Apple exterminates USB-C troubleshooting port on Apple TV 4K, adds Gigabit Ethernet

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 38
    mac_128mac_128 Posts: 3,454member
    I'm surprised they didn't leave the USB port and open it for access to add a webcam w/mic and do FaceTime from TV, or other AR uses. Maybe not a big market right now, but certainly a capability that could drive further platform adoption. They could easily integrate it with tvOS games for social features, too. Seems like a missed opportunity.
    I'm not that surprised. When Apple releases support for that, they'll release a new Apple TV you'll need to buy. That's not cynicism, that's just their M.O.

    However, I am surprised that they didn't implement HDMI over USB-C. That way they get to keep the port, and move consumers to a new standard, while unifying their entire platform.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 22 of 38
    mac_128mac_128 Posts: 3,454member

    xoox said:
    The tech specification states it is simultaneous dual band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 11ac WiFi. Simultaneous means it has 2 WiFi radios inside.

    If this is only ever a client device in a home network, it would not need to be simultaneous dual band, because the Apple TV is associated on only one network which is either 2.4GHz or 5GHz band (one or the other, not both simultaneously). 

    So why have a second WiFi radio inside? It does not make sense.

    However, if the second WiFi radio could be used as a WiFi access point, then things get more interesting. It has now a Gigabit ethernet. I think this Apple TV might have capacity to be a WiFi repeater or WiFi network extender. The Gigabit ethernet is more useful for this purpose, otherwise normal 100M ethernet would be enough.
    Could this have anything to do with AirPlay? From looking at the specs, it would appear that AirPlay is going to support 4K streaming from a device.
  • Reply 23 of 38
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Yay! When I was calling for Gb Ethernet I was shot down. I’m happy Apple now has it, even though all the negative posting about hat kept saying that you didn’t need it - even for 4K.
    You don't need it, but it's a welcome addition.
    Its nice when downloading movies in advance. And since it costs about the same, there’s no reason not to include it.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 24 of 38
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    melgross said:
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Yay! When I was calling for Gb Ethernet I was shot down. I’m happy Apple now has it, even though all the negative posting about hat kept saying that you didn’t need it - even for 4K.
    You don't need it, but it's a welcome addition.
    Its nice when downloading movies in advance. And since it costs about the same, there’s no reason not to include it.
    Wouldn't it be better when steaming v any action "in advance" since the more bandwidth effectively reduces queuing time, assuming that bandwidth is the bottleneck?
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 25 of 38
    Ayan_KarAyan_Kar Posts: 2unconfirmed, member
    mike1 said:
    Was kind of hoping they'd add back the optical connector or a second HDMI output to allow connection to the A/V receiver without having to use the receiver as a switcher for all sources. Oh well.
    I just run my TV’s optical output to my receiver and never have to switch anything on it. All HDMI inputs go to the tv and out over optical regardless of input. Why would you need a second HDMI output on the ATV?
    Doing that will relegate your sound to the limitations of your tv. If your tv supports only stereo, that's what you're going to get. To get full fidelity sound, always connect the source to your receiver directly. 
    fastasleep
  • Reply 26 of 38
    xoox said:
    The tech specification states it is simultaneous dual band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 11ac WiFi. Simultaneous means it has 2 WiFi radios inside.

    If this is only ever a client device in a home network, it would not need to be simultaneous dual band, because the Apple TV is associated on only one network which is either 2.4GHz or 5GHz band (one or the other, not both simultaneously). 

    So why have a second WiFi radio inside? It does not make sense.

    However, if the second WiFi radio could be used as a WiFi access point, then things get more interesting. It has now a Gigabit ethernet. I think this Apple TV might have capacity to be a WiFi repeater or WiFi network extender. The Gigabit ethernet is more useful for this purpose, otherwise normal 100M ethernet would be enough.
    Having a second WiFi radio does make sense. AirPlay devices can make a direct connection to the AppleTV even if the two devices are on different wireless network VLANS  (which can happen in corporate and education environments). The AppleTV broadcasts it’s availability via Bluetooth, then the direct connection is made from one device to the other, while regular network connectivity is maintained on the other radios on those two devices.
  • Reply 27 of 38
    xoox said:
    The tech specification states it is simultaneous dual band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 11ac WiFi. Simultaneous means it has 2 WiFi radios inside.

    If this is only ever a client device in a home network, it would not need to be simultaneous dual band, because the Apple TV is associated on only one network which is either 2.4GHz or 5GHz band (one or the other, not both simultaneously). 

    So why have a second WiFi radio inside? It does not make sense.

