I hear your point, but for me, I don't miss any of that stuff. I don't have a 4K tv, nor will I until prices come down and content increases. Amazon can be Airplayed to the ATV. Same with VUDU. I also buy almost all my movies on iTunes because when you buy just the digital code from online communities, new movies can be had for between $2-$5. Then you have it on everything - iPad, iPhone, Mac etc. It fits into my use case perfectly. I know it gets knocked all the time, but the ATV has been a great product for my family. And it saves us $80/mo by not needing cable.
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First Evidence of Fifth-Generation Apple TV and tvOS 11 Possibly Spotted in Developer Logs
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I hear your point, but for me, I don't miss any of that stuff. I don't have a 4K tv, nor will I until prices come down and content increases. Amazon can be Airplayed to the ATV. Same with VUDU. I also buy almost all my movies on iTunes because when you buy just the digital code from online communities, new movies can be had for between $2-$5. Then you have it on everything - iPad, iPhone, Mac etc. It fits into my use case perfectly. I know it gets knocked all the time, but the ATV has been a great product for my family. And it saves us $80/mo by not needing cable.
As with many Apple products: they come to market by storm and have the potential to grow big. Than after a couple of years you see neglect in hard- and software refresh and you start wondering if Apple is interested in that market segment at all. Also you start to wonder why you're still paying the steep price since the product doesn't offer much more today then when it was released. You see competitors grab market share by surpassing Apple on price first but on price and features later. You get a bit upset because you know you've invested in a dead end. Than Apple drops the segment all together without any notice and does a big launch in a totally different segment (this year it's probably AR) and the whole circle starts again.
4k would be great, but also please redesign the remote button locations and provide some visual indicator for battery life that could also possibly double as a flash so I can find it at night. 
My family uses IR remotes with all of our ATVs, including the ATV4. The remote learning feature is really nice and easy to use.
An issue with using an IR remote on the ATV4 is that sometimes you need to close and app after it stops working correctly. Sadly, you can't do that with an IR remote.
Also, the button presses are not universal between video apps. This was really bad at the ATV4 launch, but most of the video apps have since adopted similar button functions to Apple's old standard.
Maybe the A10X?
Third Gen and Fourth Gen didn't allow it, so there is a good chance this one won't either.
If you're buying/renting from Google Play - there's really no reason you should own an Apple TV. I can see the appeal of Amazon Prime, but if you're like me and you ended your Prime membership, the Fire TV isn't that great.
The lack of Prime Video is frustrating.
I've been installing a centralized audio system and last week I moved the amp to the new location. Now I had a problem - no HDMI run yet as it is waiting on the TV install. OK, I figured I would just use the TVs speakers for a while and use the central system for music. Then I had an idea - What about using a second aTV?
My temporary solution is to have the aTV4 plugged into the TV via HDMI with a second aTV2 or aTV3 (not sure on gen) plugged into the central audio. Now I play a video on the aTV4 and have it stream the audio to the aTV2. Surprisingly this works! I expected it to have a horrible lag but that's not the case. One side effect is that the pause/resume has a lag of about half a second. I suspect that this has something to do with the buffering to avoid audio lag. Completely acceptable as a workaround in this case.
Now I wanted to watch an Amazon video so I pulled out the iPad - and it all still works! I stream the iPad to the aTV4 that then streams the audio to the aTV2. I still want an aTV native Amazon app but I was floored that the above actually works.
Plus several very popular apps: HBO Now, Showtime, and many more are only offered in stereo. Even the apps that do support 5.1 sound better through nearly every other streaming device on the market.
I really hope this is true. I actually use my ATV more than chromecast, with a 4K HDR capable set, simply because the interface.
The Apple TV is just media streamer. Nothing as big as the iPhone/iPad/Mac.
We could argue that x product is $60 cheaper and has 4K, but in the end, it's still just a media streamer.
Amen. It's become harder and harder to evangelize Apple under Tim Cook because he bases decisions on the next upgrade cycle: "If I offer 32gb base storage now, how can I upsell the user next time? If I offer 4K Apple TV now, what could possibly be the 'next big thing' next time?"
