I just don't understand why they included the lightning cord but no wall charger adapter? There is also no USB-C or mini-displayport out on the back of this device, so it cannot be used easily with high res monitors. I guess that makes sense if you have no 4k support, but just as HDMI was a huge improvement over RGB-A cords you used to have to run for better than low def content (read, single cord to rule them all), the much smaller USB-C or mini-displayport cords are a huge improvement to the wire nest most people fight with TV, AV receiver, game console(s), apple tv, TV tuner/DVR you already struggle to keep tidy.
Wireless video standards exist:
- WiDi by intel
- WirelessHD by LG, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Onkyo and Yamaha
- Wireless USB (dongle required for TV)
- WHDI from Sony, LG, Hitachi, Samsung and Sharp
- WiGig from Dell, Intel, Nokia, and Texas Instruments, Panasonic, Samsung and Toshiba
- WiVu which is proprietary but supports 1080p 2D and 3D video over home wifi
- Wifi-Display described as "HDMI over Wi-Fi" over a Wi-Fi Direct connection
- Oh, and AirPlay, which is that venerable old protocol Apple's been kicking around a while you may have heard of
So then why, in their war against ports, have Apple decided to adopt HDMI and reconcile USB-C to a service port for restoring the unit to factory software rather than giving us things that are actually what we need to move the world forward toward an intelligent future? I understand bluetooth not being an appropriate tech if there are many other BT devices present as the noise would quickly cause interference problems, but wifi is far more resilient to this and NFC devices similarly exist to solve these problems. The industry needs to get it together on a wireless video standard that holds its weight so consumers can escape the hardwired hell of dust bunnies and snake nests that live behind our tvs.
First my credentials, I am an Unabashed Apple Fanboy and proud of it. I buy every new product Apple manufactures and I buy right at launch. So I bought two of the new Apple TVs. Received one last night and within two hours, I decided to do something I have never done before since I bought my first Mac in 1984. I am returning the new Apple TVs!!!!! Here are my reasons: 1. Touchpad not accurate enough.
2. I was surprised that it found volume control for my TV. I did it not think that it was a universal code for all TVs. Going to Settings and Audio I was surprised it found my Pioneer VSX-1031 receiver. I set the audio to the receiver but it did not work. It still went to the TV volume control.
3. HBONow app is a disaster with European date styles and no discernible chronological order of episodes.
4. HBONow also does not remember where you left off in an episode other than one time and insists on returning to a spot 5 minutes into the episode which was the spot I left off the first time I stopped viewing the episode.
5. Siri is a big miss. Did not understand my commands and could not find the shows like HBO Real Time. My iPhone and Apple Watch Siri understand me but Apple TV Siri is a dummy. This Apple TV is a real disappointment to me. I understand that the faults are in software which is fixable. But this product is below the high quality standard I expect from Apple. I will not spend my money ($487 for two 64 Gig units and Apple Care) and be frustrated while using it. This product is still in the hobby phase and not ready for prime time.
I am mystified by the decision to include a USB-A to Lightning cable, but then put a USB-C port on the box and not include a USB-A to C adapter so that the remote could be charged by the aTV. "Here's a cable. Sorry, you can't plug it into the aTV. Oh, there is a USB port on the aTV, but you can't use it for anything."
It's a bit much to blame Apple for the quality of the HBO app. Seems you're just ticked off and want to justify your decision.
You must not have read the front part of my post. I wanted to love this product. Apple does not need to sell me on their products.
You say that some of my complaints are with HBONow. You are right but some are not: touchpad, volume control, Siri.
I am not looking to justify my upset with this product. I read some glowing reviews and others that were harsh on the deficiencies. Before I received my unit, I thought the bad reviews were outliers. Now I know that my opinion is in line with the bad reviews.
Educate yourself about volume control for receivers (use the IR learning setting)
Dude, what part of "Going to Settings and Audio I was surprised it found my Pioneer VSX-1031 receiver. I set the audio to the receiver but it did not work. It still went to the TV volume control." do you not understand? He selected his receiver in the audio settings. The aTV remote _still_ tried to control his TV.
