Seeking ATV4 Impressions re: AirPlay and Games Quality

[redman042]

We have iPhones, iPads, and third gen ATVs in our house. I'm trying to decide whether it's worth upgrading the two ATV3s at this time. We have satellite TV and are not ready to "cut the cord", so for us the main drivers to upgrade would be:

1. Performance/Ease-of-use: I would like a much more responsive UI, quicker movie loading and fast forward/rewind, easier browsing of media in the iTunes store, and much improved AirPlay. With AirPlay, I now experience long loads, glitches, and other issues. AirPlay has never been fully trustworthy for me. My router is an Airport Extreme, which I purchased specifically to make AirPlay work better (it helped but did not solve the issues). Sending 1080p video from my phone is particularly slow.
   
   
2. Casual Gaming: I would like a quality casual gaming experience for the family.
   
   
3. Reduced need to reboot: I have to reboot my ATV3 every month or two it seems, usually to fix an AirPlay issue, get Netflix to fully load, or get iTunes thumbnails to show up. It's annoying.

For those who have jumped in already, how do you find the ATV4 measures up to this criteria?

I know it's a new product and needs time for updates. I'm willing to jump in if it is mostly there now and trust that Apple will keep improving it. I bought the Apple Watch at launch, to give you an idea. It's not perfect but it's improving and I've been happy with my purchase.

 

[AFEPPL]

Stick with the 3 for now.
Im in the process of returning my 4.

Lots of pauses playing both music and video - other users have also reported the same issue.
Games, they basically look like normal iPad games, but not many around. feature games are the silly chicken crossing the road.

Cant answer the reboot, it will take time for people to know that.
With the money saved - get an xbox one for games.!

 

[tillsbury]

Entirely opposite response from here. More responsive UI - check. Quicker everything - check. browsing in itunes (with Apple Music) - pretty good. Much improved Airplay - for me the biggest deal is the HDMI-CEC, so flicking Airplay on any device turns on the TV at the same time.

Casual gaming - check. Although I hate the types of games that are on iphones/ipads generally, they are there if that's the sort of thing you're into.

Never needed to reboot it yet, but can't report on whether I'd need to every "month or two".

It will obviously improve, but now with Air Video HD I'm using it a whole lot more than I ever did the aTV3, and I've ordered a couple more for other TVs around the house.

 

[jimmypopjr]

Airplay has worked pretty well for me so far. I've got a lot of iTunes content, and have a few TV playlists that I'll airplay to the TV on a random order, which has been great. The stream quit once in the middle of a show, but that's been the only hiccup so far. I never had many issues with the previous gen apple TV, so I can't really speak to the instability you saw.

Games - I've only played Rayman and Crossy Road so far, but both were stable and fun. I've got an mfi controller that worked well, and will allow you to control the rest of the interface outside of the game if you don't feel like using the Siri remote.

All that said, much better content should be on the way once developers get some more time with the apple tv. I haven't had to reboot this one at all, but it took a while for my gen 3 to get to the point of needing regular reboots.

All said, if you're on the fence I would wait a few weeks for Apple to iron out some things in updates.

 

[Poochi]

It's great... Except gaming on the Siri remote is a very ****** experience. Haven't tried 3rd party controller.

 

[Gueeds]

ATV4 pretty much runs laps around the ATV3 already and it's only had about a week so things will only improve. Games are ok so far, Rayman is fantastic, much prefer to use a game pad for games that support it.

Jury is still out on the reboot situation. However, you can kill apps now so that might be the new reboot fix.

 

[Count Blah]

Gaming is meh. I tried "edge" game, where you can literally only move in one of 4 directions, and he siri remote did not respond cleanly. Tried to go left, it would always try to move down. So this obviously made the game more frustrating than fun. Downloaded in on the iPad, and was able to get 3 times as far, in 1/3 the time.

So some things do not yet appear ready for prime time.

I've not had to reboot, and everything else seems to run pretty smoothly. Only other issue is that when I download an app, I often have to go back to the main menu, before it will launch.

 

[JKNorth]

1. Yes. much better. Skipping around in content isn't as intuitive as the AT3, but that's because AT3 worked like a VCR. Once you learn the new navigation inputs which are much more like a phone, it's actually far more efficient. Faster, smoother, no AirPlay glitches yet.

2. I've played a game. A racing game with Beach Buggies. Aside from it being the annoying "now buy gems" sort of game, it worked fine. The remote was responsive and minimal lag. No question a game controller would be better.

3. Too early to tell if there are 'reboot issues' but honestly pretty much every computing device benefits from an occasional reboot. One a month doesn't seem to bad to me.

Overall I'm very happy with it. Siri delivers almost everything as advertised in the keynote, for me anyway. The only two disappointments I have are:

a) That the catalogues are not fully indexed for Siri. So when she says she can't find something, that doesn't mean it's not there, that just means she can't find it.

b) Yeah, I admit it, the remote iOS app really should be working with ATV4 on day one. Big miss there.

 

[Benz63amg]

it is extremely quick, turning on videos in netflix etc is much faster as well, better UI, its only gonna get better as apple updates the software, its a brand new platform unlike how it was from the apple tv 2 > apple tv 3.

 

[redman042]

Sounds good. Overall, based on this input, I think I'll get one soon.

As for gaming, already have the Xbox One upstairs for serious gaming, but a casual gaming machine downstairs for the family would be nice. I'm not yet sure how multiplayer will work without buying another controller. We do have a SteelSeries Stratus that is just sitting around.