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ATV4K 64GB on Apple's refurbished store

Juicy Box

Juicy Box

macrumors 604
Original poster
Sep 23, 2014
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Apple is selling the 64GB ATV4K on their refurbished store for $169.

It is not there often, so if you were thinking about getting a 64GB 4K version, this is probably the best deal you are going to get.

There is also the 32GB ATV4, and the 32GB ATV4K, but I wouldn't recommend getting the non-4K version, and I have seen better deals for the 32GB ATV4k.

I am not sure if DirecTV now deal is still going on, but last summer I got a free 32GB ATV4K with prepaying for 3 months of service, so $105 for 3 months of TV and a free 32GB ATV4K.

Sadly, I found out that the 32GB ATV4K ran out of storage, so I end up giving it away to my parents.

Anyways, if you were looking for a 64GB version, check out the link. Don't hesitate on buying, because they don't last long, and it might be a while before they show up on the refurbished store.
 
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I got the deal from DirecTV too for $73 USD by signing up for the service via befrugal.com.

I don’t download apps so 32 GB is fine for me so far.

I was contemplating the refurbished model as well until I found the DirecTV deal.
 
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vertical smile said:
The 64GB ATV4K is back on the refurbished store. If you were thinking about getting one, the refurbished store is probably the best price you are going to see for the 64GB model.

https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/appletv
Click to expand...
It's available on the Canadian Apple site too.

I sold my 10 month old 32 GB version for a profit and bought a new 64 GB version using my credit card reward points during boxing week.
 
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They are back!

The Apple refurbished 64GB ATV4K is back on Apple's refurbished store.

If you were thinking of picking one up, this is typically the best price ($169) around for the 64GB 4K model.

They also have the 32GB HD for $129 and the 32GB 4k for $149, but better deals can usually be found for them.

https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/appletv
[doublepost=1554842685][/doublepost]BTW, when did Apple remove the "4" from the "Apple TV 4 and replace it with "Apple TV HD"?
 
The 32 GB showed up on the Apple.ca website yesterday and both are still available today.

I traded in an iPhone 6s on Wednesday for a $230 gift card that I used to buy a refurbished 4k 64 GB.
 
The 64GB ATV4k is back on the refurbished store.

It seems to be appearing more often than it used to.

In addition to the 64GB ATV4K, the 32GB ATV4K, 64GB ATV HD, and 32GB ATV HD are also on the Apple Refurbished page, if you were thinking of picking on up.
 
I haven't seen the 64GB ATV4k in a while, right now, both 32Gb and 64GB ATV4k are absent from Apple's Refurbished store.

But, the ATV4 or ATVHD in both 32Gb and 64GB is on the refurbished store. Although, I wouldn't recommend to buy them, as they are overpriced for what you are getting imo.
 
The 64 GB 4K model was on the Canadian refurb store yesterday when I ordered my 32 GB.

Weirdly enough though, I saw it online online only through Safari on Apple's site. Neither the 32 GB nor the 64 GB model showed up in the Apple Store app on my iPhone. Then only ones available in the app were the HD models.
 
The 64GB ATV4K is back on Apple's Refurbished Store, along with the 32GB ATV4K, and the 32GB and 64GB ATV4.

If you are planning/thinking of buying a 64GB ATV4K, this is your chance to get one at $169, versus $199 at full retail price.

It typically doesn't stay on the Refurbished Store for very long.


Here is the link:
https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/appletv
 
I’m curious. What do people use the extra storage for? Games? My understanding is that movies and TV are always streamed, and most non-game apps aren’t very large.

For the 1080p model, 32 GB was more than plenty for us so that’s what I got for the 4K model.
 
EugW said:
I’m curious. What do people use the extra storage for? Games? My understanding is that movies and TV are always streamed, and most non-game apps aren’t very large.
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The 32GB ATV4K would be perfectly fine for most users, imo.

But, even if you do not have a lot of apps stored on your ATV, the system still uses the extra space to cache data.

