Apple TV 4K will soon be able to play 8K content

One of the best media players you can buy, Apple TV 4K. Introduced in 2021, this device has the capacity to turn any traditional television into a Smart TV. Or if you have a model that is not compatible with certain apps, this Apple player will allow you to install anything you can think of as it has a really large catalog of apps.

And the thing is, you may more or less like the company with the bitten apple, but beyond the mighty NVIDIA Shield TV, there’s no competitor that can stand up to this powerful multimedia player. Is it the best? Soon it will be more complete than ever.

All this thanks to an update that Apple is working on to provide the following features to this multimedia player, as you can see on this support page. Support for content playback in 8K. All thanks to the AV1 codec.

What is the AV1 codec and how will it improve Apple TV 4K?

If you do not know the AV1 codec, this is a Video standard to replace VP9 and HEVC formats currently in use. In particular, it is responsible for delivering 4K content, which we talked about last time.

The problem with HEVC is that it consumes a lot of data to play 4K content online and the AV1 offers much better performance. It’s worth noting that Google, Microsoft, and Netflix have already adopted this standard to improve playback on their services.

And as far as we know, Apple TV 4K will be the next model to support this video standard. Considering that you have managed to improve andl 40% efficiency compared to HEVCIt is clear that AV1 is the future.

This way, when you try to play content in 4K, bandwidth consumption will be much lower, but without losing an iota of image quality. Is it the best? HE Apple TV 4K will also be able to play 8K content thanks to the advent of this codec.

It’s too early to tell when the Apple TV 4K will be updated to support this video codec, but they’ll likely announce it’s coming in September. And keep in mind that Apple is very likely to offer a newly developed media player, which will be an evolution of the current model. We don’t know if it will be called Apple TV 4K or Apple TV 8K, but it will have a more powerful processor to further improve the performance of a product with little competition.