Yeah I noticed same. I have same Apple TV HD. My parents just got new TV for living room few months ago and their OS is rubbish. Also my sister have newish TV that about 2 years old and it same again. Apple TV much faster, smoother and last longer too. TV manufactures defo not bother do OS well or take time do it properly.
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When to Expect a New Apple TV to Launch
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There isn't really much reason to upgrade anymore. I couldn't even tell you what generation I have at this point except that it's 4K. We use FaceTime on the Apple TV a lot so everyone can fit around the camera in my family to talk to grandparents and such, and using the iPhone works well for the most part but is kinda annoying to get the angle just right every time leaning it up against my PS5 or a sound bar, and then the sound bar sometimes echoes back into the iPhone for the viewer, and the iPhone drains a lot of battery using continuity camera. I've thought about 3D printing a popdown MagSafe mount to go underneath my TV but I haven't had time to design anything yet in Blender.
I'd probably have to move the Apple TV location or it would be looking out of a cubby. Also a lot of people mount their Apple TVs behind the TV or on the wall or in a drawer somewhere with cables routing to the TV through the wall. It would actually be kinda nice if it were a USB-C accessory that could plug into the back of a new model and then I could route it through the cable channel in my wall and clip it onto the bottom edge of my TV so it's up higher.
I'd probably have to move the Apple TV location or it would be looking out of a cubby. Also a lot of people mount their Apple TVs behind the TV or on the wall or in a drawer somewhere with cables routing to the TV through the wall. It would actually be kinda nice if it were a USB-C accessory that could plug into the back of a new model and then I could route it through the cable channel in my wall and clip it onto the bottom edge of my TV so it's up higher.
4K is enough. Plex on the Apple TV can pull all Movies, TV Shows, and Music from my local server. Can play whatever I want, whenever I want, without paying subscription fees. That's technology as an investment for the consumer, instead of being an ongoing expense.
I am with everyone else that says it is pretty hard to initiate the Siri button on the 3rd Generation Apple Remote, heck, you even have to give a pretty good push for the on/off button. I am sure it has been pointed out by now, however, if your remote is lightning, you are not using the latest Apple TV 4K. The latest Apple TV 4K comes with a USB-C port on the remote for charging and two variations as seen below.
Apple TV 4K (3rd Generation) Models:
Apple TV 4K + WiFi + 64GB Storage:
HDMI 2.1
Wi‑Fi 6 (802.11ax) with 2x2 MIMO
Bluetooth 5.0 wireless technology
IR receiver
Built-in power supply
Apple TV 4K + Wi-Fi + 128GB Storage:
Same specs as above except storage capacity, plus:
Thread networking technology
Gigabit Ethernet
I have three of these Apple TV 4K's (3rd Generation): One in 128GB and two in 64GB and I will never comes close to maxing out the storage on my 128GB Apple TV 4K, let alone my other two Apple TV 4K's with 64GB Storage, unless they really start coming out with some AAA games and Pro apps, haha.
I just use Continuity Camera which has Center Stage (depending upon iPhone/iPad model of course) and it works great! In fact, I think it is the best feature of tvOS 17! I just bought the Belkin stand (on Pre-Order) but there are plenty of creative ways to get your phone where and at the angle you need/want it, I just did not feel like messing around with that anymore and will look very much forward to being able to mount it directly to my TV.
A little bonus: With a Continuity Camera connected to Apple TV 4K (3rd generation), you can also see yourself onscreen and add entertaining filters when singing along to your favorite songs from the Music app and use Apple Music Sing.
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I use the original Siri Remote (black) on my 2022 ATV4K3.
128GB of storage is probably overkill for most people, but for people that play games, 128GB may not be enough.
Right now, there are many large games on the tvOS App Store and Apple Arcade, which could lead to storage issues on even the 128GB ATV. I have had "Out of Storage" messages on my 128GB ATV4K3, had to delete some stuff to download a new app a few times.