    However, if the second WiFi radio could be used as a WiFi access point, then things get more interesting. It has now a Gigabit ethernet. I think this Apple TV might have capacity to be a WiFi repeater or WiFi network extender. The Gigabit ethernet is more useful for this purpose, otherwise normal 100M ethernet would be enough.
    Having a second WiFi radio does make sense. AirPlay devices can make a direct connection to the AppleTV even if the two devices are on different wireless network VLANS  (which can happen in corporate and education environments). The AppleTV broadcasts it’s availability via Bluetooth, then the direct connection is made from one device to the other, while regular network connectivity is maintained on the other radios on those two devices.
    Direct connectivity for AirPlay is either via IP domain (Bonjour etc) or potentially with WiFi P2P (WiFi direct), which can be achieved using a single WiFi radio. MacBook etc have supported AirDrop for few years now and they only have a single WiFi radio. The hardware here is more capable than this having dual WiFi radios. It does mean the Apple TV can be effectively an AirPort device. I see no reason for this dual radio hardware spec for any current use cases.
  • Reply 28 of 38
    xoox said:
    The tech specification states it is simultaneous dual band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 11ac WiFi. Simultaneous means it has 2 WiFi radios inside.

    If this is only ever a client device in a home network, it would not need to be simultaneous dual band, because the Apple TV is associated on only one network which is either 2.4GHz or 5GHz band (one or the other, not both simultaneously). 

    So why have a second WiFi radio inside? It does not make sense.

    However, if the second WiFi radio could be used as a WiFi access point, then things get more interesting. It has now a Gigabit ethernet. I think this Apple TV might have capacity to be a WiFi repeater or WiFi network extender. The Gigabit ethernet is more useful for this purpose, otherwise normal 100M ethernet would be enough.
    The current gen Apple TV already works as a HomeKit Hub. One radio to connect to your router and the other for the internet of things. This is not new to the 4K Apple TV.
  • Reply 29 of 38
    Ayan_Kar said:
    mike1 said:
    Was kind of hoping they'd add back the optical connector or a second HDMI output to allow connection to the A/V receiver without having to use the receiver as a switcher for all sources. Oh well.
    I just run my TV’s optical output to my receiver and never have to switch anything on it. All HDMI inputs go to the tv and out over optical regardless of input. Why would you need a second HDMI output on the ATV?
    Doing that will relegate your sound to the limitations of your tv. If your tv supports only stereo, that's what you're going to get. To get full fidelity sound, always connect the source to your receiver directly. 
    Ah, that makes sense. I only have stereo so haven't dealt with that. So in the Op's case then, wouldn't that receiver work as an HDMI switch where you run your ATV HDMI to the receiver as well as other HDMI devices, then that works as a switch and you run the single HDMI output from the receiver to TV?
  • Reply 30 of 38
    calicali Posts: 3,494member
    I'm surprised they didn't leave the USB port and open it for access to add a webcam w/mic and do FaceTime from TV, or other AR uses. Maybe not a big market right now, but certainly a capability that could drive further platform adoption. They could easily integrate it with tvOS games for social features, too. Seems like a missed opportunity.
    I just posted about this in the other Apple TV article.

    It's coming. It seems Apple is allowing AR to build up on iPhone first and waiting until the front facing iPhone X AR cameras can be shrunken and advance a little.

    I'm almost certain they'll eventually integrate the top camera bar from iPhone X into the Siri remote or a tiny bar that sits under the TV.
    This will allow futuristic shopping, games, FaceTime. AR, apps, fun activities for kids (animojis) etc.
    with developers working hard on new AR apps they'll most likely debut the Apple TV with "thousands of AR apps on day one".
    this trumps any clunky 480p camera connected to your Apple TV. Apple won't allow that. 

    as seen by Eightzero's comment, Apple needs to innovate in this space to keep their little box relevant in a Smart TV era.
    edited September 2017
  • Reply 31 of 38
    Gigabit ethernet is long overdue - should have been there years ago. Probably necessary for decent 4k streaming.
    williamlondon
  • Reply 32 of 38
    Ayan_Kar said:
    mike1 said:
    Was kind of hoping they'd add back the optical connector or a second HDMI output to allow connection to the A/V receiver without having to use the receiver as a switcher for all sources. Oh well.
    I just run my TV’s optical output to my receiver and never have to switch anything on it. All HDMI inputs go to the tv and out over optical regardless of input. Why would you need a second HDMI output on the ATV?
    Doing that will relegate your sound to the limitations of your tv. If your tv supports only stereo, that's what you're going to get. To get full fidelity sound, always connect the source to your receiver directly. 
    I have exactly that issue. Whatever audio format I feed into my (Samsung) TV, it will only export stereo. The manual vaguely implies some DRM issue but I have never understood why the audio out can't just be a pass-through, even though the TV itself only uses stereo.

