The New Apple TV – Out November 2015

The New Apple TV – Out November 2015

The next big thing is just around the corner… say Hi to the New Apple TV

 

One of DC IT’s personal favourite tech gadgets the Apple TV has just been refreshed. The public has been asking for an upgrade since the last few years and now here it is. You are looking at the most elegant and sophisticated smart tv set top box unit. It will no doubt revolutionlise the way you entertain yourself. Powered by the new dedicated tvOS Apple Operating System, enabling rich third party app development.

It features a new smart touch capable Siri enabled Remote, encorporating buttons with the easy of voice navigation. The remote will last X days without recharging by the nice reversible lightning cable which we all have, right? The size of the Apple TV has increased in height, which is understandable given the extra punch it carries to allow more content and user experience. It even allows users to use third party controllers for some apps.

Since the introduction of the original Apple TV there has been no need for internal storage until now. It now includes – you guessed it – 16gb and 32gb versions, so you can buffer those movies well before you’re ready for that crisp full HD content or even just to store apps like games. This is all made possible throught the upgrade from the A5 single core processor to the A8 dual-core processor.

The Siri remote is something like no other. From the Apple Keynote demonstration and tv advertisements out, it looks amazing with great continuous feedback. You can now continue asking Siri to further narrow your selection down to find the movie or tv show that matches you feeling. It includes not one but two microphones for enhanced noise cancelling, say goodbye to repeating your commands! The accelerometer and gyroscope are included too so you can get immersed into those action/adventure fun games on the  inbuilt App Store.

One strange move with the outputs is the lack of optical toslink/spdif audio out jack. However this is compensated through the upgrade of the HDMI port to v1.4. This new hdmi v1.4 allows for 7.1ch surround sound, compared to the outdated 5.1ch. If you are relying in optical out it might be worth purchasing a hdmi cable converter to optical out.