New Apple TV

I'm not sure what iOS developers are seeing in the average game when comparing a Metal code-path vs OES code-path, but didn't John Carmack used to say that bare metal access to console GPUs results in 2x more effective performance than if the same GPU ran high-level desktop APIs? Acknowledging that is a generalization and Metal probably isn't as low-level as bare metal console API, Apple TV's realizable performance gap over the Fire TV is still going to be wider than a pure hardware comparison. Vulkan still needs to be finalized, incorporated into a future Android version, then forked into Fire OS, so it might not be until 2017 that Fire TV gets it assuming Amazon will still be updating this 2015 model. But as you say, as much as gaming is a focus, the interest will be in more casual games.

Although I was kind of disappointed Apple and Chair didn't port Infinity Blade over to Apple TV, at least not in time for the keynote. I thought Infinity Blade was originally conceptualized as a Kinect game where you swung your arms as swords? They could have gone back to it's roots by having the player swing the Apple TV remote to control the sword. It'd probably look kind of silly, but it would have given the Apple TV a graphical workout. Especially now that they've ported a lot of the Infinity Blade assets to UE4 and made it available for free, a full UE4 remaster of Infinity Blade III would make a good Apple TV showcase. But I suppose Chair would rather work on new things than rehash old content.

 

Yes. No. Yes...

For UHD you need a smart TV, which supports H.265@4K and apps like Netflix. How many cheap Smart TVs come with Netflix or Amazon Instant Video?
But if your cheap TV is dumb, so it needs HDMI 2.0/2.0a for UHD@60 Hz and HDCP 2.2.

 

If you're using a set-top-box, you don't need a smart TV which is kind of the topic at hand.

 

Yes, but all this "oh, Apple TV doesn't support 4K, but the new Fire TV does" fraction forgets, that you need a TV with HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2.
The next thing about Fire TV is: Why does it support 2160p30 only?

 

No, you don't need HDMI 2.0 or HDCP 2.2 for 4K.
HDMI 1.4a/b supports 2160p24-30Hz, which is what all the streaming services are offering at the moment AFAIK.

1 - The SoC's video DSP isn't fast enough for more
2 - The box doesn't have HDMI 2.0 output so it'd be a moot point.
3 - Amazon's Ultra HD Instant Video only serves at 30Hz anyways.

Don't expect streaming services to reach 4K60 anytime soon. At the usual 25Mbps streaming speeds at which these services are rated, there wouldn't be much to gain anyways.
Most probably, 4k60 will only be found in UHD Blu-Rays for at least the next couple of years.



So yes, Amazon is offering a product+service that provides 4K content today whereas apple tops at FHD, and 4K TVs capable of reproducing it are both cheap and common nowadays.
This fraction that you speak of does have a point.

 

So 4K is a marketing name:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/174221-no-tv-makers-4k-and-uhd-are-not-the-same-thing

I thought even streaming UHD content still required HDCP 2.2? Amazon does list it as a requirement and HDCP 2.2 seems to be associated with HDMI 2.0a, not earlier HDMI revisions.

The other part of it is that there's a dispute about H.265 royalties so some tech companies are trying to produce an open source alternative codec.

 

It's their service so they'll use whatever HDCP version they want, if at all.
Amazon won't let their encryption demands get in the way of their service, at least not with their own newly-released 4k-capable box.

 

A codec can't be open source. It can be royalty free.

 

A codec can be open source, and many are. A format, however, can only be royalty-free; and h.265 is a format.

 

Ok....

There are open source h265 decoders, but you can't legally distribute the binary without paying royalties to the various patent holders.

 

It's their service, but it's not their content. The encryption requirements are specified by the content holders.

It's possible that Amazon gets waivers to play it on their devices, with HDCP 1.4 completely broken that'd be surprising.

 

Here are the specs for Fire TV:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U3FPN4U...36701&pf_rd_p=2210357402&pf_rd_i=desktop#tech

Under TV Compatibility, they list the requirements for both 4K and HD content:

 

Cute: Full nude cheerleaders.

 

I like the power connector.

 

https://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?ben...=gl&D=Amazon+Fire+TV+(AFTS)&testgroup=overall

Looks so

 

Roku 4 announced for $129. Will do 4k60.

 

Not sure why 4K is so important.

The user base just isn't there.

 

I wouldn't expect otherwise with 4 vs. 2 clusters, unless the latter has twice the frequency than the former. I think but am not sure that the GX6250 in the 8173 is clocked at 700 and not 600MHz as Lazy8s mentions above?

That still doesn't mean though that the A8 has enough graphics "oooomph" for a gaming platform with some higher potential. Then again as I mentioned elsewhere the original iPad had a neck-breaking 2 GFLOPs of FP16 from its SGX535@250MHz GPU. A9X will have 720 GFLOPs of those

If anything TV related becomes ever a sizeable sales success and they can have much bigger margins from such devices then of course they'll invest in higher performance SoCs for it

I'm sure that sales for 4k TV sets are extremely low. However since a 4k decoder doesn't cost much more these days, wouldn't it be a shame to leave those few that opt for a 4k TV set in the cold?

 

Yeah it looks nice and 4k60 is great for futureproofing, the only problem is that the Roku 4 is only $20 cheaper than the new Apple TV and although 4k is a good selling point, what about a whole APP ecosystem and playing games? This is where Roku will fall down. You either provide a cheap streaming box or compete like for like. I just don't see it selling well at that price.

 

Around 2007-2008, people were saying the same thing about 1080p after Sony touted 1080p for the PS3.