New Apple TV: Tips, Tricks, Siri Remote Shortcuts and Useful Settings

[MrX8503]

That's the home button?! I thought it was AirPlay. What's wrong with using a home icon?

Is it just me, or is the usability of the ATV really bad? So many hidden buttons/menus.

 

[Kaibelf]

That's the home button?! I thought it was AirPlay. What's wrong with using a home icon?

Is it just me, or is the usability of the ATV really bad? So many hidden buttons/menus.

And yet everyone in my home learned how to handle all 4 buttons in about five minutes (and no, I'm not counting the volume as a legitimate button anyone under the age of 80 needs an explanation to use). Also, that is NOT and AirPlay icon, it's a television. It's not that hard. Just return yours, since this one's too much to handle.

 

[Mums]

As I read this article, I asked myself how anyone could possibly complain about an article that nicely summarizes the buttons and the various ways to use them, most of which aren't intuitive, and is very helpful to me, and I have the atv 4.

Then I remembered some of the people who post here, and my fantasy evaporated. And sure enough, the first poster found a way to complain about the article. Part of me wants really express myself which will get me kicked off this board. So I'll just stop here. Very sad, but completely expected.

What does it say about these forums that you can't "express yourself"?

 

[mrmini78]

I'm not getting the click twice on the siri button to work

you double click the Home button next to the Menu button

 

[dragje]

General feel: I love. apple TV, can't wait to see Plex on it.

But the device does need some serious update, especially concerning Apple Music, the loading times to start a song are ridiculously long (I've got a 210Mbit download connection so that's not the problem) and that you can't skip a song is quite frustrating. Other than that everything works great.
Like the article said, it's a device with lots of potential.

Tip: one needs to trying the Rayman the game on this new device, it's remarkable good playable with just the Aplle TV remote and it looks gorgeous on a big screen and shows the power of what an A8 chip is capable of.

 

[RockSpider]

General feel: I love. apple TV, can't wait to see Plex on it.

But the device does need some serious update, especially concerning Apple Music, the loading times to start a song are ridiculously long (I've got a 210Mbit download connection so that's not the problem) and that you can't skip a song is quite frustrating. Other than that everything works great.
Like the article said, it's a device with lots of potential.

Tip: one needs to trying the Rayman the game on this new device, it's remarkable good playable with just the Aplle TV remote and it looks gorgeous on a big screen and shows the power of what an A8 chip is capable of.

Admittedly Rayman is a nice looking game, but just about anything can run it on a TV, I've got an old first Atom built computer that can run it and looks very nice on a big TV. I think it was made by Ubisoft, they had a knack of making some nice looking games years ago that ran really well.

 

[dragje]

Admittedly Rayman is a nice looking game, but just about anything can run it on a TV, I've got an old first Atom built computer that can run it and looks very nice on a big TV. I think it was made by Ubisoft, they had a knack of making some nice looking games years ago that ran really well.

Fair enough mate, I think I was positively suprised how good an iPad game initially looks on a big screen television, my niece of 4 years old shakes her head; she agrees. Unfortunately the Apple TV manual doesn't include instructions how to receive your remote back safely from the hands of a 4 years old child playing a game :-(

 

[Jamie0003]

I don't like that fact that you can't skip songs like you could on the old remote, Especially when playing radio. Everything else on the new remote is good. Also Siri can't do anything with music. iPhone remote app doesn't work with it either.

Just click on the right side of the touch surface to skip a song, not tried it but I'm guessing clicking the left side goes back to previous song

I've seen this hint several times and can't get it to work either.

When I first got it my home button wasn't working at all, thought there was something wrong with the Siri remote. Rebooted Apple TV and it works now. Probably a bug

 

[rikscha]

"Press the Home button twice quickly to bring up the App Switcher, which displays all apps open."

Oh, dear.

And so begins the myth that all apps shown in the AppleTV switcher are "running." The force-quit-all-apps voodoo madness from iOS continues!