The right way is to turn off TV audio in the settings
Then teach the AppleTV volume settings using the receiver remote.
So the aTV is smart enough to give you a choice of using your receiver for audio output, but then it is dumb enough to still send volume commands to the TV? That sounds like a UX design flaw to me - regardless of whether instructions on how to do it "right" are in a manual somewhere.
You are doing it wrong. You need to teach the AppleTV your Pioneer remote. Go to settings and select learn device. Point you Pioneer remote toward the AppleTV and press + and -. It works like a charm. Seems like you didn't even bother to try to solve the 'problems' you had.
This is on HBO devs not Apple.
You need to speak louder and more clear. I have no problem with Siri on AppleTV
So the problem isn't the AppleTV. The problem is YOU. You didn't adjust your settings correctly for touch sensitivity and IR remote learning. HBO app has nothing to do with Apple. And you need to speak clearer with Siri.
You have posted intelligent answers to my complaints except you blew it with the troll comment. 1. Where do you set the trackpad speed? It is not like I have a manual. 2. I selected the Pioneer receiver in the Audio section of the Settings. Apple cannot figure out the IR command from that information by looking it up in a database? I thought by selecting the Apple TV recognized receiver, I was done. Where is the learn command which should be unnecessary if you have the receiver information? 3. I spoke very clearly and slowly and the Siri performance was terrible unlike the Siri with my iPhone 6 Plus and my Apple Watch. 4. I have already contacted HBO about their terrible HBONow app.
Thank you for your reply and any forthcoming answers in advance. One advice: Don't pull out the "troll" accusation on everyone who points out deficiencies in Apple products. I just learned that myself from your post.
The right way is to turn off TV audio in the settings
Then teach the AppleTV volume settings using the receiver remote.
Would help if people actually took the time to research or read the instructions instead of making a fool out of themself.
I just read your comment. You have got to be kidding me. You are talking about using my receiver remote learning aTV settings as an answer to why the aTV remote volume control did not work. For your information, I have a Harmony One universal remote. One of its activities is Watching Apple TV. With that active, I have full control of volume on my receiver as well as navigating Apple TV.
My complaint is totally different. Apple TV remote claims to control the volume of my receiver and it still sends volume commands to my TV.
Understand?
icloud photos and streaming simply does not work effectively, its woeful over everything else that works terrific. I simply do not get why at the very least thumbnail images of your photos cannot be automatically downloaded, but with that said it still takes a painfully long time to load an image when everything else works so fast.
So many posts here, but I'm trying to figure out if you can use TWO wireless game controllers with it, instead of the remote. Player one and Player two... Or is everything one player only?
> But Amazon's products also feel like a pitch to sell you into the Amazon ecosystem and its lineup of content
Not really much of a negative for FireTV, while Apple has offered such a disappointing product. FireTV has 4k and a SD card slot so it can be upgraded, if desired, to 128G, yet it still is only $99. Meanwhile Apple only just caught up by: having a remote that's no longer line-of-sight; allowing apps and games; voice searching (it's always been great on FireTV for me); and nice screen savers.
But I like FireTV's:
- groupings of types of things, making navigation way easier than my AppleTV
- support for PrimeVideo (the main reason I bought it originally)
- ability to delete things from Recent (wish Netflix had that)
- beautiful screenshots. No they don't animate, but they're gorgeous and quite varied.
- Amazon Music which is just like Apple Music, but included in the Prime subscription (though, tbh, I use it more on my iPhone and MBPro)
I wish Apple had made something much better than FireTV, but they just didn't. And as an Apple developer (since the days of Sculley) I don't see much opportunity in its app store, any more than the Watch. There just should have been more "there" there. Wait and see, I guess.
What is disappointing about it?
You do realize that Amazon won't put Prime Video on Apple TVs right? They won't even sell them!
For a lot of people, iTunes is the reason for getting an Apple TV, and Fire tv doesn't have it.
Amazon will never have equivalent apps. Not on phones, tablets or TVs. They might get "similar" ones, but the quality won't be the same.
