Apple unveiled a trio of product updates at its “Hey Siri” media event in San Francisco. The tech giant added enough features to justify a new iPhone and introduced a larger iPad (which looks suspiciously like a Microsoft Surface Pro and has a $99 pencil accessory), but my interest centered on a much-needed refresh of the Apple TV.

Apple’s second and third generation digital media players were released over three years ago. They’re decent at what they do and work fine if you enjoy living in Apple’s walled garden, but they’ve grown stale in comparison to the competition. Amazon and Roku currently offer streaming boxes with better features and more intuitive software, so Apple will be releasing a fourth generation Apple TV in late October to finally catch up.

The new Apple TV got a spec bump to make it faster, but punted on 4K ultra-HD resolution (not a deal breaker). It’ll run what folks in Cupertino call tvOS, bringing it in line with Apple’s iOS devices. It’ll feature deep Siri integration, allowing users to ask the “personal assistant” to search for content and to execute tasks such as rewinding simply by asking “what did she say?” The Apple TV also gets a redesigned remote, which borrows heavily from Nintendo’s iconic Wii controller, that’ll play a big part in making the streaming box double as a casual video game system.

None of these features are necessarily game-changers, just necessary upgrades. The real potential in Apple TV comes from the full-fledged App Store and how media companies decide to use the new hardware.

We got a glimpse when Major League Baseball ran a demo of their new MLB At Bat app.

At first blush, the new app presents a simple scoreboard. Selecting a box score will then take you to a 60 frames-per-second live stream of the game. Users can then shrink the game, making room for real-time stats and other scores. In the demo, MLB At Bat sent a push notification for another game with playoff implications and offered split-screen viewing of both contests.

It looked seemless and, frankly, it looked cool.

Hockey fans will get a similar experience with NHL Game Center and both apps will be released in 2016. This is where the viewing experience is headed, so it’ll be interesting to see how ESPN, the NFL and others upgrade their own apps.

We’ll also have to wait until 2016 for Apple’s foray into the “skinny bundle” trend. The much-anticipated subscription television service wasn’t mentioned at Apple’s event, but speculation has centered on a collection of channels for around $40-a-month. Financial terms and live local programming have reportedly been the sticking points between Apple and broadcasters.