We bought an Apple TV 4K this weekend as a hopeful replacement for a 10 year old Mac mini that has reliably served as an HTPC.
I've never understood all the negativity for iTunes. We dropped cable, I suppose, about 15 years ago and started purchasing movies and shows from iTunes as soon as they were offered. We've built up a huge library of premium content, just the content, that we enjoy again and again and again. And, we purchased on our budget and our schedule. Cutting back when our budget didn't permit, and only buying quality content. iTunes has had minor UI/UX issues from time to time, but always enjoyable and functional, even for many thousands of movies, shows, and songs.
It's been great, and affordable, but this push towards subscribing for every network just seems ridiculously expensive.
So, we love the hardware, the remote, the voice control, and the software are just premium, but the push to subscriptions is repulsive. If the trend continues, the Apple TV and Apple TV app are going to become worthless, at least to us, because we do like to purchase content on our schedule, our budget. We like that level of control, and the ability to continue to enjoy our library of purchases. Meaning, it only has value to us as a media center and way to make purchases for our library, not as a never ending, expensive subscription portal.
Surely the trend cannot continue. Are people really willing, wanting to pay hundreds of dollars a month for a handful of shows from dozens of "channels".