    This isn't a problem with my previous-generation ATV as it has the optical-out but it is a disincentive to upgrading.
  • Reply 33 of 38
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Yay! When I was calling for Gb Ethernet I was shot down. I’m happy Apple now has it, even though all the negative posting about hat kept saying that you didn’t need it - even for 4K.
    You don't need it, but it's a welcome addition.
    Its nice when downloading movies in advance. And since it costs about the same, there’s no reason not to include it.
    Wouldn't it be better when steaming v any action "in advance" since the more bandwidth effectively reduces queuing time, assuming that bandwidth is the bottleneck?
    Well, yes. That’s why I’ve been wanting it, and why I was disappointed when I bought the 4, and it still had 100Mbs, which is used these days, pretty much only on cheap Ethernet connected printers.

    i had 150Mbs fios, which was a lot faster. I moved to 1Gbs fios over a year and a half ago. Having a set box with one tenth that speed just seems ridiculous. But people here were flaming me for wanting more. Well, if Apple didn’t support it, it wasn’t needed, right?
    wozwoz
  • Reply 34 of 38
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    melgross said:
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Yay! When I was calling for Gb Ethernet I was shot down. I’m happy Apple now has it, even though all the negative posting about hat kept saying that you didn’t need it - even for 4K.
    You don't need it, but it's a welcome addition.
    Its nice when downloading movies in advance. And since it costs about the same, there’s no reason not to include it.
    Wouldn't it be better when steaming v any action "in advance" since the more bandwidth effectively reduces queuing time, assuming that bandwidth is the bottleneck?
    Well, yes. That’s why I’ve been wanting it, and why I was disappointed when I bought the 4, and it still had 100Mbs, which is used these days, pretty much only on cheap Ethernet connected printers.

    i had 150Mbs fios, which was a lot faster. I moved to 1Gbs fios over a year and a half ago. Having a set box with one tenth that speed just seems ridiculous. But people here were flaming me for wanting more. Well, if Apple didn’t support it, it wasn’t needed, right?
    The max bandwidth of FIOS ≠ the speed of your transfers. Tell me, what streaming service was giving you 1Gibps so that you could use 100% of the speed of your FIOS service? Does Netflix offer 1Gibps streaming? Does Amazon? Does iTS have 1Gibps download speeds? How about YouTube? Also, who are these people that were complaining that it took 7 nanoseconds longer to queue because of the 100Mibps Apple TV connection over it having a 1Gibps Ethernet port? How would you even know? If you can actually time the 4th and 5th generation speeds between the streaming services on the Apple TV and see a slight difference the ethernet port will have never been you bottleneck.
  • Reply 35 of 38
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Yay! When I was calling for Gb Ethernet I was shot down. I’m happy Apple now has it, even though all the negative posting about hat kept saying that you didn’t need it - even for 4K.
    You don't need it, but it's a welcome addition.
    Its nice when downloading movies in advance. And since it costs about the same, there’s no reason not to include it.
    Wouldn't it be better when steaming v any action "in advance" since the more bandwidth effectively reduces queuing time, assuming that bandwidth is the bottleneck?
    Well, yes. That’s why I’ve been wanting it, and why I was disappointed when I bought the 4, and it still had 100Mbs, which is used these days, pretty much only on cheap Ethernet connected printers.

    i had 150Mbs fios, which was a lot faster. I moved to 1Gbs fios over a year and a half ago. Having a set box with one tenth that speed just seems ridiculous. But people here were flaming me for wanting more. Well, if Apple didn’t support it, it wasn’t needed, right?
    The max bandwidth of FIOS ≠ the speed of your transfers. Tell me, what streaming service was giving you 1Gibps so that you could use 100% of the speed of your FIOS service? Does Netflix offer 1Gibps streaming? Does Amazon? Does iTS have 1Gibps download speeds? How about YouTube? Also, who are these people that were complaining that it took 7 nanoseconds longer to queue because of the 100Mibps Apple TV connection over it having a 1Gibps Ethernet port? How would you even know? If you can actually time the 4th and 5th generation speeds between the streaming services on the Apple TV and see a slight difference the ethernet port will have never been you bottleneck.
    Apple comes really close to that. They pretty much use whatever speed you can use. Often, when watching a movie on the aTV, even with 100Mbs, the movie is downloaded well before it’s finished. We’ll just have to see what happens when I get the new box. Really, we can’t comment on that yet. I can say that aTV updates just take a very short time to download, as do large games. I’m hoping it will be even faster. Remember that watching Tv isn’t the only thing we do with this.
  • Reply 36 of 38
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    melgross said:
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Yay! When I was calling for Gb Ethernet I was shot down. I’m happy Apple now has it, even though all the negative posting about hat kept saying that you didn’t need it - even for 4K.
    You don't need it, but it's a welcome addition.
    Its nice when downloading movies in advance. And since it costs about the same, there’s no reason not to include it.
    Wouldn't it be better when steaming v any action "in advance" since the more bandwidth effectively reduces queuing time, assuming that bandwidth is the bottleneck?
    Well, yes. That’s why I’ve been wanting it, and why I was disappointed when I bought the 4, and it still had 100Mbs, which is used these days, pretty much only on cheap Ethernet connected printers.