For the 32GB ATVs, about six large games can fill the storage.
Aerial Screensavers take up a decent amount of space as well, there are many of them now and they keep downloading unless you turn it off or run out of space.
Ahh, I see with the remote. I honestly did not hate that remote at all, but most people hated the heck out of it! I still have my Apple TV's that came with the black remotes, I guess a little extra backup, just in case a couple of the newer ones die before they should, haha.
See, I do not play games...so that is why even with the 32GB Apple TV's I never came close to maxing out my storage.
Knowing Apple, I bet they release an Apple TV 4K Pro with certain AAA games at release with more promised (and/or buy a game studio), 500GB Storage, 8GB RAM, but you will have to pay extra if you want ethernet! Comes with a basic remote, and they let you pick if you want a Playstation or Xbox controller, or no controller since most of us have controllers. I have two Xbox Elite Series II controllers in front of me and five normal ones that rarely, if ever get used.
Then they will release minor updates to the current, non-pro Apple TV's!
Obviously, I am being a bit facetious (or am I?!) but one day I truly believe they will branch the Apple TV's off by Pro and Non-Pro.
PS: Not quite on topic, but this is how Apple and Dolby created Dolby Vision Profile 20, which is kind of wild! Good read.
Apple, Dolby collaborate on Dolby Vision profile 20 extension for Vision Pro - TVBEurope
Profile 20 is the first Dolby Vision profile to support Multiview High Efficiency Video Coding (MV-HEVC) and enables the delivery of Stereoscopic (3D) video
www.tvbeurope.com
LG OLED C3 + Plex (NAS) + TrueHD + Sonos = Nope
Add on a really bizarre issue with sound not working on my AppleTV when all the bells and whistles were enabled (ATMOS / DV, etc.) on my Xbox Series X. This drove me crazy for WEEKS. Dumbing down the XSX to just standard "stereo" gave me sound but anything ATMOS would display on SONOS as Multichannel PCM and did not sound right.
Fifth Element R2 BDRIP (ATMOS) [Rip from my original] would crash Plex like clockwork. If I switched the audio to DD it worked fine.
Purchased a FireTV 4K MAX - ZERO issues with anything.
I really prefer the ATV4K, but too many issues for me.
Add on a really bizarre issue with sound not working on my AppleTV when all the bells and whistles were enabled (ATMOS / DV, etc.) on my Xbox Series X. This drove me crazy for WEEKS. Dumbing down the XSX to just standard "stereo" gave me sound but anything ATMOS would display on SONOS as Multichannel PCM and did not sound right.
Fifth Element R2 BDRIP (ATMOS) [Rip from my original] would crash Plex like clockwork. If I switched the audio to DD it worked fine.
Purchased a FireTV 4K MAX - ZERO issues with anything.
I really prefer the ATV4K, but too many issues for me.
How they'd fall out of synch with MacBooks or Apple TV or have a slight but perceptible lag. Personally I had issues across 6 different WiFi networks- I've moved around a lot. Add to that a bunch of other glitches and issues, especially if trying to run a stereo pair.
Price? Cooling? It can't properly keep a 6W chip cool as things stand. How do they differentiate between this and a MacMini if they have the same internals?
Just get a real console instead. No point in waiting for Apple to take gaming seriously.
Pushing gaming was always a stupid thing for Apple. For it to be worthwhile for developers to port AAA games (or even just some of the best Indie games on consoles and PC) there has to be a good userbase for the device. The problem is as an Apple Device its always going to be on the expensive side and when you have Amazon, Roku and Google with devices that regularly sell for $/£20 mark and 4k versions selling for under 50 and even their of-the-line all bells and whistles versions coming in between the 80-100 mark the AppleTV is always going to struggle to get the size of user base that gets developers interested. Trying to spec it for gaming though without a doubt has increased the price, its been overspeced since day one as just a streaming content box.