And lastly, 4K... Really?! 4K. 4K streaming requires about 15 Mbps internet bandwidth, and the national average is HALF that! Also, fewer than 10% of US homes own a 4K tv. So 4K doesn't matter yet to Apple. In a few years, when iTunes starts to sell 4K content, they'll offer an upgraded version and/or enable 4K via firmware.
who looks at pictures on a tv? why not just use airplay
I do. Had the grandparents over to look at pictures from a recent vacation just a few days ago. Said pictures are stored on my local Mac - not iCloud. So no aTV4 for me until they fix local photo sharing.
Why not use airplay? Because the photos were not taken with an iPhone. They were dumped onto the hard drive from a different source.
So many posts here, but I'm trying to figure out if you can use TWO wireless game controllers with it, instead of the remote. Player one and Player two... Or is everything one player only?
I thought I remembered hearing about either 6 or 8 player support. But that might depend on type of controller (Siri remote, iOS devices, mfi game pads).
You've obviously never worked for a television provider, installer, or service company. If you believe this incorrect statistic, you'd be absolutely horrified at the number of coaxial and composite connections that are still used to connect STBs and DVRs to HDTVs resulting in incorrect aspect ratios and SD resolution. I get nauseated every time I see a new 4K TV getting video from a cable box through RF channel 3. It's more common than you might think.
Then, there are people with surround sound systems that place all 5 or 7 speakers right beside the TV, out-of-phase wiring, or failing to disable the TV speakers when external speakers are used. It's a huge mess. My OCD just wants to correct every improperly configured home theater system, but that's an impossible task that I don't have time for. To avoid going crazy(er), I just have to force myself to worry about my own equipment and let everyone else be happy with their junk.
any comments on how Siri works (or does not work) multilingual?
You definitely need to pronounce things a certain way for it to pick up correctly (0:55):
[VIDEO]
Apple might want to have a look at lowering the priority of certain words in the lookup. They already have Siri worldwide on iOS so it's unusual that they are holding back the rollout. They are supporting 8 countries and 5 languages:
Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom, United States
They must have forgotten Ireland speaks English too.
You do realize that Amazon won't put Prime Video on Apple TVs right? They won't even sell them!
For a lot of people, iTunes is the reason for getting an Apple TV, and Fire tv doesn't have it.
Amazon will never have equivalent apps. Not on phones, tablets or TVs. They might get "similar" ones, but the quality won't be the same.
And lastly, 4K... Really?! 4K. 4K streaming requires about 15 Mbps internet bandwidth, and the national average is HALF that! Also, fewer than 10% of US homes own a 4K tv. So 4K doesn't matter yet to Apple. In a few years, when iTunes starts to sell 4K content, they'll offer an upgraded version and/or enable 4K via firmware.
What's disappointing is that Apple could have delivered something like the ATV4 five years ago when they based it on the A4 and iOS, and developers could have built apps, and there would already be an ecosystem like the iPad's all these years, as the iPad came out that same year. They could have done a bluetooth remote instead of the line-of-sight one, which happens to be the remote I most easily lose. But now, 5 years later, they barely caught up to what Amazon produced 1.5 years ago. But then AppleTV4's new navigation is just inferior to Amazon's from 1.5 years ago; it just isn't any great design solution to the needs of such a box. (I'm not referring to voice-search -- FireTV has always had that.) And it's disappointing that they charge twice as much as Amazon or Roku. After 5 years of waiting, I expected more, so: "disappointment".
I only use my two AppleTVs for AirPlay; iTunes costs per-view, while Netflix and Prime are a better value to me. And a bonus with Prime is (on iPhone/iPad) I can download streamed episodes to watch offline. I originally got Prime just for the shipping benefit, but then they added a Netflix-like service and their Apple Music-like service, and the value proposition has just kept getting better. I don't know why Amazon Instant Video isn't on Apple TV, but Apple has prevented or removed other company's products from its Stores for various reasons, so it's likely due to one of the companies strategies. But Amazon Instant Video sells or rents most of what's on iTunes, so I don't find a need for iTunes video purchases. You said "for a lot of people...", and I'm only giving my own POV.
FireTV plays really good (not fantastic) games, like Sev Zero (FPS+tower defense). But I personally prefer to play games on an iPad or iPhone, and if I wanted better games than the FireTV, I'd get a PlayStation or Xbox, not an ATV4.
