Los Angeles International Airport as seen in an Apple TV screensaver.Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends
You’d be forgiven if you ask the following question upon seeing one of the high-resolution screensavers onApple TV 4K:
Are Apple TV screensavers real? Or are they CGI?
It’s a fair question, and one we tend to ask ourselves every now and then when new videos — also known as Aerials given their perspective — roll out to the platform. If you’ve yet to see one, we’re talking about high-resolution imagery, shot at a high frame rate and then played back a bit slower, giving it kind of a slow-motion effect. The video appears optimized for high dynamic range (aka HDR).
In a word, they’re stunning.
It’s not often you use the word cinematography when it comes to screensavers. Those of us of a certain age can recall flying toasters or, later, a pretty realistic aquarium. Apple TV screensavers are more akin to the latter on steroids, and they’ve been ridiculously realistic for years.
Part of what may cause you to wonder whether Apple TV screensavers are fake is that high dynamic range. Oversimplified, it means that you’re seeing a greater range of color and better contrast. So something isn’t just red, it’sreallyred. Same for the rest of the spectrum. And that sort of thing really stands out against the darkness of night, or the blackness of space, or the deep blue sea.
The quality of the video itself matters a lot, too. And the short version is that using great equipment and shooting in 8K resolution — if not higher — and then scaling down to 4K leads to some incredible footage.
Some of the screensavers also lead to more dubiousness than others. Flying over Central Park in New York City, or downtown Los Angeles, or Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai — those are all known places with moving people and pieces. Same goes for even higher perspectives, like views from the International Space Station. Flying over Europe and Asia, or North America, we see familiar landmasses and landmarks.
Where things get a little more surreal is underwater. Cinematographer Roger Munns worked with the BBC’s Natural History Unit and in 2019gave some serious detailinto what went into shooting some of the underwater Apple TV screensavers.
“This was a unique project in terms of the challenges it presented to our team,” Munns wrote. “Trying to emulate the style of the aerial images, but with far less technology and grip and, most importantly, with moving animals rather than static landscapes, was extremely tough.”
So, yeah. Apple TV screensavers are real.
And consider that Munns is talking about some of the earlier Apple TV screensavers. They’ve gotten more incredible since then, insofar as there’s a scale for this sort of thing.
This sort of thing isn’t limited to Apple TV, either. On the official side of things, MacOS 14.0 Sonoma adds the same sort of screensavers directly to the operating system. And on the third-party side,Aerial Dreamlets you add the Apple TV screensavers to some flavors of Google TV (Chromecast with Google TV doesn’t allow for it). There’s also anAerial appthat’ll extend what’s available on your Mac. And there’s aChrome extensionthat’ll load them in a new tab of the Chrome browser.
The really cool part? Apple is adding more screensavers all the time. And, yes, they’re real.