    i had 150Mbs fios, which was a lot faster. I moved to 1Gbs fios over a year and a half ago. Having a set box with one tenth that speed just seems ridiculous. But people here were flaming me for wanting more. Well, if Apple didn’t support it, it wasn’t needed, right?
    The max bandwidth of FIOS ≠ the speed of your transfers. Tell me, what streaming service was giving you 1Gibps so that you could use 100% of the speed of your FIOS service? Does Netflix offer 1Gibps streaming? Does Amazon? Does iTS have 1Gibps download speeds? How about YouTube? Also, who are these people that were complaining that it took 7 nanoseconds longer to queue because of the 100Mibps Apple TV connection over it having a 1Gibps Ethernet port? How would you even know? If you can actually time the 4th and 5th generation speeds between the streaming services on the Apple TV and see a slight difference the ethernet port will have never been you bottleneck.
    Apple comes really close to that. They pretty much use whatever speed you can use. Often, when watching a movie on the aTV, even with 100Mbs, the movie is downloaded well before it’s finished. We’ll just have to see what happens when I get the new box. Really, we can’t comment on that yet. I can say that aTV updates just take a very short time to download, as do large games. I’m hoping it will be even faster. Remember that watching Tv isn’t the only thing we do with this.
    1) What?! How could it ever be finished before it was downloaded?

    2) Run the numbers and you'll see that even a 15Mibps connection for streaming 4K+HDR is adequate to watch without waiting for it to buffer. I'll help you out for HD based on the previous data I provided. 1GiB/hour = 8Gib/hour = 136.53Mib/min = 2.27Mibps. To reverse that 2.27 × 60 (secs in a min) × 60 (min in an hour) = 8,172Mib/hour = 0.998Gib/hour (slightly off to do rounding). Of course, we always want more bandwidth because speeds aren't always sustained so we want an average that's well above our minimum and within our buffer zone*, and these are bare minimum for being able to watch one second while downloading one second. You do not need to have over 450x that to be able to watch a streaming video.


     Well, if Apple didn’t support it, it wasn’t needed, right?
    Where's the logic in that? Do you need 4 spatial streams for your home WiFi to function or will the AirPort Extreme with 3 spatial steams (and other lower possible specs) work fine? You can move files to another device faster with a faster network, but this doesn't come into play when talking about steaming. It's like arguing that the Apple Watch needs faster LTE because of Apple Music. No, no it absolutely don't need faster connectivity for Apple Music. It's other features, where increased network speed becomes useful.


    * This means that having 200Mibps for the first half of a movie and then being offline for the second half of a movie become 100Mbips average because streaming video services don't send the entire video at once. Netflix does offer offline viewing in iOS, but that's a download to the device so if you have only a few minutes before leaving for a flight that 1Gbips FIOS and 4 spatial streams of 802.11ac or even faster 802.11ad would be great for having more content delivered to your iPad in a short amount of time.
    edited September 2017
  • Reply 37 of 38
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Soli said:
    melgross said:
    Yay! When I was calling for Gb Ethernet I was shot down. I’m happy Apple now has it, even though all the negative posting about hat kept saying that you didn’t need it - even for 4K.
    You don't need it, but it's a welcome addition.
    Its nice when downloading movies in advance. And since it costs about the same, there’s no reason not to include it.
    Wouldn't it be better when steaming v any action "in advance" since the more bandwidth effectively reduces queuing time, assuming that bandwidth is the bottleneck?
    Well, yes. That’s why I’ve been wanting it, and why I was disappointed when I bought the 4, and it still had 100Mbs, which is used these days, pretty much only on cheap Ethernet connected printers.

