aTV4 improvements

[bergert]

Great news:
* remote is great: scrolling is superb
* controls volume of HDMI attached TV
* scrolling (scrubbing) for video and audio is great
* finally - removed the silly screen saver (moving artwork left-right-left) needed only to avoid burn-in on plasma: not required on LED displays.


I still recommend it over aTV3, but there are a few shortcomings:
* no TOSLINK out (music sounds great on a surround-amp)
* AirPlay only streams to one speaker a time (turns off TV sound; no multi-speaker)
* Siri cannot search home sharing content (asked Siri why; answer: "because the app does not support it")
* No Siri commands on home-sharing playlists (Music, Movies, TVshows: only for what is on the screen)
* Siri search is iTunes Store only (always streams from store, ignores purchased content readily available on home-sharing)
* Music display does not show the year of the album (bug!)
* HomeSharing video/tvshows have no meta-data (description)

Edit: updated for iOS9.1:
* Music on home sharing: open Artist, open Album was fixed with 9.1

summary: positive, with lots of room for improvement (great hardware, software good but not great)

 

[2010mini]

Great news:
* remote is great: scrolling is superb
* controls volume of HDMI attached TV
* scrolling (scrubbing) for video and audio is great
* finally - removed the silly screen saver (moving artwork left-right-left) needed only to avoid burn-in on plasma: not required on LED displays.


I still recommend it over aTV3, but there are a few shortcomings:
* no TOSLINK out (music sounds great on a surround-amp)
* AirPlay only streams to one speaker a time (turns off TV sound; no multi-speaker)
* Siri cannot search home sharing content (asked Siri why; answer: "because the app does not support it")
* No Siri commands on home-sharing playlists (not even what is on screen)
* Siri search is iTunes Store only (does not even know what is purchased, ignores purchased content on home-sharing)
* Music display does not show the year of the album (bug!)
* HomeSharing video/tvshows have no meta-data (director, actors, description, year)

summary: positive, with lots of room for improvement (great hardware, software good but not great)

I wonder what tvOS 2.0 will bring???