If you plan on downloading a lot of apps, especially games, you can fill up a 32GB ATV. Some people on the forum have claimed that it is impossible to fill a 32GB ATV, but I have.

Since I have a lot of stuff stored on my 64GB ATV, I also cannot use the One Home Screen feature with a 32Gb ATV, as I have tried, and it will not sync up because of lack of space.

But a big reason is that the 64GB version is just a little bit more than the 32GB version. If one was going to pay full retail prices for an ATV, I would recommend just getting the 64GB version for the reasons above, and that it is just a relatively tiny bit more money.

Now, if you could get a really good deal on a 32GB ATV4K, then I would consider getting the smaller of the two.

EugW said:
For the 1080p model, 32 GB was more than plenty for us so that’s what I got for the 4K model.
Click to expand...
One thing about the 4K models is that the Aerial Screen Savers take up a lot of space. The OS will delete them, or just not download them if there is a lot of stuff stored on your ATV, or if the OS needs to free up space.

Another thing, when the OS is caching 4K video, I would bet that this would take up a whole lot more space than 1080p streams, so if you are viewing 4K content, then there would be less space to cache stuff.
 
vertical smile said:
The 32GB ATV4K would be perfectly fine for most users, imo.

But, even if you do not have a lot of apps stored on your ATV, the system still uses the extra space to cache data.

If you plan on downloading a lot of apps, especially games, you can fill up a 32GB ATV. Some people on the forum have claimed that it is impossible to fill a 32GB ATV, but I have.

Since I have a lot of stuff stored on my 64GB ATV, I also cannot use the One Home Screen feature with a 32Gb ATV, as I have tried, and it will not sync up because of lack of space.

But a big reason is that the 64GB version is just a little bit more than the 32GB version. If one was going to pay full retail prices for an ATV, I would recommend just getting the 64GB version for the reasons above, and that it is just a relatively tiny bit more money.

Now, if you could get a really good deal on a 32GB ATV4K, then I would consider getting the smaller of the two.


One thing about the 4K models is that the Aerial Screen Savers take up a lot of space. The OS will delete them, or just not download them if there is a lot of stuff stored on your ATV, or if the OS needs to free up space.

Another thing, when the OS is caching 4K video, I would bet that this would take up a whole lot more space than 1080p streams, so if you are viewing 4K content, then there would be less space to cache stuff.
Click to expand...
A cache for a 4K stream would likely only be a few hundred MB. For example, Netflix 4K is 15.3 Mbps. To cache a full two minutes of content would only require 230 MB. AFAIK, these caches are deleted as soon as you exit the Movies app.

For mainstream apps, they range from as low as 1 MB up to around 250 MB each. It seems the games are the big ones, and Apple has increased the max size limit up to 4 GB, for the assets.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/01/12/apple-boosts-tvos-app-size-limit-to-4gb

However, I don't play any games, so that's moot for me. Perhaps when my kids get older then they'll be playing games, but I figure if that time comes I'll be buying a new Apple TV anyway with a faster performing SoC. Also, tvOS 13 reduces app download and update sizes too, due to a new app packaging method.

Anyhow, I bought the refurb 32 GB model for CAD$189 (US$144). Mind you, the 64 GB model would have only been $20 more at CAD$209 (US$159).

I'm guessing for iOS 13 you need about 2.5 GB for the OS, plus about 2.5 GB of extra space to download full updates, so that's about 5 GB. Then you need say 10 GB for caching, screensavers, and several dozen mainstream apps. So, that's about half the storage of a 32 GB model, leaving us enough room for about 3-5 big games (but as mentioned, I don't play games).
 
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EugW said:
A cache for a 4K stream would likely only be a few hundred MB.
Click to expand...
Is this a guess or are do you have a source on this? I have noticed a lot more data being cached with 4K streams, far more than just a few hundred MBs.

EugW said:
AFAIK, these caches are deleted as soon as you exit the Movies app.
Click to expand...