    i had 150Mbs fios, which was a lot faster. I moved to 1Gbs fios over a year and a half ago. Having a set box with one tenth that speed just seems ridiculous. But people here were flaming me for wanting more. Well, if Apple didn’t support it, it wasn’t needed, right?
    The max bandwidth of FIOS ≠ the speed of your transfers. Tell me, what streaming service was giving you 1Gibps so that you could use 100% of the speed of your FIOS service? Does Netflix offer 1Gibps streaming? Does Amazon? Does iTS have 1Gibps download speeds? How about YouTube? Also, who are these people that were complaining that it took 7 nanoseconds longer to queue because of the 100Mibps Apple TV connection over it having a 1Gibps Ethernet port? How would you even know? If you can actually time the 4th and 5th generation speeds between the streaming services on the Apple TV and see a slight difference the ethernet port will have never been you bottleneck.
    Apple comes really close to that. They pretty much use whatever speed you can use. Often, when watching a movie on the aTV, even with 100Mbs, the movie is downloaded well before it’s finished. We’ll just have to see what happens when I get the new box. Really, we can’t comment on that yet. I can say that aTV updates just take a very short time to download, as do large games. I’m hoping it will be even faster. Remember that watching Tv isn’t the only thing we do with this.
    1) What?! How could it ever be finished before it was downloaded?

    2) Run the numbers and you'll see that even a 15Mibps connection for streaming 4K+HDR is adequate to watch without waiting for it to buffer. I'll help you out for HD based on the previous data I provided. 1GiB/hour = 8Gib/hour = 136.53Mib/min = 2.27Mibps. To reverse that 2.27 × 60 (secs in a min) × 60 (min in an hour) = 8,172Mib/hour = 0.998Gib/hour (slightly off to do rounding). Of course, we always want more bandwidth because speeds aren't always sustained so we want an average that's well above our minimum and within our buffer zone*, and these are bare minimum for being able to watch one second while downloading one second. You do not need to have over 450x that to be able to watch a streaming video.


     Well, if Apple didn’t support it, it wasn’t needed, right?
    Where's the logic in that? Do you need 4 spatial streams for your home WiFi to function or will the AirPort Extreme with 3 spatial steams (and other lower possible specs) work fine? You can move files to another device faster with a faster network, but this doesn't come into play when talking about steaming. It's like arguing that the Apple Watch needs faster LTE because of Apple Music. No, no it absolutely don't need faster connectivity for Apple Music. It's other features, where increased network speed becomes useful.


    * This means that having 200Mibps for the first half of a movie and then being offline for the second half of a movie become 100Mbips average because streaming video services don't send the entire video at once. Netflix does offer offline viewing in iOS, but that's a download to the device so if you have only a few minutes before leaving for a flight that 1Gbips FIOS and 4 spatial streams of 802.11ac or even faster 802.11ad would be great for having more content delivered to your iPad in a short amount of time.
    You really did misunderstand that. Downloaded before it’s finished means that it’s finished downloading before we’re finished watching it in real-time. I never thought that would be misunderstood. I was using that as a measure of the download speed apple is giving, nothing else. Give me a bit of credit here please.

    and you’re not getting the point. It doesn’t matter if it finished downloading well before we finish watching it. What matters is that there are times where you want to download it before you watch it, which Apple allows. I’m really not going to go into all the reasons why people want to do that, because I don’t care to get into another argument with you about that too. Suffice to say, that there are reasons, and just let it go at that.

    but as I also said, we do other things with this as well, such as play some of the games Apple seems to want us to. Some of those, games have multi GB downloads for graphics, and video segments. So, yes, I want that to come down as quickly as possible.

    i think it’s funny that you’re arguing an obsolete argument, as Apple agrees with me about this now, and not with you. I’m now done with this. Carry on as you please!
    edited September 2017
  • Reply 38 of 38
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    melgross said:
    Downloaded before it’s finished means that it’s finished downloading before we’re finished watching it in real-time. I never thought that would be misunderstood. 
    Again, since you can't finish watching it until the content is downloaded and ready to play. Even if just a fraction of a second sooner, it's still comes before you watch it.. This should be a pretty easy temporal concept to understand.

    i think it’s funny that you’re arguing an obsolete argument, as Apple agrees with me about this now, and not with you. I’m now done with this. Carry on as you please!
    Apple agrees with me. I even used their 15Mbips minimum for 4K+HDR content in my example. That wasn't an accident. This notion of you need 1Gibps for streaming isn't the reason for GiGE, but the reasons are simple, 1) GigE is negligible in cost compared to 100 BASE-T port (which is why I found to be an exclusion odd for the 4th gen Apple TV and referenced it many times on AI), and 2) it's useful for a device, even one limited with only 32 to 64GB of local storage because it helps facilitate faster access to newly downloaded apps and SW updates because those items can't be utilized until the complete package is downloaded, then installed, then launched. That's why GigE exists, not streaming content.
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