Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

New Apple TV Obsolete - No 4K

I guess the question is, if you are in the market right now for a new TV, would you buy a 1080p?

I get the people who are not upgrading thier TV sets, and the new appLe is perfect, but if you were in a situation where you had to replace your unit , say the only one died, would you really buy a 1080p?

I'll be in that situation soon, and I don't see the point of spending good money on a non 4K unit if I intend to keep it for about 5 years. Had I recently spent money on a good 1080p , I'd keep that for a few more years.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ssgbryan
MH01 said:
I guess the question is, if you are in the market right now for a new TV, would you buy a 1080p?

I get the people who are not upgrading thier TV sets, and the new appLe is perfect, but if you were in a situation where you had to replace your unit , say the only one died, would you really buy a 1080p?

I'll be in that situation soon, and I don't see the point of spending good money on a non 4K unit if I intend to keep it for about 5 years. Had I recently spent money on a good 1080p , I'd keep that for a few more years.
Click to expand...

Buy 4K. You're price differential is going to be negligible on a good set.
 
Meister said:
Where I live the new :apple:TV hasn't even come out yet. It's also quite pricey for 100€ more I can get a mac mini.

Since you already use it:

Does it allow webbrowsing?
Does it have vpn support?
Does it support pages, keynote,...?

thank you for your answers :)
Click to expand...


From what I've gathered on other forums, the lack of apps makes it an expensive AppleTV 3 with a Siri function that isn't quite ready for prime time. I just cancelled my order for two of them. Maybe Apple will get their head out of the sand by Christmas.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Meister
Snoopy4 said:
From what I've gathered on other forums, the lack of apps makes it an expensive AppleTV 3 with a Siri function that isn't quite ready for prime time. I just cancelled my order for two of them. Maybe Apple will get their head out of the sand by Christmas.
Click to expand...
Actually it is less that an ATV3 because of several missing apps that were there on the older version, causing some to go back to their older units for now. Can anybody elaborate?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Meister
MH01 said:
I guess the question is, if you are in the market right now for a new TV, would you buy a 1080p?

I get the people who are not upgrading thier TV sets, and the new appLe is perfect, but if you were in a situation where you had to replace your unit , say the only one died, would you really buy a 1080p?

I'll be in that situation soon, and I don't see the point of spending good money on a non 4K unit if I intend to keep it for about 5 years. Had I recently spent money on a good 1080p , I'd keep that for a few more years.
Click to expand...

Completely depends upon what you like to watch.
If you primarily stream sports or movies/tv that have already been created in the past, or YouTube/Net stuff, there's just no reason for 4k.

People have to remember, it's more than just the TV for a lot of people. Some have entire home theater setups that work great and are all dialed in and they don't want a new receiver, etc.

Everybody keeps saying "go 4k" - Maybe is the answer, but really the onus is on 4k to prove it's worth anything. We are years from it being some kind of "Must have". The TV companies are just dying for a reason to get people to buy something new. I love tech - always have, but find the tv up-sell stuff to be lacking truthfully.

I still routinely see people that can't tell HQ 720 vs 1080 sources on a 50-55" at about 8' out. In fact most normal people i see just can't tell and just don't care.

Honestly, at this very moment, I'd take a high end 1080p Plasma (and of course my OLED) over a "meh" 4k LCD that's whole goal was to jam out 4k above any other forms of tech quality and/or quality control
 
  • Like
Reactions: MH01
If you need something newer right now...

My goodness try Craigslist - Old TV's hold basically ZERO resale value and people just about "give" them away (no other choice)
 
MH01 said:
I guess the question is, if you are in the market right now for a new TV, would you buy a 1080p?

I get the people who are not upgrading thier TV sets, and the new appLe is perfect, but if you were in a situation where you had to replace your unit , say the only one died, would you really buy a 1080p?

I'll be in that situation soon, and I don't see the point of spending good money on a non 4K unit if I intend to keep it for about 5 years. Had I recently spent money on a good 1080p , I'd keep that for a few more years.
Click to expand...

Today, I think I would buy a really good 1080p rather than a mid-range 4k. For example, the LG OLED tvs look really great but cost a pretty penny. The price difference between 1080p and 4k with those is way more than just a little. Thus, if faced with the choice between a great OLED 1080p and an average LED 4k, I would go with the OLED 1080p for sure.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MH01 and turbineseaplane
I know we all enjoy piling on the "Apple is setting up the up-sell to AppleTV 5 with 4k!" bandwagon...

