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HBO GO and HBO NOW Will No Longer Be Available on 2nd and 3rd Gen Apple TVs Starting April 30
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Because navigating your iOS device via touch interface is way faster, more updated and more personal to you than using a 6 input remote control while having to stare up at a screen separate from that remote. Have you tried entering your login credentials on that thing?
My iPhone immediately prompts me to use the keyboard whenever the AppleTV requests credentials. It works really well and even with 1Password.
Here is the support page. If the remote isn't all black you have a third gen.
Identify your Apple TV model - Apple Support
Learn how to identify your Apple TV by its model number and other details.
There are at least two technical issues that could be driving HBO.
Remember the ATV 3rd gen has an A5, 4th gen has an A8. SO
- the actual apps for the 2nd and 3rd gen have to be 32-bit ARM code. That's one tool chain that HBO has to maintain. And sure, you could say they can just freeze the app and never bother updating it, but that can become a hassle if they want things on their backend (eg how the app communicates with the customer database).
- the A5 is limited to h.264 playback at 1080p. The internet appears confused on whether the A8 does or does not have h.265 hardware, but it's generally agreed that even just using the CPU alone, the A8 can decode h.265 streams up to 20Mbps. (Obviously that uses more power than dedicated HW, but for the aTV that's not a big deal.)
So if HBO wants to move to a backend that delivers h.265 and nothing lower, they will have to drop ATV 2nd and 3rd gen.
I don't follow non-Apple media streamers very closely, but it seems like this sort of thing has happened before with HBO or Netflix dropping other older devices. We could get some insight into whether h.265 is driving the issue by seeing if they are dropping any other streamers this time with the main common thread being an inability to support h.265.
I'm going with the h.265 codec, exacerbated by HBO now dealing with more subscribers at once than they ever have. The 2015 model of Roku was the first to support h.265, but HBO already dropped support for older models anyway.
- Jon Prosser (very good leak record) says the new aTV is ready to go, everything settled. It's just a marketing decision as to when it gets announced. Apple's plans may even have been something like early April, with that derailed by covid. So if you CAN delay purchase for a month or two...
- to say that the aTV 4K is "powerful enough" is to believe that the aTV should do nothing but stream video. That's a very blinkered view of the world. The aTV should be a general purpose home server! It should have lots of storage, it should be processing the video (with face recognition) from all your security cameras. It should allow you to play AR games in the living room with friends half way round the world. It should be a security engine for your internet connection. etc etc etc
aTV should be not just a way to watch movies, it should be the way your Apple Personal Compute Cluster displays Ambient Video and Shared Living Space content. (Those should be three buzzwords that Apple takes seriously and that we all know, not three phrases that look like I just made them up.)
Think big!!! Just because the current aTV team seem to have zero ambition, there's always hope that one day the top layer of management all get fired and replaced with people who give the aTV the love and care it deserves.
You're missing out. Right now HBO is FREE for some shows (especially good ones are Silicon Valley, Veep, Barry).
This free content is HBO's nice gift to us in plague times, but it won't last. Grab the HBO app and enjoy while you can.
(When you first open the app it will ask you to sign up. Can't blame them for that! But just ignore the signup, go to the section of the side menu that lists "Collections" and find the "Free on HBO collection.)
There’s nothing from a hardware standpoint that warrants this given that the ATV3 is plenty powerful enough. Moreover, the HBO apps stink on every platform, quite frankly. HBO NOW subscription is going to be cancelled in our home.
There literally is something from a hardware standpoint, decoding h.265 which only the 4th gen and higher can do.
Well, for the most part i am watching the show and in my experience streaming quality is lower/has more stutter when i Airplay.
And obviously password i do via keychain and the keyboard pops up automatically on my iPhone and iPad when i am clicking on anything that requires text to be entered.
You can definitely see the quality difference when using Airplay. Some apps, though, will handoff the streaming to the Apple TV when using Airplay.
HBO removed support for the PS3 and Xbox 360 last year. IIRC, the PS3 supported the AVC codecs through software emulation rather than a hardware SoC. It could also simply come down to rights fees and/or platform security.
In those cases, those systems have been retired for a long time. Removing support doesn't necessarily mean video will no longer work. But yeah, I would guess that for every reason you can think of, all content providers want to concentrate on one codec and one codec only. That means leaving a lot of products behind.
AVC is h.264. Dropping it is reasonable if the whole issue is HBO pivoting to h.265 (ie HEVC).
Now why did HBO drop say PS3 last year, not now? Who knows?
Maybe they phase these things one or two platforms at a time over some months, to reduce the complaining?
Maybe there is a general long-term plan to drop various platforms, but in each case it boils down to when something else becomes so much of a hassle that it's not worth continuing (like maybe the PS3 developer wanted to leave the company)?
The fact that the poster to whom you replied used "tvOS" and "ATV3" together should tell you they didn't know what they were talking about.
tvOS started with Apple TV 4. Unfortunately, there is no jailbreak for ATV3. There is one for ATV2 though.
Companies ALWAYS preface bad news with this canned, worthless “in order to provide the best experience” statement. It’s worthless because anyone could say that before any bad news. The company hopes that the customer assumes that it’s because of some technical reason, but we know there’s probably simply another part to that preface that doesn’t sound good: in order to provide the best experience while first maintaining or increasing profits,...”
The preface is actually worse than worthless, it’s patronizing. If there’s no actual technical explanation accompanying, then I’d rather they not use that preface at all. I get it, you’re a company that needs to make money. So just say your piece. Don’t kill with a smile.
Keep in mind that ATV in general is somewhat of a niche device. Video content providers are not going to care about ATV3.
Similar to the iPhone being a niche device?
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While the interface is important, it certainly isn't the reason I subscribe to HBO. Their shows are way better quality than anything from Netflix, Amazon, etc.
All of y’all saying this is just lazy developers and this whole thing seems fishy, how many apps do YOU have running on both tvOS 8.4.4 AND tvOS 13.4?
There are pretty big differences between the 2 and I imagine companies know how many are still using 3rd gen. It’s probably not worth it to make 2 separate apps and having to support those few holdouts may be holding back the current version.
There are pretty big differences between the 2 and I imagine companies know how many are still using 3rd gen. It’s probably not worth it to make 2 separate apps and having to support those few holdouts may be holding back the current version.
Why would I want a home server connected to each of my TVs? Isn’t one in the house good enough?
A pandemic is probably the wrong time to narrow the number of devices that can access your service.