I think this is inaccurate based off of my observations. If it is clearing the cache as you exit the app, then the OS is probably clearing up space for something else.

Having a larger amount of storage of the 64GB, is probably why my observations is different than yours.

EugW said:
Then you need say 10 GB for caching,
Click to expand...
You may not even need that much.

Like I said before, the OS caches a lot of data.

I have done tests back in 2016 using the 64GB ATV4, and the OS had a lot more than 10GBs cached. Actually, the OS would free 15GB blocks of cached data to make room for additional downloads when I was trying to see how many apps I can store on it.

EugW said:
screensavers
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This is a guess, but I would think that the 4K aerial screen savers could potentially take up much more space than you might think.

The 1080p ones were 600MB, but I am unsure about the 4k ones, but I assume a lot more per screen saver.

As for how much space is dedicated to screen savers:
Apple Support said:
The number of Aerials that you can download depends on how much storage is available on your Apple TV. To manage storage on your Apple TV, go to Settings > General > Manage Storage.
Click to expand...

I am sure that Apple wouldn't fill up an ATV with just aerials, but I am not sure how the OS chooses the number of aerials to save. A wild guess would be a percentage of total storage or total available storage.

Either way, I bet that the aerials take up a lot more space than you think.
 
Just an educated guess for the cache sizes. But note that “few hundred MB” is just for one stream, and for 2 mins.

I believe Apple is using H.265 HEVC, and so is Netflix for 4K, and neither are using lossless audio, so it is reasonable to use Netflix’s 15.3 Mbps as a comparative guide. As for the 2 minutes, perhaps that is too little. However, even 5 minutes would be well under 1 GB. I don’t see much point in caching for more than 5 minutes, including both forward and back cache.

However, if you go into 10 shows before leaving the Movies app, it could be 10x that much, so many GB.

And if you extrapolate that to the Aerials screensavers, that means they’d also be maybe a few GB. I don’t really care about the screensavers though anyway.
 
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EugW said:
And if you extrapolate that to the Aerials screensavers, that means they’d also be maybe a few GB
Click to expand...
Do you mean a few GB each? Apple stated that the 1080p ones were 600MB each, and this is downloaded, not streamed. I would bet that the 4K ones are much larger.

EugW said:
I don’t really care about the screensavers though anyway.
Click to expand...
For yourself, the 32GB might have been a good choice. The OS does a really good job at managing and utilizing the free space, so for someone that doesn't do a lot with their ATV, having the 64GB may go unnoticed versus the 32GB.

But, my general recommendation is still the 64GB model when paying full retail, considering the relatively tiny price between the two.
 
IIRC, typically a 4K video stream is roughly 2X - 2.5X the size of the corresponding 1080p stream, at least for Netflix that is.

So that 15.3 Mbps 4K HDR Stream will be about 7 GB Per hour. In contrast, the top quality for 1080 will be about 6-7 Mbps or 3 GB per hour. (Note that the files are often much smaller than this actually, judging by the file sizes for Netflix downloads.) Actually, come to think of it, it’s a bit under 6 Mbps on my 4K TV for 1080p streams but it’s in that ballpark nonetheless.

I don’t know if this carries over to the screensavers but if it does, then that would mean around 1.2-1.5 GB for those screensavers. IOW, 4 GB for three of them.

Again, all just educated guesstimates. Also, as mentioned, I don’t care about the screensavers anyway.
 
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To see the streaming rate on your ATV, enable X-code on your MacOS device, enable HUD on the ATV, and watch a movie.

On my LG TV's Netflix app, I can see the streaming rate by pressing the info button on the remote.
 
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Audit13 said:
To see the streaming rate on your ATV, enable X-code on your MacOS device, enable HUD on the ATV, and watch a movie.

On my LG TV's Netflix app, I can see the streaming rate by pressing the info button on the remote.
Click to expand...
Anyone got Xcode installed?
 
I had X-code installed on my Air before I sold it. I did it more for the sake of curiosity and it's a free download.
 

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