Jamie Condliffe - 

Though it’s not Apple’s most exciting announcement of recent time, the Apple TV received a big a boost in specs last week. Now a teardown by a forum member at XBMC.org shows exactly what’s changed.

As noted on the tech specs page of the Apple website, it now boasts a rather unique single-core A5 system-on-a-chip — an upgrade from its previous A4 processor but lacking the dual-core prowess of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.

Elsewhere, RAM has been upgraded, with a 512MB Hynix chip providing a little more breathing space than the previous 256MB chip. In terms of storage, the device still employs 8GB of flash, supplied by Toshiba. It also contains an extra Wi-Fi antenna but, umm, nobody is quite sure what improvement that brings.

All in, the bump in RAM and processor specs suit the jump in graphics performance — with the device now handling 1080p video — but little more. But then, that’s fine, because it’s only designed to stream media, so all it needs to do is run an OS and buffer content. For the price — £99 — it’s still a neat little device. [xbmc.org via Apple Insider]