Short of a mini-PC, an Apple TV 4K is probably the most powerful media streamer you can buy, and that’s before its anticipated fall 2026 refresh. The key is that Apple reuses iPhone processors, which are frankly excessive if all you’re trying to do is watch Netflix or YouTube. The 2026 refresh could make the box capable of running console-quality games, competing with your PlayStation 5, or at least your Switch 2.

There’s more than raw horsepower at work, though. There are other hardware and software features at play, some of them meant to help streaming video, others with a wider focus. I’m going to touch on a few of my favorites here, but there may be more. “Hidden” is also a relative term in this context, since a feature one person considers obscure might be in daily use by someone else.

Audio and video calibration with your iPhone

Keeping color and audio sync on point

In most situations, there’s no urgency to calibrate video output. With the right picture mode, modern TVs are generally good enough out of the box, and the Apple TV is primed to match resolution and HDR formats. But if you want to ensure accurate colors, there’s an option to use your iPhone to automatically correct them, something that once required a dedicated tool. I can’t vouch for how close this gets to professional calibration — but most people don’t need that precision.

To get started, head over to Settings – > Video and Audio, then select Color Balance under the Calibration section. You’ll be prompted to aim your iPhone’s Face ID camera close to the screen, and the process should be completed just a few moments later. The one catch is that Face ID requirement — if your iPhone is an older model with Touch ID, you’re out of luck.

Something fewer people are probably aware of is that you can use an iPhone to fix sync issues with wireless speakers, particularly when they’re used in tandem with wired ones connected to a receiver. Under Calibration options, click on Wireless Audio Sync. You’ll be prompted to hold your iPhone next to your TV or the wired speakers. After it plays a series of test tones, tvOS will make adjustments to keep your speakers in unison.

Matter and Thread support for your smart home

More important than you might realize

For years, Apple’s greatest barrier to success in the smart home world was the authentication tech it imposed on HomeKit. Accessory makers had to jump through hoops to accommodate it, which often wasn’t worth the trouble when they could add Amazon Alexa and Google Home and call it a day. That, in turn, led to a dearth of products for people who were Apple-exclusive.

Matter is helping to turn things around. If you’re not aware, that’s a universal pairing standard, allowing you to link accessories to ecosystems that aren’t directly supported. You may, in some cases, end up sacrificing a few features, but the Matter spec is continuously evolving, and Apple is one of its backers — so it’s not about to suffer anything that would hamper compatibility on Apple devices.

The Apple TV 4K automatically operates as both a Home Hub for HomeKit and as a Matter controller. The latter is important not just for pairing Matter products in the Apple Home app, but in going the opposite direction, pairing products with the likes of Alexa, Google Home, or Samsung SmartThings.

Thread, meanwhile, is a low-power mesh protocol meant to replace the likes of Zigbee and Z-Wave. At the moment, you have to buy the top-end Apple TV to get this feature — but if you do, it can open up access to a variety of light bulbs, sensors, switches, and other compatible accessories. Your Apple TV simply acts as a “border router,” allowing those products to talk to devices on Wi-Fi and the internet. There are actually a variety of smart home products that can double as border routers — but this is an obvious starting point, and the more of them you have, the better.

Multiple levels of dialogue enhancement

Never miss anything again

My hearing isn’t that great. I’m not hard of hearing, per se, but my ears aren’t exactly sensitive anymore, and I’m more prone to missing something if I’m not staring at the screen the entire time — say if I’m mostly just listening to one of my PEV videos while I work on meal prep. For that reason, I often have some sort of dialogue enhancement option on, somewhere.

You can flip on dialogue enhancement very quickly on an Apple TV by bringing up playback controls, then clicking on the audio wave icon. The exact options you’ll see will depend on the Apple TV you have and which speakers or headphones are connected, but there will probably be at least two levels, and of course you can disable enhancement at any time.

If you’re truly struggling to understand people, you can enable an option called Voice Isolation. To do this, just go to Settings -> Accessibility. Be warned, though, that this completely isolates dialogue in the audio mix, and dramatically lowers the volume of everything else. It’s legitimately meant for people with hearing damage or other disabilities.

In fact, all forms of dialogue enhancement affect the dynamic range of your audio. You might want to avoid it, then, if you’re trying to get the most out of a sound system.

Setting any AirPlay speaker as a default output

Why wasn’t this there from the beginning?

The best reason to buy a HomePod is to pair a couple with an Apple TV. Even HomePod minis can be an upgrade over your TV’s internal speakers, and second-gen HomePods offer not just better range, but Dolby Atmos. There could be more incentive to buy one after Siri AI rolls out this fall, but we’ll see how soon Apple rolls out the necessary hardware upgrades.

Until recently, HomePods were the only wireless speakers you could set as a default audio output. There may have been technical reasons for this, such as guaranteed audio sync, or the software framework involved — but it always smacked of favoritism, since there are third-party AirPlay speakers that sound just as good or better than Apple’s own. You were only able to choose those as temporary outputs, so you had to select them again every time you sat down.

As of tvOS 26, you can finally make any AirPlay 2-compatible speaker your default. Head to Settings – > Video and Audio – > Default Audio Output. This does come with some caveats, the big one being that you won’t get ARC or eARC support — you need HomePods if you want to share audio with other devices connected to your TV. Also, system alerts and game sounds are funneled through your TV’s speakers instead, and there’s a higher chance of lag. Still, you’ll probably enjoy Dune a lot more if the mix is loud and bass-heavy.

Connection Type

Wireless

Brand

Apple

Color(s)

Midnight, White