The current Apple TV has been physically unchanged since the second-generation model rolled out in September of 2010, but a new FCC filing hints at a slight redesign. It looks like the next Apple TV set-top box will measure 93.78 square millimeters, down from the current model's 98mm wide and deep. It's not a huge size reduction, and the current Apple TV feels plenty small to us, but we're not surprised to see Apple continually strive to make its products smaller and smaller. This comes a day after MacRumors found that the recent Apple TV software update actually supports three models — the second- and third-generation Apple TV as well as an as-yet unidentified model. While it's far too soon to tell, there's a chance this smaller Apple TV could be it. Unfortunately, this isn't exactly the big Apple TV reveal we're all waiting for, but if Apple is in fact making a TV set, the first word we hear likely won't be from the FCC.


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Yesterday along with iOS 6.1 being pushed to iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches, Apple released an update to the Apple TV 2,1 and 3,1, and curiously enough released another image for an unannounced Apple TV 3,2 product with model A1469. Originally it was assumed this was an international release with minimal changes, however it turns out there's much more inside, including an A5X SoC and BCM4334 (up from BCM4330) WLAN and BT. 
Matthew Panzarino from The Next Web pinged me about the FCC documents posting and whether there were any changes inside, which piqued my interested and made me dig a little deeper. First, the Apple TV 3,2 model is slightly smaller, as noted by Engadget. Inside however from what we can glean from the FCC documents there's no longer a two antenna solution for the BCM4330 WiFi+BT combo, but rather a single antenna solution with different gain and utilizing a BCM4334 combo instead. This is the same WLAN+BT combo as used in the iPhone 5 and basically all of the newly refreshed iDevices, and is built on a 40nm RF CMOS process. Since the previous antennas were a part of the Apple TV PCB, and the FCC disclosure notes that the new Apple TV uses a single PIFA (Planar Inverted F Antenna), it's highly likely we're looking at a completely different PCB.