Apple TV received a discount, not an update, at the company's recent smartwatch media event. The snub set the stage for a hardware refresh that's now rumored to take place this summer according to sources familiar with Apple's plans as reported by BuzzFeed.
The next generation Apple TV will reportedly make its debut during the annual World Wide Developers Conference in June. The set-top box will be loaded with an A8 processor (or perhaps a variant of it), much more onboard storage than usual, an update to the operating system and support for both Siri and HomeKit.
Hardware aside, the big news here is the software and UI improvements. The additional storage capacity will be needed to support the new App Store, a feature that has been rumored to be in the works for quite a while now.
Overall, sources say this revision of Apple TV - the first since early 2012 (unless you count the minor revision in January 2013) - will really capture the company's vision of television for the modern era. When Apple TV first debuted in 2007, it was considered little more than a hobby.
That status has since been promoted to "an area of intense interest" under Tim Cook and given the new App Store and Homekit integration, this is starting to sound a lot like the Apple hub that one analyst described a few years back.
No word yet on pricing although it's probably a safe bet to assume that new hardware will be priced above the $69 mark that the current model now sits at (the previous $99 price point seems about right).