YHK - yet another hacker news clone

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...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50077296

I don’t think it would have been easily done on non-AI spotlight.

I have the 4K and MiBox next to each other, the Apple TV is cool for a UI showcase, but beyond the oohs and aahs the MiBox is a more useful entertainment device.

Honestly? A 2nd-hand Apple TV. That’s the competitor for this. I’ve had mine for what feels like it must be >5 years, they survived two years in a suitcase as a digital nomad, as far as I can tell they’re indestructible. My local 2nd hand site is full of them, too.

I’d like Plex to integrate this.

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.

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.

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...

Also I play back full 4k BR disk rips.

I really wanted to make it work, but it ended up being an annoying hassle. I got a Shield TV and it has been a much better solution.

Not sure if things have changed since then (~5 years ago).

Siri AI is increasingly looking like a product that's exclusively for Americans. An unfortunate side effect of the EU attempting to become a regulatory superpower but failing to export its rules to the rest of the world.

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.

I had to buy a special HDMI switch because my projector is eARC-naive, but my understanding is that a lot of modern TVs are eARC-aware and a special switch is not required. The one downside to my setup is that I have to press a button on the HDMI switch to toggle between the PC and the AppleTV, no remote control, but hey it's good to stretch your legs now and then right?

Re audio quality, I really like my big HomePods and find they fill the room quite well and have a solid low range to them. I'd also agree that the HomePod Minis are not suitable for a living room entertainment experience.

The move to the A19 also meant that they couldn't go with LPDDR4X RAM and instead had to use more expensive LPDDR5X (IIRC).

It is crazy. I expect the new Apple TV to be a flop because $300 is just a lot. The problem is that Apple is a little boxed in on this device. Apple wants to re-use the A19, but that locks them into expensive DDR5 RAM. They want to push Siri AI, but that locks them into 8GB RAM. Unlike the iPhone, there aren't as many other opportunities with the App Store, Apple Pay, search engine placement revenue, etc.

Storage has also gone up a lot and Apple is no longer selling a 64GB model. Most streaming sticks have 4-16GB of storage and it's usually really slow/cheap storage. The new Apple TV has 128GB of storage and the price for that has probably gone from around $25 to $50.

You say that it's fine from "$200 to $300", but that's not really true. It's gone from $250 to $300 when you look at the 128GB model. I still think it's crazy that it went from $150 to $300 in the same year, but the outgoing 128GB model was already $250 after the price hikes earlier this year.

The problem is that Apple didn't want to reign in their product for the current market and I somewhat get that. What's the point of a new Apple TV if it's just "we updated the processor." For me, the point would be AV1 and VP9 decoding, but Apple wanted to push Siri AI.

Other high-end TV devices have also seen big increases in price. The Fire TV Cube went from being $110-140 to now $200 - and with the Fire TV Cube you're getting Cortex-A73 processor cores from 2016, 2GB LPDDR4X, and 16GB storage. At least Apple is giving you 8GB LPDDR5X and 128GB of storage and a processor that is way better.

The Google TV Streamer is $150 now with 4GB RAM and 16GB storage, but with LPDDR4 RAM and Cortex-A55 cores - and it's still $150.

A Roku Ultra is 2GB RAM and 4GB storage with Cortex-A55 cores and costs $150.

I think we're seeing that there's still some really old stock out there that's cheap, but we're seeing the prices climb on competitors too. Google raised its price 50%. Amazon has raised its price 40-80%. Apple raised its price 54-67% on the same-model and launched the newer model with double the RAM, more expensive RAM, a processor that's 4 years newer, etc.

I think it's likely that Google, Roku, and Amazon simply don't upgrade their streaming devices during this parts shortage. I think a lot of people will be fine with a 12nm Cortex-A55 based TV streamer with limited RAM and storage (and slow RAM and storage). I love how fast my Apple TV is. It's amazing the difference in UI lag. But I think most companies aren't going to prioritize that premium experience, especially during a parts shortage.

that's not what I did

> just because the marketing

not just because of the marketing

> of a for-profit corporation with previous histories of privacy violations (there's even lawsuits) claims their closed source device connected 24/7 to the internet, is private.

in other words, they are being watched and held accountable when they do screw up, which obviates a lot of the "well maybe they're stealing your data and we don't know about it" nonsense elsewhere in the replies.

I'll ask something specific: We know that Rokus and built-in smart TVs are actively tracking and monetizing everything you do on your television. People can prove this by looking at what calls are made on your network.

Does Apple do the same thing?

This is a common judgement among the technically literate.

> Breaking down why Apple TVs are privacy advocates’ go-to streaming device

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/all-the-ways-apple-t...

To me, it doesn’t make sense to rate all levels of imperfection the same. Of course Apple isn’t perfect. But that’s not am important question.

