They probably force you to get their internet precisely because of the first thought that came to my head: my sister has bell fibe I should totally get her account details and get free tv on my Apple TV at home.
It's probably a means of making sure that doesn't happen.
Within the application there's a mention about the Apple TV app being counted in the 5 app limit for an account if used outside of the home (on another network). It's showing my iPad and iPhone as as well as my sister in law iPad as having the app installed. Pretty sure this is new because I used to install it to every family members, will have to be careful where I install it going forward.
I did not have to enter any credentials once installed, it automatically recognized my account as would a dedicated Bell Fibe receiver.
Just my observation but so far it work really well. Way easier to navigate the UI than the dedicated box, especially for on demand recording.
They advertise that the pause/rewind and recording features will be added soon and I think this means it will be able to access the main DVR, hence the obligation to have one. And to be able to subscribe to Bell Fibe you are forced to subscribe to their Internet package. Maybe they'll be able to make it so that it you don't need the unlimited internet someday, after all they're able to separate the Netflix stream watched using their receiver from the Bell Fibe stream...
If it was not that I use my second receiver to expend my network in the basement area where the TV sits (it's connected to the modem thru coax cable and I have a switch hooked to the network jack), I would replace it and the ATV3 by an ATV4.
It's not often that I can say that I'm happy with how Bell is doing things .
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FibeTV has been growing the past few years with Bell. The only problem is, you need fiber optic service to get it, so it's not as widespread.
I was lucky, when I bought my new house, the neighborhood was wired with fiber optic cable straight into the home, so I could get Bell's service. The neighbor one block North of me however, couldn't, because houses built in that phase of the development were wired with old-school copper phone lines. The houses were only built about 2 years apart.
Bell has been really good about putting fiber into new developments, but they'll need to go around and rewire all of the old neighborhoods to get this more wide spread.
Fibe TV is offered even in area where the fiber is not connected to the house. The fiber must get to the pole close to the house though so it is a big upgrade for Bell, I seen them working in a small town (Joliette) to expend there, there were so much Bell trucks in the city it was insane.
But the fiber to home is required for the gigabyte service, in my area I'm stuck at 50Megabytes service, which is not bad anyway. I know that in Quebec City, they went all in with fiber to every home due to the fact their network was old, the city is old and more importantly so jammed packed that why not bring the fiber straight to the home instead of 10m from it...
