This year’s Apple TV 4K could put a camera in your living room

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Rumours suggest we could be finally getting an update on the Apple TV 4K and HomePod smart speaker hardware this year. It’s been a long time coming. The third-generation Apple TV 4K released back in November 2022 while the HomePod and HomePod Mini were last revised in 2023 and 2020.

It might not be the long-rumoured Apple TV-HomePod hybrid, but according to the reports, Apple users will be getting a new Apple TV 4K, a new HomePod mini, a new full-size HomePod and an all-new smart home hub, like Google’s Nest Hub. All this, of course, in addition to the usual hardware upgrades, like new iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch and Macs and maybe even its first foldable smartphone.

Besides the Apple smart home hub, the most interesting of these rumoured upgrades could be the Apple TV 4K. In addition to an A17 Pro Chip, more “personalised” Siri, the Apple N1 Chip and Wi-Fi 7 support, the fourth-generation Apple TV 4K is also rumoured to include an in-built FaceTime camera.

Why would they do such a thing? Well, for one, it has been suggested that an Apple TV camera would support “gesture controls”, but it could also be used for convenient video conferencing on the big screen. You can picture the marketing now: two families a world apart, connecting via their living room televisions, rather than huddled together around a single iPhone.

It’s not hard to imagine. The question is whether customers are willing to place an internet-connected camera in their living room, especially at a time when public perception of privacy and data collection is so fraught.

Even when Nintendo tried to introduce a video camera to living rooms with the Nintendo Switch 2, it was careful to make it clear that, one, the camera was totally optional, and two, it had a physical privacy shutter to give users peace of mind when it wasn’t in use.

Whatever it ends up being, there’s really no telling when the new Apple TV 4K will be announced and released. Unlike the iPhone, which is religiously announced every September, the Apple TV hardware is much harder to predict, with some models releasing in September, some in March, some in October and some in May.

Apple’s next big event is WWDC 2026 in June, but the hardware announcements during that event are typically more geared towards Mac computers and new in-house silicon chips.

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Brodie Fogg

Managing Editor - Streaming

Brodie Fogg is WhistleOut Australia's Managing Editor for Streaming. He's been writing about tech, streaming, games and telco since 2015. He previously managed a team of entertainment editors at Finder, and has also appeared on 7NEWS.

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