Tip: Apple's app switchers are lists of RECENTS. Not lists of what is actually occupying any system resources at the moment. Force-quitting an app is a rare troubleshooting technique, not the "obsessively all the time" measure some people have started emotionally clinging to...

Makes me want to slap people every time I see an idiot closing all the apps.
This is actually killing your battery life rather than preserving it but hey, people grew up with Windows and can't shake this notion off that a system needs to be actively managed.

 

[leesweet]

In video media it skips 10 seconds either direction. Clicking and holding goes fast forward or fast back, depending on the side of the pad your finger is on. Clicking the pad once freezes the picture and lets you scrub. Clicking again starts the video again at the spot that you have scrubbed to.

You also don't need to freeze/click to scrub. Just slide left or right and it freezes and shows you the time line and the video preview of where you are. Menu returns you to live, Select (click) takes you to where the cursor is.

 

[Bevz]

This is great! Learnt some really cool time saving features from this article!! Makes me love my new Apple TV that little bit more All it needs now is the Plex app and I’m all set

Yeah, looking forward to the official Plex app, but SimpleX does the job pretty well until then. You should definitely check it out if you not using it already.

 

[sniffies]

It has them now. You put your finger on the right or the left side of the trackpad and click. Right side is forward, and left is back. It's contextual, so in music it skips songs.

The next/previous buttons work only inside the Music app, not outside, hence my original post.

 

[RockSpider]

Fair enough mate, I think I was positively suprised how good an iPad game initially looks on a big screen television, my niece of 4 years old shakes her head; she agrees. Unfortunately the Apple TV manual doesn't include instructions how to receive your remote back safely from the hands of a 4 years old child playing a game :-(

Yeah 4 year olds can be tough to negotiate with.

 

[loekf]

Silly/stupid Apple engineers should realise people in e.g. Holland can also speak other languages than dutch. Dutch appstore => no Siri makes no sense to me. On iPhone/iPad you can configure the Siri language independently from your appstore location or language.

For US Siri you need a "twang" (hey Texas.. *wave* !!!)

UK Siri works fine.

I prefer to use english as language for my gadgets. Absolutely hate translated UIs.

 

[Popeye206]

The one small thing I liked was the initial set-up... loved that it used the settings from my iPhone to set all the network and AppleID settings. Saves a ton of time. BTW... the list here is great. Apple should have a built in tutorial App that walks you through the shortcuts.

Otherwise... Love it... but not impressed with HBOGo App... they did some odd changes and it takes some time to get use to. Games are cool and love the ease of subtitles. Looking forward to software updates, I'm sure more SIRI functions will be added.

 

[bbeagle]

So if you have a huge collection of DVD's, you must scroll through them all in order to play any of them... or re-purchase your movies from Apple. I think I'll be returning mine and buying a Roku, thank you very much.

I hope you don't find that this doesn't work with Rokus either, and return your Roku for an Amazon Fire, and find that this doesn't work either, and return that, etc. etc.

Maybe you can hold off for a software update? What you buy today will be different from the same device in 3 months.

What does it say about these forums that you can't "express yourself"?

Madonna would be kicked right off these boards.

 

[Keerock]

Quick thoughts:

I won't waste time re-listing all the positives and there are plenty. I would recommend buying this upgrade but I feel the cons make it tough to recommend to less "AV experienced" folk.

Pros:
See lots of comments on Macrumors threads. I agree with many of the Pros.

