, you want to do a walk around the house anyway. And turning on/off home systems remotely is fraught with about as much risk as benefit.
I could see some benefit in what a energy management firm I once worked for sold. A computer system monitored inside and outside temperatures and taking into account the temperature inertia of the building. Turned on and off heating and cooling on a schedule.
It was smart enough to calculate, based on inside and outside temperatures, just the right moment to turn on the heating or cooling for an office building for it to just the right temperature when workers arrived. And at the end of the day, it'd turn off the heating or cooling so it went into the uncomfortable range just after they left. Add in a knowledge of the weather, say a cold front moving it, and it would save money without adding complexity.
You can get normal switches that will turn your individual lights on and off, but that also have a wireless component, so when you go to bed to can check to make sure the lights are all off. The ones i have are also dimmable so you can set the default dim level. This also gives me the ability to auto turn on some of my lights on when I unlock the door and its past sunset or set up a schedule to turn a light on and off when you are away. I also have mine setup so if my nest protect goes off it turns a bunch of lights on.
also its great that i cant turn off my kids light when they fall asleep with out going into their room
What about the value of "do[ing] a walk around the house" when you are away from home, 1,000 miles away?
There should be little, or no, risk with a hub, even if you are away from home ... You set defaults, e.g. all windows and doors locked until told different, randomly turn lights no/off to simulate someone at home, monitor doors, windows, security cameras for unscheduled activity ...
People are really underestimating the capabilities of HomeKit -- it is one of the most robust systems systems I've seen from Apple.
The biggest misnomer is calling it HomeKit ... it can easily be applied to a warehouse, restaurant, hospital, hotel/motel, SMB, Computer Stores ...
The AppleTV, as we know it (version 3), can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Yet it's limited to streaming 16-bit audio. Anything above 16-bit is down sampled. So much for the "computer inside the AppleTV. /s
But, you seem to be OK with that for your HEC (as am I) ... the HomeKit hub functionality detracts nothing from 3rd-generation AppleTV function.
I suspect the New AppleTV will have h.265 and and better audio (more RAM and Flash storage) -- likely, around $149.
In my case, I'll get a New AppleTV for the [shared] HEC in the family room -- and move the gen 3 AppleTV upstairs to to one of the bedrooms ... already have planned to do this.
But, you seem to be OK with that for your HEC (as am I)
Actually, I've NEVER EVER been OK with it. That's why I have a Mac mini as part of my HT. I play all my ripped CDs (aiff) using Audirvana Plus instead of iTunes. The mini is connected to a separate DAC via USB which is connected to my receiver. My music sounds much better.
First of all, Netflix somehow does it for 24mbps, and as I just said, i get 100mbps, which is not the highest available in my area. 250 is. I could stream 8k.
Also, you could easily put in 32gb (or 48 or 64) of onboard memory to store and not need to compress it. Btw, you know that h265 is twice as good as 264, right?
Think A LITTLE man
Yes, and they compress the crap out of it; so what's the point.
Most people don't get 100mps, not even close. Here its $57 for 25mbs and I'm in a 4.5M pop metro area.
The very fact most people don't have a 4K TV worth shit in the first place (Netflix doesn't even support most of them), or would sit way too far to make a difference for the size of TV they can afford, just compounds everything.
Finally, unless your can garantee you have no slow down between you and Netflix, I think even 4K at their rate is pushing it in many situations (unless you buffer quite a bit) Because net neutrality mean your god damn traffic shares the road with everyone.
BTW, you're incredible condescending for someone who is so far up his own ass.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204893
In future Apple TV will evolve into much more than streaming device and it's name will change too. It will be home-living control and entertaining HUB.
I think it makes more sense for the AirPort Extreme, express, and time capsule to be the hub(s) for homekit, or at least the gateways to outside access for controlling homekit accessories. Let the Apple TV be a content hub like its intended to be (streaming from Mac/iCloud/other, AirPlay, hopefully games soon). With as small and portable as the Apple TV is, I'm likely to take it to a friends house. What if I wanted to control my stuff at the house? The express/extreme/capsule are not likely to leave the home and are already gateways to/from the internet so in my mind this would be a better "hub" for home automation. Also, if you didn't have an express, extreme, capsule, home automation would still work as it does today, you just wouldn't have external access without buying one to put on the network. It would be even more awesome if iCloud was the "hub", so you would just attach the HA device to your account and no physical hub needed, but this maybe just a pipe dream.
All that to say, the Apple TV should/could play a part in home automation - it should be more of an interface than a hub, just as the iPhone is an interface and not a hub. It would be nice, for instance, for the Apple TV to send signal out to home automation devices such as lights - dim the lights or turn them off when a movie starts playing and turn them back on when stopped or paused.
I think it makes more sense for the AirPort Extreme, express, and time capsule to be the hub(s) for homekit, or at least the gateways to outside access for controlling homekit accessories. Let the Apple TV be a content hub like its intended to be (streaming from Mac/iCloud/other, AirPlay, hopefully games soon). With as small and portable as the Apple TV is, I'm likely to take it to a friends house. What if I wanted to control my stuff at the house? The express/extreme/capsule are not likely to leave the home and are already gateways to/from the internet so in my mind this would be a better "hub" for home automation.
What happens if I have a non-Apple router / WiFi ?
See my edit.
See my edit.
Well, with it being part of Apple TV then I don't need to buy an express, extreme capsule, etc.
6 one 1/2 doze of the other probably.
(I do actually use Airport Extreme now but I know lots of people who don't.)
Not everyone has an Apple TV either. I guess the ideal solution would be to associate homekit devices with your iCloud account - then there is no need to buy a hub, you just hook them up to your account. However, that would be become a pain for adding and removing HA devices as more are adopted into the home.
The apple tv just doesn't make sense as a "hub" in my mind. In my opinion it would be like making a toaster and blender into one device, or even those combination DVD/VHS players to a degree.