Easily the second most exciting Apple TV 4K update announced at Apple’s ‘Spring Forward’ event beyond the new remote is that you can now use an iPhone to colour calibrate your Apple TV. While at first it seemed like this might be an exclusive feature for the new Apple TV, 9to5Mac confirmed that it’s coming to the older Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD too.
The feature uses the front-facing camera on an iPhone to scan a pattern of lights displayed on your TV screen and then adjust the colour values in the Apple TV. That means that this colour adjustment only applies to the input your Apple TV is plugged into. The other inputs on your TV won’t get calibrated.
This is a pretty smart move on a few fronts and should help people get a little extra performance out of their TV. Apple is also selling the new Siri remote separately if you want to make your older Apple TV feel like the new one.
The update for older Apple TV devices is due out next week with tvOS 14.5. The calibration setup is under the ‘Video and Audio’ section of the set-top bow’s settings. You also need an iPhone with Face ID (iPhone X or newer, but not the SE), and it needs to be running iOS 14.5, which is also expected to release next week.
FlatpanelsHD is also reporting that it’s unable to get the feature to work on TVs with Dolby Vision enabled. This is likely because Dolby holds the calibration of Dolby Vision as its highest form of video codec, so it likely doesn’t want Apple tweaking how it looks.
Source: 9to5mac, FlatpannelsHD
