benji888

AppleInsider said:

AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.

APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?

To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"

lkrupp said:

Previously on “As the Apple Turns”

“iTunes is a bloated mess. It’s disgusting, unusable. Get rid of the bloat, remove features, split it up into multiple apps!”

On this episode of “As the Apple Turns”

“They removed MY favorite feature? iTunes is a mess now. It’s disgusting, unusable. Put MY bloat back in.

Well, they completely took away a major function, when they could have just as easily split it into a separate app, which is what they should do, and what they did ages ago with iBooks, yet you can still use iTunes to sync iBooks to iOS devices. ...So, there’s no real reason Apple had to just delete App Store, they should have either added iOS apps to Mac App Store or break iOS device syncing and the App Store into a separate app from iTunes, use iTunes solely for media. It’s totally realistic, and Apple needs to explain why they do these things.

They also need a lot more how-tos as they become less intuitive.

Let’s see some side by side real world tests with AR and VR apps ...iPhone 7+ vs 8+, iPhone 8+ vs flagship Android. Maybe even iPad 10.5 vs android tablet.

spliff monkey said:

maestro64 said:

Should we guess who made this decision

"But, we couldn't generate a H.265 file that would be recognized on the Apple TV. The file will load into iTunes, but Home Sharing just won't pick it up. This same file loaded into VLC plays fine, and isn't transcoded to a lower resolution.

So, the lack of Home Sharing picking up the file isn't a technical limitation of the Apple TV 4K, and appears at this point to be a choice that someone made along the way to actively prevent this kind of thing.."

The studio do not want people ripping Blue-ray or getting 4K H.265 content for pirate site and being able to stream them to the ATV. I wonder if Plex from a media server would work.

I disagree that studios are holding this up. It makes no sense. 

All of our iPhone camera content will be in h265 moving forward. So using home sharing to play out your home videos in h265 would not only be obvious, but perfectly legally. The studios can’t hold back feature like that. I feel like this is a temporary issue and a small oversight. 

Also, if you can still stream 4k in h264 it’s not really preventing pirates at all. Sure you’re file size could be a bit cumbersome depending on your data rate, but pirates still have to rip the file regardless of whether they transcode it to h264 or h265. I’m relatively sure VLC for the Apple TV will play h265 files if you really wanted to. 

So, all someone who’s already inclined to be a tinkerer, has to do is find another streaming app. Most likely this is an iTunes limitation. As I recall last time I tested out h265 with iTunes it didn’t exactly like it, meaning it might not even show up in your library to begin with, but if it was in exactly the right specs it might play and stream. I also remember maybe having to use airplay from my Mac instead of using home sharing directly through the “computers” app on the atv. It’s been a little while. That said, this seems like a non issue and probably a temporary issue. 

As I tried to write earlier, I think the only limitation is that AirPlay 2 has not been implemented yet, I think HEVC/H.265 outside of iTunes is all tied to the AirPlay 2 code, which, for iOS 11 betas, was in the first 5 betas, from what I’ve heard, and then removed, in fact, Apple removed the references to AirPlay 2, it used to be there on their iOS 11 site back in June. Now they say it’s coming in a future update.

tmay said:

So, how does one best dump 4k video from iPhone in h.265 to Apple TV? Stream on Airplay or upload to iCloud and then download to Apple TV, or better, can I upload to Apple TV directly over the network?

mark mervich said:

My 2015 Samsung TV seems to do a good job of up scaling to 4K.  Am I better off using the TV or the Apple TV for the upscaling?  How would I set it up?
Mark

Mike Wuerthele said:

mark mervich said:

My 2015 Samsung TV seems to do a good job of up scaling to 4K.  Am I better off using the TV or the Apple TV for the upscaling?  How would I set it up?
Mark

The first device in the stream does the upscaling -- in the normal case, the Apple TV. If the TV is already getting 4K resolution, it won't apply additional upscaling to it.

You could always set the Apple TV resolution to a lower one, say, 1080p, and see how the television does on its own, and compare. Might be subjective.

hanumang said:

AppleInsider said:

But, we couldn't generate a H.265 file that would be recognized on the Apple TV. The file will load into iTunes, but Home Sharing just won't pick it up. This same file loaded into VLC plays fine, and isn't transcoded to a lower resolution.

So, the lack of Home Sharing picking up the file isn't a technical limitation of the Apple TV 4K, and appears at this point to be a choice that someone made along the way to actively prevent this kind of thing.

As someone waiting on the iPhone X -- to record 4K home videos of my 4 year old -- does this apply to iPhone or iMovie content as well?  In other words, does the "Edit With... iTunes" function work with HEVC content that has captured on an iPhone & imported to Photos on High Sierra?

As far as upscaling goes, the ATV 4K does that automatically, no way to change it, you can manually change to 1080p output if you so choose, of course no HDR that way. Most people are complaining the ATV 4K does not change modes on the fly, but picks the “best” setting for your TV, at 60Hz, then upscales both resultion, and SDR to HDR/DV if your TV is compatible, with results that are mixed, sometimes good sometimes not. People in home theater forums are returning these for this alone, because it requires you to change modes manually depending on what content you’re playing, unlike UHD blu-ray players or other 4K set tops, also giving Apple feedback, which I recommend...they need to get this right, things are not simple with UHD, like it or not, and I do think Apple could give us the option to auto change modes depending on content.

HEVC/H.265 streaming...HEVC/H.265 is new to all apple products, and not yet fully implemented. AirPlay 2 was pulled during the beta process and Apple says its coming in a future OS update. They pulled any info. on it, but, I’m 99% sure AirPlay 2 will handle HEVC/H.265 streaming from iOS devices and High Sierra (and video in iCloud), once implemented. So, it’s not that ATV 4K won’t, but, it will in the (unknown timeframe) future. For now it seems to be working for iTunes and Netflix (with 4K/UHD Premium subscription), VUDU has not yet been updated, Amazon Prime should come with 4K HDR, (sometime between now and dec. 31st). ...iMovie update has already been pushed out with HEVC compatibility the 25th for High Sierra, Photos app in High Sierra also, but, again I think waiting on AirPlay 2 to be implemented for streaming to other Apple devices.