Regarding 4K, I have a 6s, about which Apple says: "It takes brilliant 4K video, up to four times the resolution of 1080p HD video." So on that basis, I'd disagree that "4K doesn't matter yet to Apple." It still feels to me that it's AppleTV that doesn't matter enough to Apple; they didn't leapfrog their competitors like I had hoped they would. I am not the only one disappointed that they left 4K out, since Roku and FireTV include it.
Regarding lack of digital-audio out: For my projector (which doesn't feed out its audio signal) I use a splitter from J-Tech, which takes 4 HDMI inputs, can send any of them to its two HDMI outputs, and includes digital audio out to boot. For my HDTV in another room, I discovered my ole' Samsung has digital-audio out, so I let it switch between AppleTV, Roku, and the DVD player, and then take the TV's audio out into a Sony home theater box. I was sooo happy to find that audio-out.
Had to switch back to my older Apple TV due to severe limitations with music: playlists seem to only take 250 tracks each, plus you can't shuffle in a playlist. While the missing shuffle may be fixed, the 250 song limit seems to be on purpose, and may stay with us.
That means you can't use it as your personal shuffle-based radio station, which seems like key functionality for a living room device. I would think any comprehensive review would need to mention that.
Also, obvious bugs, I have to say I've never seen software so poorly designed and tested from Apple since, well, a long time ago (move a song into a new playlist, move to the next song, try to add to same playlist, can't, create new one with same name, now you have 2 playlists with same name!)
And why can't I play out to multiple devices? At least fix that!
Comments
I just don't understand why they included the lightning cord but no wall charger adapter? There is also no USB-C or mini-displayport out on the back of this device, so it cannot be used easily with high res monitors. I guess that makes sense if you have no 4k support, but just as HDMI was a huge improvement over RGB-A cords you used to have to run for better than low def content (read, single cord to rule them all), the much smaller USB-C or mini-displayport cords are a huge improvement to the wire nest most people fight with TV, AV receiver, game console(s), apple tv, TV tuner/DVR you already struggle to keep tidy.
Wireless video standards exist:
- WiDi by intel
- WirelessHD by LG, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Onkyo and Yamaha
- Wireless USB (dongle required for TV)
- WHDI from Sony, LG, Hitachi, Samsung and Sharp
- WiGig from Dell, Intel, Nokia, and Texas Instruments, Panasonic, Samsung and Toshiba
- WiVu which is proprietary but supports 1080p 2D and 3D video over home wifi
- Wifi-Display described as "HDMI over Wi-Fi" over a Wi-Fi Direct connection
- Oh, and AirPlay, which is that venerable old protocol Apple's been kicking around a while you may have heard of
So then why, in their war against ports, have Apple decided to adopt HDMI and reconcile USB-C to a service port for restoring the unit to factory software rather than giving us things that are actually what we need to move the world forward toward an intelligent future? I understand bluetooth not being an appropriate tech if there are many other BT devices present as the noise would quickly cause interference problems, but wifi is far more resilient to this and NFC devices similarly exist to solve these problems. The industry needs to get it together on a wireless video standard that holds its weight so consumers can escape the hardwired hell of dust bunnies and snake nests that live behind our tvs.
Here are my reasons:
1. Touchpad not accurate enough.
2. I was surprised that it found volume control for my TV. I did it not think that it was a universal code for all TVs. Going to Settings and Audio I was surprised it found my Pioneer VSX-1031 receiver. I set the audio to the receiver but it did not work. It still went to the TV volume control.
3. HBONow app is a disaster with European date styles and no discernible chronological order of episodes.
4. HBONow also does not remember where you left off in an episode other than one time and insists on returning to a spot 5 minutes into the episode which was the spot I left off the first time I stopped viewing the episode.
5. Siri is a big miss. Did not understand my commands and could not find the shows like HBO Real Time. My iPhone and Apple Watch Siri understand me but Apple TV Siri is a dummy.
This Apple TV is a real disappointment to me. I understand that the faults are in software which is fixable. But this product is below the high quality standard I expect from Apple. I will not spend my money ($487 for two 64 Gig units and Apple Care) and be frustrated while using it.