Cons:
1) I'm not happy with the touch interface. I have adjusted the sensitivity in settings and still find it erratic. Maybe I have bad hardware. Shoots past my target or falls shorts. I have no acceleration that I notice other than randomly when using the on screen keyboard.
2) On screen keyboard needs work. Swiping far left or far right will not take you over to the opposite side. If you are on the far right you must ship all the way back to the far left. Hard press on letters and being able to delete is erratic as I don't always get the backspace when i need it.
3) Set up process. Everyone else seems to like/love this. I have not. Yes, using my iOS beta 9 iPad was a nice shortcut to getting onto my network but then that was the end of it. I would have loved to actually use my iPad for entering the 8+ apps username and passwords (Hulu, Netflix, CBS, etc.). Speaking of, I can't believe Apple has not released an updated Remote app for the new ATV. I spend an hour and half activating my video apps etc...
4) Having to go to my iTunes computer to allow iCloud? Silly. Had to enter my Apple password more than 4 times that I could count during setup.
5) Siri will really need some work. "Shows with Hugh Bonneville" returns "Sorry I cannot help with movies in the theaters now". Hulu has hundreds of Hugh Bonneville results when you search. This is one example of fairly high failure rate for items that I know are on either Netflix of Hulu in some form.
6) Picture quality is not a big improvement over the old Apple TV. I expected more. The interface looks beautiful though. I have 50 Mbs down and a 1080P TV so not stream rate. I have to set a very odd custom setting on my TV to get rid of the very high contrast for most shows.
7) Tried downloading the racing game they feature. Wow, did that take forever, and then mid game downloads took forever as well. Again, I have very fast 50Ms down consistently. Perhaps the Apple servers are having trouble after dissing Akamai.

 

[rdlink]

The next/previous buttons work only inside the Music app, not outside, hence my original post.

Missed that one. Good point. Hopefully they'll find (or are already working on) an elegant software solution, so that you don't have to wait until a hardware update.

 

[hp200lx]

I wish google had a document like this for their new youtube app. I can't figure out how to do half the things the old app used to do...unless they're not there, which is also a possibility.

 

[rdlink]

I hope you don't find that this doesn't work with Rokus either, and return your Roku for an Amazon Fire, and find that this doesn't work either, and return that, etc. etc.

Maybe you can hold off for a software update? What you buy today will be different from the same device in 3 months.

The beauty of this new environment, and what the OP and many others seem to fail to see is that the app store is going to make this already awesome device even more awesome in the coming days/weeks/months. The specific problem to which they refer will be completely eradicated when the Plex app (which Plex has already confirmed) becomes available. And yes, once Apple opens the Siri search API to developers you will be able to do a Siri search to find your local media via Plex right along side of iTunes, Netflix, HBO, Showtime, etc.

 

[MrX8503]

And yet everyone in my home learned how to handle all 4 buttons in about five minutes (and no, I'm not counting the volume as a legitimate button anyone under the age of 80 needs an explanation to use). Also, that is NOT and AirPlay icon, it's a television. It's not that hard. Just return yours, since this one's too much to handle.

The AirPlay icon has a TV on it.

 

[bookcase]

I picked up a 32GB box on Saturday since my online order won't be here for a few more days. Once I realized you had to hard-click to select (I thought it was touch), I think it's a worthy upgrade from my AT3. Setting up every account again was a pain. Honestly, the worst thing about this new set is that Netflix now uses their new interface, which I think is abysmal. Unless I'm not seeing it, gone are the genre searches -- instead you get rows instead of pages, so unless you know what you're looking for, its usability factor has vanished.

 

[MrX8503]

Agreed on the Netflix front. It's much slower to browse

 

[macfoxpro]

Pressing the Home Button four times will open the hidden "Amazon Prime" app.

I picked up a 32GB box on Saturday since my online order won't be here for a few more days. Once I realized you had to hard-click to select (I thought it was touch), I think it's a worthy upgrade from my AT3. Setting up every account again was a pain. Honestly, the worst thing about this new set is that Netflix now uses their new interface, which I think is abysmal. Unless I'm not seeing it, gone are the genre searches -- instead you get rows instead of pages, so unless you know what you're looking for, its usability factor has vanished.

Yeah, the Netflix UI is nothing short of horrible.

 

[mic j]

Weird thing happened to mine yesterday.
It showed a grid style search like the old Apple TV.
Then this morning it has reverted to the line again.
Maybe there is a way to toggle between the 2.
The line is such a waste of time!

I was noticing this yesterday, line replaced with the old grid style. When moving the cursor around I noticed that the line style would flash at the top, then disappear. Then the grid style would appear. Very strange behavior.