Cook intentionally cripples products now so that he can sell the next one down the line, and that's been obvious for years. So what we have now, and for the foreseeable future, is a hobbled Apple whose bottom line is more important than making great products -- exactly what Jobs hated about other tech companies and feared would happen to Apple.
It's funny to see all the hate for the Siri remote on here. I actually like the remote overall, although I wish they had made it easier to tell which way you're holding it without looking at it. I find myself using Siri way more on the Apple TV than with any of my other Apple devices (have never used it on my iMac actually - not really sure why I need Siri on my desktop). She's super convenient for finding content when I don't know what I want to watch or to find a movie where I know the name of the actor in it but don't know the title. Whenever I miss something in a show or movie I can just ask Siri to rewind 30 seconds. Super easy and simple.
Most is 1080... Netflix built into the Samsung 4k TV's have a tiny selection of 4k titles.
My point is that you have to price your product accordingly to what the market is offering. If it's more expensive you have to offer compelling features or suffer marketshare decline. That what's happening with AppleTV today and lots of other Apple products (if not all). You can target the premium segment but your products needs to be premium (read better than competing products).
The ATV4 could have been so much more than a media streamer.
I really dislike the Siri remote, but I like using Siri. It mostly works, unlike Siri on other devices.
Actually, I don't think too many people are complaining about Siri on the Siri remote, I think it is everything else about it.
I wish there could be a way to use Siri on the ATV3, as Siri would be to one of the only things I miss about the ATV4 if I fully downgraded. Although, one good thing about using Siri, is that you don't have to use the horribly designed search system on the ATV4. The long swiping to punch in characters is so stupid.
I don't think people hate the product but hate the lag of improvements in hard- and software more.
I felt the same with the ATV4 vs ATV3 - the user experience on the 3 is noticeably better. Our family actually rolled back to the 3 and the 4 is on the shelf in the basement...
Apple TV is good, but it just misses on a few things - no 4k support (Netflix and Amazon are already doing 4k HDR streams), no Amazon video, no Vudu. Add those and it becomes a much better TV box. Also ditching the MFI program for controllers and allowing any bluetooth game controller (i.e. PS4) would be a huge boon to actually playing games on the thing.
The Shield TV actually ends up a bit better IMO - 4k support, Amazon, Vudu and even game streaming from a PC if you have one. Also includes both a game controller and a remote in the box. Their problem is their branding is terrible with angular edges and glowing green lines.
The Shield TV actually ends up a bit better IMO - 4k support, Amazon, Vudu and even game streaming from a PC if you have one. Also includes both a game controller and a remote in the box. Their problem is their branding is terrible with angular edges and glowing green lines.
A very good example on how AppleTV could improve. I'm wondering how much Shield TV is charging for its device...
Use the Plex app and any of the many Plex server solutions, including the external drive that includes Plex server in its firmware ...
I think it is time. I didn't support 4k support in the original AppleTV because it was not widely supported in the industry and would not be for the life of that box. We are starting to see growing support for 4k as a baseline standard now, especially with HDR support. It is time for the AppleTV to support the current 4k standards.
That said, Apple will not do that until it has 4k content available in the iTunes store. It seems like we will start hearing murmurs from the usual industry suspects (CBS CEO ...) well in advance of that happening. It would be somewhat out of character for 4k to be added to the AppleTV with the only content option being non-Apple sources.
The core underlying chip has enough power for 4k, but not the chip driving the HDMI port (which is only 1.4a compatible). Technically HDMI 1.4a could streak a version of 4k content, but it is not what generally "4k" TV owners want. Also I'd expect an H.265 chipset (or native support for H.265 in the Ax main chip used) in the new box to hardware decode the standard 4k is compressed with.
I have a Prime subscription and definitely fall in the third camp. We have a FireStick, which is a bit of a lemon with its way-too-often network issues. The effect for me is that we rarely watch anything on Amazon and will pay the extra buck or 10 cents to get a movie / show episode on iTunes rather than on Amazon unless we are watching it on a computer.
In most cases, if we want to watch Amazon content I airplay from my phone to the AppleTV, which works quite well (much better than using that crappy FireStick!), but that is still clunky enough that I'd rather avoid it.