This product is still in the hobby phase and not ready for prime time.
I am mystified by the decision to include a USB-A to Lightning cable, but then put a USB-C port on the box and not include a USB-A to C adapter so that the remote could be charged by the aTV. "Here's a cable. Sorry, you can't plug it into the aTV. Oh, there is a USB port on the aTV, but you can't use it for anything."
See http://www.monoprice.com/Product?p_id=13005. I expect a lot of these will be sold.
You say that some of my complaints are with HBONow. You are right but some are not: touchpad, volume control, Siri.
I am not looking to justify my upset with this product. I read some glowing reviews and others that were harsh on the deficiencies. Before I received my unit, I thought the bad reviews were outliers. Now I know that my opinion is in line with the bad reviews.
Educate yourself about volume control for receivers (use the IR learning setting)
Dude, what part of "Going to Settings and Audio I was surprised it found my Pioneer VSX-1031 receiver. I set the audio to the receiver but it did not work. It still went to the TV volume control." do you not understand? He selected his receiver in the audio settings. The aTV remote _still_ tried to control his TV.
Thats the wrong way to do it.
The right way is to turn off TV audio in the settings
Then teach the AppleTV volume settings using the receiver remote.
So the aTV is smart enough to give you a choice of using your receiver for audio output, but then it is dumb enough to still send volume commands to the TV? That sounds like a UX design flaw to me - regardless of whether instructions on how to do it "right" are in a manual somewhere.
1. Where do you set the trackpad speed? It is not like I have a manual.
2. I selected the Pioneer receiver in the Audio section of the Settings. Apple cannot figure out the IR command from that information by looking it up in a database? I thought by selecting the Apple TV recognized receiver, I was done. Where is the learn command which should be unnecessary if you have the receiver information?
3. I spoke very clearly and slowly and the Siri performance was terrible unlike the Siri with my iPhone 6 Plus and my Apple Watch.
4. I have already contacted HBO about their terrible HBONow app.
Thank you for your reply and any forthcoming answers in advance. One advice: Don't pull out the "troll" accusation on everyone who points out deficiencies in Apple products. I just learned that myself from your post.
My complaint is totally different. Apple TV remote claims to control the volume of my receiver and it still sends volume commands to my TV.
Understand?
What is disappointing about it?
You do realize that Amazon won't put Prime Video on Apple TVs right? They won't even sell them!
For a lot of people, iTunes is the reason for getting an Apple TV, and Fire tv doesn't have it.
Amazon will never have equivalent apps. Not on phones, tablets or TVs. They might get "similar" ones, but the quality won't be the same.
And lastly, 4K... Really?! 4K. 4K streaming requires about 15 Mbps internet bandwidth, and the national average is HALF that! Also, fewer than 10% of US homes own a 4K tv. So 4K doesn't matter yet to Apple. In a few years, when iTunes starts to sell 4K content, they'll offer an upgraded version and/or enable 4K via firmware.
who looks at pictures on a tv? why not just use airplay
I do. Had the grandparents over to look at pictures from a recent vacation just a few days ago. Said pictures are stored on my local Mac - not iCloud. So no aTV4 for me until they fix local photo sharing.
Why not use airplay? Because the photos were not taken with an iPhone. They were dumped onto the hard drive from a different source.
I thought I remembered hearing about either 6 or 8 player support. But that might depend on type of controller (Siri remote, iOS devices, mfi game pads).
HDMI is used by 99% of HD homes today.
You've obviously never worked for a television provider, installer, or service company. If you believe this incorrect statistic, you'd be absolutely horrified at the number of coaxial and composite connections that are still used to connect STBs and DVRs to HDTVs resulting in incorrect aspect ratios and SD resolution. I get nauseated every time I see a new 4K TV getting video from a cable box through RF channel 3. It's more common than you might think.
Then, there are people with surround sound systems that place all 5 or 7 speakers right beside the TV, out-of-phase wiring, or failing to disable the TV speakers when external speakers are used. It's a huge mess. My OCD just wants to correct every improperly configured home theater system, but that's an impossible task that I don't have time for. To avoid going crazy(er), I just have to force myself to worry about my own equipment and let everyone else be happy with their junk.
