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Apple TV 4K With 64GB is Back in Stock After Extended Shipping Delays
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No networks are going to allow offline storage of streaming content these days on a new service. I doubt Apple would even bother to try to license something like that anyways. I'm not sure where people get this idea that Apple is going to create a DVR that stores data on the Apple TV. That would be the opposite of where the industry is going.
I think we are just trying to figure what the different storage tiers were ever for..
Even their own sales page for it mentions absolutely nothing that would indicate why one would want more storage.
Whether to get a 32GB or 64GB ATV gets asked a lot. On the surface, it doesn't seem like there is a reason to get a 64GB, but I may have found uses for it.
I while back, I was wondering if I could fill up the space on my ATV4 64GB. I started downloading any free game I could, plus some paid ones that looked interesting.
Using the Storage app, I would watch the space available go down into less than 1GB, only to have the OS free up space, usually 10GB of space. This continued for a long while, and the OS would keep clearing out cache every time I got close to filled. I never ran out of space.
I forget how many apps I have install, probably 400+, but many of them are relatively small. There are a few games that take up quite a bit of space, but most of them are small.
Now, one might think that this means the 64GB is pointless, but I don't think so. A problem I noticed after having so many apps installed, is that the tvOS runs sluggish, freezes, and sometimes reloads and restarts itself when using a lot of different apps in a short period of time. This is especially true for video app, such as Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, HBO....
While this might not be typical behavior of the average ATV user, I tend to go from app to app to app in a really short period of time. Example, some games give daily tokens to use/give, and I might play many games daily to use/collect the free currency. As for video apps, sometimes I will start watching something, then change it to something else.
These things seem to cause the tvOS to become unstable. I assume it was because I was constantly needing more space, and the OS would free up space.
Also, it seemed like the task of freeing up space also was taxing on the OS, as this is usually when I would see the slowdowns.
Keep in mind that this was on a 64GB, so I assume that this would be worse on the 32GB.
So, I think the 64GB does have a use, and that is keeping things long term in the cache.
All that said, I do plan on my next ATV4K to be a 32GB, but only because I could get that under the DTN promotion for really cheap. If I was to pay full price, I would get the 64GB one.
Games and Apple profit.
64gb would never be enough to use for storage for a DVR anyways. Local storage for DVRs is a dying market. Apple doesn't move into dying markets.
This one in particular..
In terms of DVR, I was thinking more of a large buffer for pause/rewind of live content through the service anyhow
True it is only $20 more. That has nothing to do with your assumption though. There is literally no correlation.
Cloud based TV services store the buffer remotely. There would be no need for much storage.