ATV4 -- a UK review

Did the Now TV app add any new features over the old Apple TV? Does it remember TV series you're watching for example, box sets series and episode, make recommendations, etc. The Now TV box does that well, the old Now TV app on Apple TV did none of the discovery stuff.

 

Thanks. Generally interested to see if they've bothered to do anything extra.

I agree with your conclusion: "this is a good box that's going to become a great box in time." It's why I haven't picked one up in the UK yet. Once the catchup services get added (iPlayer, 4oD, ITV Player, 5) and there are more UK-specific apps integrated with siri, it'll be the best box of its kind. But I'm not rushing in and buying the new box in the UK until the apps and content offerings arrive.

The wife already has a couple connected up in our home in the US. But I haven't been home to play with them yet.

 

Are you sure you are the same person who wrote this: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/just-ordered-my-apple-tv-4.1932012/#post-22143883
???

 

Yep as I said we bought them for our home in the US already. I did intend on buying a few more, but I'm not getting burned in the UK again until the apps are here.

 

sorry, overlooked your last sentence. I was just thrown because your writing style now seem to differ significantly from your usual postings, so I wondered if there was account hijacking going on. Just ignore me

 

Hmm I see the omissions post lists basically the things I wanted at least added - all missing. Not a great start for the UK launch of ATV4 with all the other important UK TV apps missing and a shoddy Now TV implementation ported over from ATV3.

 

I agree that the "linear keyboard" is better or at least not worse than the ATV3 on-screen keyboard with the touch remote (especially if you know the shortcut to switch between lower and upper case). The thing is that on-screen keyboards in general suck for entering more complex strings and they already had better solutions for this (the Remote app and Bluetooth keyboard support). It's just puzzling why this was dropped. It's equally puzzling why it's not possible to use Siri to dictate search terms into text boxes. I really hope both issues will be solved, since setting this thing up is really not a good first impression.

It actually doesn't, since it works over Bluetooth. When setting mine up I never had to enter my Wifi password (thank god, since it's very long and complex). But this already worked on the ATV3.

 

Yes, obviously. How else would it know which Wifi password to send to the Apple TV.

 

The ITV Player app is a complete joke. It used to work fine but over the years the 'updates' have rendered it useless. Now it constantly lags, will play about ten seconds on content where there should be an ad break, repeats ads over and over (and cuts some off). AirPlay gives us only sound throught the ATV (video stays on iOS device) (using ATV3), and mirroring is completely unusable due to stuttering.

 

Why would it need to do that if the Apple TV is connected via ethernet to the router in the first place which is the way mine is connected. When I set mine up using my iPhone it wouldn't work at first as the wi-fi wasn't on on my iPhone. I got an error message and was asked to turn on wi-fi on the iPhone first. Then the setup worked. There is no logical reason for this as far as I can see as both the Apple TV and the iPhone have bluetooth and I would assume it was turned on on the Apple TV. The bluetooth was certainly on on my iPhone. Apart from that it was pretty straight forward though and easy to set up.

 

In that case it obviously wouldn't. But if you use a wired connection the phone-aided setup doesn't gain you much anyway since you don't have to enter a Wifi password (and you'll still have to enter the iCloud password several times after setup to sign into the app store, homesharing etc.). They probably designed the process for the most common case.

 

Let's be honest about this there's Apple TV for the U.S. (the only market Apple really cares about) then there's Apple TV lite for the rest of us.

I have an Apple TV which I now rarely use apart from streaming the odd iTunes movie from my iMac etc. However, there are now so many other options available to the consumer most of which are more feature rich than ATV that the whole experience is redundant.

I certainly won't be getting burnt again by purchasing another ATV. With the exception of Netfilx I'm no longer interested in pay TV in any event whether that is from Murdoch or anyone else. Given Netflix is on most other devices I think only the really loyal or blind Apple fan would choose ATV over the other options available.

 

I just picked up the new Apple TV today, and I have my Netflix set to the American version through a DNS change but Siri does not seem to find anything when I search. Anybody managed a work round with this? Thanks in advance.

 

There's a shortcut?!

 

You may like to know that the iPlayer channel within Plex works really well for catch-up (but not live). It also has the advantage of Plex's interface which I prefer to most of the native iPlayer implementations.

 

I don't own one [yet?] but from what I've heard if you push the Play/Pause button once, it changes the keyboard between uppercase and lowercase... hope I haven't misled you. :x

 

Nope, that's spot on. It certainly beats swiping down to the case selector.

 

Is that ATV4 only or 3, too?

 

I was being lazy...if you hold down the central button on ATV3, you get the multiple character selection.