But I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt in that I think they realized that when releasing a product like this it's best to cater what's out there right now at this very moment - not in terms of what display people "can" buy, but what most people have and what the content source quality is for the majority of what they'll watching (not 4k...not even close...not anytime soon)
 
I understand the reason why the box should have 4k, but not the necessity. Majority of all 4k TV's have wifi and apps built in for Amazon and Netflix. Even the PS4 and Xbox One don't do games in 4k. 4k, still uses a a lot of data for streaming and I can only imagine gaming would be ridiculous the way Apple is setting up how apps are run. 4k is still in its infancy as far as technology goes, while making huge jumps. I have a 1080p plasma and I wouldn't upgrade to 4k just for an Apple TV or streaming unless it was an incredible deal. I also have a PS4, so 4k doesn't benefit me. I see nothing wrong with Apple not releasing this one without 4k, because it will be in it in 2 or less years when 4k TV's are all in the 400-1000k dollar range.
 
  • Like
Reactions: turbineseaplane
iceperson said:
Unless you're sitting on the floor 2 feet from the TV like a 6 year old you wouldn't even notice anyway.
Click to expand...

False. The real benefit is the color spectrum available so unless you're color blind you won't notice.
 
Snoopy4 said:
Probably right. Plenty of people on this forum think 480p is fine.
Click to expand...

lol - so true.

It's so dependent upon what/how you're watching stuff. Us tech geeks seem to approach this from the angle that everything is some "lighting controlled, distraction free, home theater bliss experience" when average people just fire up the tv and start something for themselves while cooking, hanging out, friends are over, sports saturday/sunday or something for their kids, etc...

Most "normal" use cases are basically "does it play smoothly and look ok"? :)

This is one area where "normal cable/sat TV" has an advantage. Much easier for people to just "turn it on" and see what's there and/or leave it playing and let things steer themselves.
 
I'll buy a 4K TV when content is ready (Movies, Nintendo games, Game of Thrones) but guess by the time it happens, 8K will be starting to get attention.
 
  • Like
Reactions: turbineseaplane
I just bought a new 1080p TV this year. The main factor was its super-low input lag for gaming. I probably won't get a 4K TV until gaming consoles support it. By then the technology will probably be better; and who knows, maybe the Apple TV will be even more flexible by allowing local disk storage. But for the next five or so years, 1080p is fine for me.

Also, my Apple TV was just delivered, but I have to wait till I get home from work to play with it. :(
 
  • Like
Reactions: turbineseaplane
danny_w said:
Actually it is less that an ATV3 because of several missing apps that were there on the older version, causing some to go back to their older units for now. Can anybody elaborate?
Click to expand...
I tried to make a thread about the weird shortcomings of the new :apple:TV here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/what-am-i-missing.1933148/

For that I was first accused of trolling and then the moderators banned it to the wasteland.

It appears as if we are not supposed to discuss the bizaro crippling of the new ATV.

Fair enough.
Nobody has to buy one.
I sure know that I won't.
 
danny_w said:
I don't know about that but 720p is all my old eyes can discern at my seating distance across the living room, about 11 feet. My next set will be another 720p plasma.
Click to expand...


I know everyone is different, but there is an absolute difference between 720P and 1080P at 11 feet unless your set is 20".
 
Snoopy4 said:
I know everyone is different, but there is an absolute difference between 720P and 1080P at 11 feet unless your set is 20".
Click to expand...

The source quality matters in that discussion.

Overall though, I'd have to disagree that "normal users" will easily tell 720 vs 1080 at 10' on a 40-50" screen. I've had that exact test around my house a lot and basically nobody could tell, not even the geeks.
 
turbineseaplane said:
The source quality matters in that discussion.

Overall though, I'd have to disagree that "normal users" will easily tell 720 vs 1080 at 10' on a 40-50" screen. I've had that exact test around my house a lot and basically nobody could tell, not even the geeks.
Click to expand...

We're going to simply have to disagree on this, especially at the sizes you mention.
 
Snoopy4 said:
We're going to simply have to disagree on this, especially at the sizes you mention.
Click to expand...

Fair enough.

I'm a total tech guy and I personally really can't tell from that range if the source 720 is good quality.

Perhaps your definition of "normal" person is also different than mine?

The actual type of content does help one way or the other. For instance a sports situation with lots of small moving text (ticker at bottom or score box, etc) can give one away vs the other for sure.

It's also worth giving some thought to "is the difference enough to matter"?

Considering we are even talking about anecdotes of people having a hard time telling the difference, it's pretty safe to say that the difference is so small (and often not noticeable) that it simply isn't relevant for a lot of people - at least not enough to, on its own, drive new sales to otherwise indifferent people.
 
Last edited:
turbineseaplane said:
Smart man - 4K should honestly be left to flesh itself out for another good year at least. They keep adding things like HDR, etc to these sets, yet at the end of the day, the amount of actual normal consumption 4k content is ridiculously limited and simply doesn't justify all new equipment for it right now.

Funny thing about my OLED is that people who come over immediately *think* it's 4k (when playing a Blu-Ray type of source) - It looks that good!
Click to expand...
Nope 4k looks so good. My 4k oled tv looks soo good and even 1080p content on it looks quite good.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back