You definitely need to pronounce things a certain way for it to pick up correctly (0:55):
[VIDEO]
Apple might want to have a look at lowering the priority of certain words in the lookup. They already have Siri worldwide on iOS so it's unusual that they are holding back the rollout. They are supporting 8 countries and 5 languages:
Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom, United States
They must have forgotten Ireland speaks English too.
What is disappointing about it?
You do realize that Amazon won't put Prime Video on Apple TVs right? They won't even sell them!
For a lot of people, iTunes is the reason for getting an Apple TV, and Fire tv doesn't have it.
Amazon will never have equivalent apps. Not on phones, tablets or TVs. They might get "similar" ones, but the quality won't be the same.
And lastly, 4K... Really?! 4K. 4K streaming requires about 15 Mbps internet bandwidth, and the national average is HALF that! Also, fewer than 10% of US homes own a 4K tv. So 4K doesn't matter yet to Apple. In a few years, when iTunes starts to sell 4K content, they'll offer an upgraded version and/or enable 4K via firmware.
What's disappointing is that Apple could have delivered something like the ATV4 five years ago when they based it on the A4 and iOS, and developers could have built apps, and there would already be an ecosystem like the iPad's all these years, as the iPad came out that same year. They could have done a bluetooth remote instead of the line-of-sight one, which happens to be the remote I most easily lose. But now, 5 years later, they barely caught up to what Amazon produced 1.5 years ago. But then AppleTV4's new navigation is just inferior to Amazon's from 1.5 years ago; it just isn't any great design solution to the needs of such a box. (I'm not referring to voice-search -- FireTV has always had that.) And it's disappointing that they charge twice as much as Amazon or Roku. After 5 years of waiting, I expected more, so: "disappointment".
I only use my two AppleTVs for AirPlay; iTunes costs per-view, while Netflix and Prime are a better value to me. And a bonus with Prime is (on iPhone/iPad) I can download streamed episodes to watch offline. I originally got Prime just for the shipping benefit, but then they added a Netflix-like service and their Apple Music-like service, and the value proposition has just kept getting better. I don't know why Amazon Instant Video isn't on Apple TV, but Apple has prevented or removed other company's products from its Stores for various reasons, so it's likely due to one of the companies strategies. But Amazon Instant Video sells or rents most of what's on iTunes, so I don't find a need for iTunes video purchases. You said "for a lot of people...", and I'm only giving my own POV.
FireTV plays really good (not fantastic) games, like Sev Zero (FPS+tower defense). But I personally prefer to play games on an iPad or iPhone, and if I wanted better games than the FireTV, I'd get a PlayStation or Xbox, not an ATV4.
Regarding 4K, I have a 6s, about which Apple says: "It takes brilliant 4K video, up to four times the resolution of 1080p HD video." So on that basis, I'd disagree that "4K doesn't matter yet to Apple." It still feels to me that it's AppleTV that doesn't matter enough to Apple; they didn't leapfrog their competitors like I had hoped they would. I am not the only one disappointed that they left 4K out, since Roku and FireTV include it.
Regarding lack of digital-audio out: For my projector (which doesn't feed out its audio signal) I use a splitter from J-Tech, which takes 4 HDMI inputs, can send any of them to its two HDMI outputs, and includes digital audio out to boot. For my HDTV in another room, I discovered my ole' Samsung has digital-audio out, so I let it switch between AppleTV, Roku, and the DVD player, and then take the TV's audio out into a Sony home theater box. I was sooo happy to find that audio-out.
Irish people are cool as hell but not too sure they are speaking English ????
That means you can't use it as your personal shuffle-based radio station, which seems like key functionality for a living room device. I would think any comprehensive review would need to mention that.
Also, obvious bugs, I have to say I've never seen software so poorly designed and tested from Apple since, well, a long time ago (move a song into a new playlist, move to the next song, try to add to same playlist, can't, create new one with same name, now you have 2 playlists with same name!)
And why can't I play out to multiple devices? At least fix that!