Apple’s the only major purveyor of these kinds of devices whose existential business model is not predicated on privacy violations. Hardly a guarantee of good behavior (and we’ll see what happens in the future). But a lot better than the alternatives.

> Breaking down why Apple TVs are privacy advocates’ go-to streaming device

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/all-the-ways-apple-t...

I'm not comfortable with my TV or streaming stick manufacturer collecting and mining data about everything that appears on the screen.

1) By default, every word (each character, actually) you input into Spotlight/Siri gets time-stamped and sent to `smoot.apple.com`

2) Even with a Pi-Hole blocking *.apple.com (i.e. using MacOS >> Networking >> DNS Server), on boot all modern Apple Silicon reaches out to security.apple.com (i.e. bypassing the user's manual-input DNS setting), using the DHCP-issued DNS IP [0]

pro-tip: use your router's DHCP to auto-issue your local Pi-Hole's IP address [as DNS] with your IP-leases; then you'll actually be able to block all *.apple.com traffic (using the PiHole which your DHCP issues to, by default)

[0] this is for security chip "lockout" detection (e.g.) and it is pervasive across NICs (i.e. it REALLY seeks any attempt for DNS resolution to security.apple.com)

If you use the Apple TV app and if you give permission to the app in the modal to link your HBO Max/Paramount+/etc. app, then that app can call a special API to donate your viewing history to the Apple TV app. You can just decline the prompt, or you can just not use the Apple TV app, and then the other streaming services have no recipient to give this data to.

Conversely, your TV runs something called ACR or Automatic Content Recognition where a screenshot of your TV input/app is taken every ~x seconds. At best, it distills it into a local signature and ships that off to some amount of servers. At worst (e.g.: laptop HDMI) it can send it for processing. Some TVs take screenshots much more often if you use a device connected by HDMI.[1]

The former is generally used for content recommendation, but we can also assume that it could potentially get pooled into stuff like App Store ads. The latter is also used to discern your political affiliation and target you for political campaign ads, among every other type of ad.

1: https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/research/smart-tv-data-priva...

There absolutely are much more private options (I run one) but it’s more effort.

With Advanced Data Security enabled?

Of course, then there's the persons you're talking to. I figure they are one of your "other three", another is the iCloud copy (deduped from backups) ostensibly resolved by advanced data security, what's the third?

Because they want to allow people to recover them.

I’ll never buy another Sonos product ever again. Terrible experience all around. App is trash, soundbar drops off wifi for no reason, songs will stop playing over Airplay and it’ll just disappear as an Airplay speaker for hours and then show back up randomly and work fine again.

I meant the one thing I'm missing from my current setup, not something that would be fixed by upgrading.

But seriously, 1Gbps is plenty for any video content.

There are comparable devices like Ugoos (am6b+ with coreelec) and Zidoo but they're a little sketch compared to the aforementioned...

For me, I’m hopeful to get a good deal on the previous gen to replace my parents ATV HD.

It will be my first used ATV purchase, but $299 isn’t worth it to consider buying new in my opinion.

"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).

Maybe at some point I could play games on the Apple TV that do?

For real though, 120 is nice even just for navigating UIs smoothly. On top of that, 120 is a nice multiple of 24, 30, and 60. So the device can just output 120Hz and skip frames as needed depending on the source content frame rate.

You can also probably maybe do terrible things like CEC on one port and signal on another, it's mostly a bus.

I thought I surely was imagining it, so I revisited it 6 months or a year later, and, yes, the input latency from the controller is substantially worse on the Apple TV.

Everything. It's like pixel density, going from 96ppi to 220 is just better, and once you first see it, you just start wanting it everywhere. My Mac, iPhone and iPad all have 120Hz at this point, so of course I want to see it in more Apple products - it feels amazing compared to 60. It just does.

and yes I am assuming that HN crowd can program a remote.

I'd guess it's room for the AI model and future versions of it that could grow.

That said, I'd love it if Plex or Jellyfin were able to use that storage to cache files locally (eg. stream the data as fast as possible and play from the local copy) to smooth out some flakiness with the wifi between the tv and my home server.

I would expect only mobile developers to actually bother porting games natively to Apple TV, with larger titles opting for game streaming.

It's really not. It's so reviewers will be able to say "it costs more than the last version, but you also get much more storage" and the average consumer is happy. If there were a practical reason for it Apple would put it front and center.

They also bought RAC9, developers of Sneaky Sasquatch (one of the best games on the service, in my opinion), and they've had an aTV version since day one.

In general, the idea of a single game being able to hop between a phone (which can turn into a handheld with a controller grip), TV box, and desktop/laptop is really interesting. Streaming can do that, but latency and bandwidth caps become issues; this sidesteps it by letting you run everything locally.

Do not underestimate modern audio technology.

So, yeah, I’ve decided that modern 4K+60-120+eARC+Spatial sound slightly exceeds the Apple Silicon capacity of the bargain-priced models.