Anyone else uninterested in a 4K Apple TV at this point?

[brucewayne]

I just bought the 900E after a serious comparison with the 850E. It is by far worth every extra $$$. The picture is nothing short of amazing, and the best contrast you can get without going OLED. IMHO the best 4k HDR LED TV on the market.

Nice to see some x900e love on this thread. I bought one a few weeks ago after going to best buy to buy an 850e. There is a noticeable difference in quality between the 65x850e and the 65x900e that easily justified the $300 difference. The 930e ($1000 more) gets a little brighter and the 65a1e ($2000 more) oled has better absolute black level but the 900e is 90% as good for less than half the price.

Best Buy has the 65x900e on sale again for $1799.
[doublepost=1506483665][/doublepost]to the OP original question - I preordered 2 ATV4k and my card was just charged so presumably they will ship soon. That said, I'm likely to return them. We subscribe to Amazon, Hulu and Netflix and I have an extensive Plex library and some iTunes purchases as well - I was hoping to have one device to cover all of it but I'm disappointed by the reviews of the forced upscaling and synthesized HDR unless I change settings for every different piece of content. And the lack of Atmos capability and not having Amazon at launch is ridiculous. Dear Apple, let my content play out natively so my receiver and TV which have far better processing can do their job.

 

[Jeans89]

I cancelled my order of ATV 4k. It seems waste of money as I have almost all the apps in my LG smart TV.

 

[Mac 128]

Nice to see some x900e love on this thread. I bought one a few weeks ago after going to best buy to buy an 850e. There is a noticeable difference in quality between the 65x850e and the 65x900e that easily justified the $300 difference. The 930e ($1000 more) gets a little brighter and the 65a1e ($2000 more) oled has better absolute black level but the 900e is 90% as good for less than half the price.

Best Buy has the 65x900e on sale again for $1799.
[doublepost=1506483665][/doublepost]to the OP original question - I preordered 2 ATV4k and my card was just charged so presumably they will ship soon. That said, I'm likely to return them. We subscribe to Amazon, Hulu and Netflix and I have an extensive Plex library and some iTunes purchases as well - I was hoping to have one device to cover all of it but I'm disappointed by the reviews of the forced upscaling and synthesized HDR unless I change settings for every different piece of content. And the lack of Atmos capability and not having Amazon at launch is ridiculous. Dear Apple, let my content play out natively so my receiver and TV which have far better processing can do their job.

Also, I do not believe that the ATV 4K will stream 4K videos from iTunes HomeSharing. All the 4K videos I tested would not play on the ATV with the message, video unsupported. The only 4K videos I could get to play were my iPhone 4K videos (which had the exact same specs as some of the other files which would not play), and those did not look like 4K, they didn't even look like 720p.

I cancelled my order of ATV 4k. It seems waste of money as I have almost all the apps in my LG smart TV.

I have all the apps I use regularly on my Sony 900E as well. I will definitely feel the loss of the ATV 4K, since it removes the burden from the TV's processor and everything runs much more smoothly now. I can actually adjust picture settings, or change the volume without laggy delays in the menu/function response, and no more stutters or reduced picture quality in the streaming video.

I actually preferred the LG WebOS much more than I do the Android TV OS on my 900E, however, either way, in addition to improving the overall performance, the ATV also gives me access to my iTunes purchases (including free upgrade to 4K versions for my previous purchases), AirPlay, and HomeSharing, as well as access to my entire Apple ecosystem in iCloud. For that alone, it's worth every penny. If you don't use any of those things, or otherwise invested in Apple's ecosystem beyond your actual hardware, then you're fine with just the smart apps built into your set, assuming there are no performance issues as I have. But you can't really make a blanket statement like yours without qualifying it.

 

[scouser75]

I haven't read anything about bad 1080p output. What happens is that by default all content on the 4K ATV is upscaled to 4K. I think that's what people are complaining about. I have it manually set to 1080p SDR right now and the picture is fantastic. Other than 720p streaming programs, the 1080p SDR should be native stream outputs straight to my TV which does the upscaling to 4K.

But again, I'm not sure you need to spend the extra money now on the 4K model, if you have no intention of upgrading your TV for the next two years. I expect Apple to launch the ATV 5 in less time than that. Of course, if you think there's a possibility you may buy a 4K TV in the next year then it would be worth it to get the ATV 4K now. Again, absent any 1080p issues, which I have not seen myself, nor really read about outside of the forced upscaling issue.

You're right. I should save my dough for now. I had the opportunity yesterday to pick up the ATV4 for £90. But because I faffed I missed out on it! But I'll keep looking out for a good deal.