As such as you said all we really get are iPhone games with everything scaled up and tbh a lot of the times as these games were designed for the iPhone which does have a userbase that get devs interested in they don't always look that good blown up onto a TV and don't control as well.
Without getting the device under 50 or just giving them away when you buy any other apple device or if you pay for a year of certain Apple services (Maybe part of Apple One) they will never persuade most developers to go full in on porting upcoming and classic games to the AppleTV
BBC iPlayer has alot of 4K content, unfortunately, the BBC iPlayer app doesn't support it even on a 4K version because Apple chose not to support MPEG-DASH which BBC use and most other devices support. With the userbase of the AppleTV being fairly low, especially in the UK it just isn't worth the resources needed to develop and maintain a whole separate setup just for the AppleTV so we get a very basic app.
It's perhaps the most annoying thing about the AppleTV really, the price is higher than anything else which is fine but then makes it difficult for companies to support all of their services by not supporting certain key standards. If you are going to price high and limit your market share you need to support every standard possible to make it easy on services to include all their features thus making it more appealing for users to buy an ATV. Either that or it needs sold cheap enough that the services see the importance of implementing support for standards Apple choose to use rather than the ones you use
Apple seems to want the TV app to be the main hub of the Apple TV.
For me, the TV app is a commercial that makes it difficult to get to the content you already paid for.
You see an entire page of sponsored content and a tiny sliver of shows you can continue watching.
Paramount+ does it better by giving you a full page of your favorites with large tiles for each one.
For me, the TV app is a commercial that makes it difficult to get to the content you already paid for.
You see an entire page of sponsored content and a tiny sliver of shows you can continue watching.
Paramount+ does it better by giving you a full page of your favorites with large tiles for each one.
Audio passthrough for Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD Master Audio / DTS:X is sorely needed for Infuse. The Nvidia Shield TV Pro can with Plex but that hasn't been refreshed since 2019. A real shame Apple won't just unlock it in the tvOS API rather than restricting output to Dolby Atmos to Dolby Digital Plus and LPCM. They would probably see a least some purchases from media centre enthusiasts if they acknowledged its usage is a bit wider than just online streaming services. They could even sell it as a new feature even though the 2022 hardware is likely more than capable of doing it already.
Why is Plex always stuttering using ATV4K? Is it really "not fast enough network" which Plex tells me. I am using 1GB ethernet. If it's truly the network speed then ATV4K could use a 2.5GB or 5GB ethernet port.
I have my doubts when Infuse plays the same movie without issue, but a faster ethernet port would future proof.
Other Plex/ATV4K conflict is having AirPods Pro set to "Spatial Audio" and "Spatialize Stereo" and playing a movie with Stereo audio. The movie won't play. I don't know if this is an ATV4K issue or a Plex issue, but annoying.
I have my doubts when Infuse plays the same movie without issue, but a faster ethernet port would future proof.
Other Plex/ATV4K conflict is having AirPods Pro set to "Spatial Audio" and "Spatialize Stereo" and playing a movie with Stereo audio. The movie won't play. I don't know if this is an ATV4K issue or a Plex issue, but annoying.
I occasionally get this message even though my connection is ~300 Mbps. It looks like it is some other problem on the server end. Have never pursued due to the almost non-existent Plex support.
It's usually not the device thats the problem but the server. The AppleTV pretty much can't natively play video or audio format that you are likely to use for your media server so everything needs transcoded and that often seems to cause issues
My Apple tv HD is starting to show its age but is much faster than my new Amazon Fire tv
What a time it would be for Apple to release an updated Apple TV with perhaps a bundled controller SKU as an optional version!
With emulators exploding in popularity -- it would sell VERY well I think
With emulators exploding in popularity -- it would sell VERY well I think
Yup... I would love to see emulators on tvOS.
You could install game emulators (among other things) on the original ATV1 and the ATV2. IIRC, Apple locked down the ATV3, so that put an end to non-Apple approved SW and OS on the ATVs.