 

[zone23]

All I really use my Apple TV 3 is to listen to music on my receiver and I had to buy a box to break out the optical fiber on top of it (I like to listen to music and watch sports). So not really interested in throwing more money at it, this box should have been 4K.

 

[Donfor39]

You're right. I should save my dough for now. I had the opportunity yesterday to pick up the ATV4 for £90. But because I faffed I missed out on it! But I'll keep looking out for a good deal.

90 excellent I’ve never held off buying a product this length of time until ap tv 4K.

Enjoying the reviews etc since launch.

Trying to detemine what quality I’ll get from Sony 4K non hdr t.v.

At least Argos have stock for delivery -2 days if I take a purchase today or tomorrow.

I’ll be very dissappointed if there’s is any stuttering/low quality 4k playback from rentals.

Though from what I can establish is I’ll set ap tv to SDR and let my Sony upscale to 4K.

 

[Mac 128]

90 excellent I’ve never held off buying a product this length of time until ap tv 4K.

Enjoying the reviews etc since launch.

Trying to detemine what quality I’ll get from Sony 4K non hdr t.v.

At least Argos have stock for delivery -2 days if I take a purchase today or tomorrow.

I’ll be very dissappointed if there’s is any stuttering/low quality 4k playback from rentals.

Though from what I can establish is I’ll set ap tv to SDR and let my Sony upscale to 4K.

So you have a Sony 4K TV without HDR? If so, depending on which is better, will determine whether you let the ATV or the Sony TV upscale any non-4K content. Obviously you'll want to set the ATV to 4K SDR for native 4K signals. And if it does a better job than your Sony 4K, at upscaling 1080p and 720p HD signals, then you're all set. If the Sony does a better job, then your in the same boat and will have to switch back and forth between 720p, 1080p and 4K SDR.

 

[ZivaD]

Don't have a 4k TV, don't want one. Still using my two AppleTV 3's and they meet my need, which is just accessing a large library of ripped DVD's. Moved to my current rural location in 2006 with no cable service and only very slow DSL internet. I used to watch cable TV heavily but I quit cold turkey back then and it was the best thing that ever happened to me, freed up a lot of time that I've put to better use.

Just got 150/150 FIOS a couple months ago, so now I have a big enough pipe for whatever content I want, but I don't see it changing much in my media consumption habits.

I use mine the same way as you, but I’ve updated to the new unit, I have never bought a thing from iTunes.

 

[brucewayne]

All I really use my Apple TV 3 is to listen to music on my receiver and I had to buy a box to break out the optical fiber on top of it (I like to listen to music and watch sports). So not really interested in throwing more money at it, this box should have been 4K.

The Apple TV 3 was introduced in March 2012. 4k content was nearly non-existent and there were very few 4k TVs available at the consumer level and were ridiculously expensive - for example LG and Sony released their first 4k sets in the US in November 2012 and they were both over 20,000. It wasn't until a year after the ATV3 was released that a 4k TV broke the $5k barrier.

A good case could be made that the ATV4 should have been 4k capable but its a bit ridiculous expecting the ATV3 to have been.

 

[zone23]

The Apple TV 3 was introduced in March 2012. 4k content was nearly non-existent and there were very few 4k TVs available at the consumer level and were ridiculously expensive - for example LG and Sony released their first 4k sets in the US in November 2012 and they were both over 20,000. It wasn't until a year after the ATV3 was released that a 4k TV broke the $5k barrier.

A good case could be made that the ATV4 should have been 4k capable but its a bit ridiculous expecting the ATV3 to have been.

You know I get ATV 3 and 4 mixed up I mean what is the new one the 5? I don't know.. I'm talking about the last model.

 

[sanvito]

I cancelled my order of ATV 4k. It seems waste of money as I have almost all the apps in my LG smart TV.

3 reasons you will come back:

1. D O L B Y A T M O S is on it's way. I have a DA sound system and it's awesome.

2. The programming on LG OLED apps look fuzzy, ATV has better picture quality. Plus it offers lip sync frame rate features.

3. Toggle between SDR, HDR, Dolby Vision, at 4K or 1080 rates. What this means is if you watch a show made for 480/720p, such as a western movie from the 1950's, changing the ATV in settings to SDR 4K, offers a much better picture than HDR. Even recent TV shows such as ER, is much better in SDR mode.

However, LG's YOUTUBE app offers 4K HDR. ATV only does 1080 on their youtube app, and this will never change due to codec differences.