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With how good smart TVs are now, why keep my Apple TV?

Ghost31

Ghost31

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 9, 2015
3,586
5,701
I know it’s all subjective, but I thought I’d share me experience real quick before I head out the door.

I’ve been using and loving apple tvs since the Apple TV 3. It’s been the centerpiece of my living room and I’ve had a lot of good times with it. There’s nothing better than going on a trip with my family and taking a bunch of pictures and videos and coming home and reliving those moments by air playing those to my tv. And the way Apple TV just made renting movies so much easier than going to Redbox and buying movies that I can watch anywhere has been just plain awesome. Love that I can start a movie on my Apple TV and continue on my iPhone later on.

But now smart TVs have gotten so good, I can’t really recommend people buy apple TVs anymore. Back in the day when TVs were nothing more than displays that did nothing else, sure. But last year I got an lg TV and wow. The web os interface is so much nicer than apple’s and their virtual assistant understands me even better than siri! How can siri, something that a trillion dollar touts as one of their biggest features, be so bad at even the most basic stuff?

Now I moved that lg tv to the bedroom and bought a new Samsung and the difference between smart tv and Apple TV is even greater. The apps load quicker. The interface is much less cluttered, the assistant understands me better, it hooks directly into my home stuff, the picture quality is better when I watch through tv’s Netflix and YouTube vs apple’s, the remote is much much easier to use. And now I’m told Samsung will be getting an update in the spring where I’ll have iTunes and AirPlay. Two of the biggest reasons I had an Apple TV.

So I wonder at this point if there’s anyone else that feels like me and sees it as a bit redundant having a box plugged into my tv that does what my tv already does.
 
kissfan said:
If you like android, go for it.

I’d rather my TV not openly spy on me.
Click to expand...
Google creeps me out too. But let me ask you. What are the real world implications of using google products? How will it harm me?
 
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I recently bought a 2018 model Samsung Smart TV and I pretty much had the same conclusion. Smart TV's aren't as bad as they used to be and mine has YouTube (in 4k), HULU, Amazon Prime, CBS All-Access, DirecTV Now, Twitch and Netflix. It's also getting AirPlay 2 and iTunes. If they added HomeKit support it would be perfect. It's probably about 50% smart tv's have gotten good (no lag, better UI) and 50% the Apply TV is just a missed opportunity with huge potential that has largely gone untapped.

If I could have Siri open DirectTV Now and switch to the local news in the morning and even better automate it so that it happens when my alarm goes off and the lights come on that would be great or if would automatically show the front-door camera when the doorbell rings or some other stuff like that I'd be all for it but if all you're using your Apple TV for is things like Netflix there's no point, its just another box and more wires to deal with.
 
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This question has been asked a lot of times on the MR forums.

Reasons to get an ATV over using smart TVs are:

1. ATV will most likely have updates for many years, smart TVs are known to stop getting updates only after 2 years.

2. While subjective, the UI tends to be better on the tvOS.

3. The tvOS App Store tends to have more and better quality apps.

4. The ATV4K is very powerful, and should be more than sufficient for many years.

5. The ATV is portable, and can be taken with you while traveling.

6. If ATVs are placed on multiple TV in a household, the user's can get an identical experience regardless of the make of the TV.

7. Access to Apple Music, iTunes, iCloud photos, and stuff like that.



All that said, I think that for the majority of people out there, the Smart TV would be a better choice. While the ATV has many advantages, the Smart TVs apps are good enough, and most of the popular apps are pretty similar to tvOS versions.

The ATV4K could be so much more, but due to Apple's missteps at the launch of tvOS, the ATV is now just a way overpowered, very expensive, Netflix streaming box to most people.

Hopefully, that will change, but I lost faith in Apple, so I won't count on it.
 
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kissfan said:
Apparently they didn’t like my link, but basically just search for those keywords, Google and privacy, and you’ll see exactly what they’re up to.
Click to expand...
Alright man. Should be interesting lol give me a rundown though? Like what are the downsides to using google on my smart tv? How could this be bad for me and my life?

In 500 words or less please lol
 
I purchased a Samsung UHD SmartTV on Black Friday and I didn't even bother connecting the TV to my home WiFi. I'm sure the UI and experience of connected TV's are pretty good, but I have been using ATV's since the third generation. I like the interface and overall user experience. I guess I'm just used to the Apple ecosystem and overall experience.
 
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Just wait a few years and your manufacturer will stop updating the OS and apps on your TV, rendering some of them unusable. The whole television business model is to introduce new whizz bang features to get you to upgrade sooner than you need to (HD, 4K, 8k cases in point), so why should they keep updating their software? In a few years your smart features will be useless, whereas at least your Apple TV will still be getting updates.
 
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Moonjumper said:
A smart TV is likely to get updated even less that an Android phone. A great option when new, but the Apple TV will be more useful as a TV ages. And most people hold onto a TV a lot longer than a phone.
Click to expand...
I thought that too, but my lg tv gets updates all the time. Quite often when I click on Netflix or something a pop up message goes “there’s an update for this app. Would you like to install”.
 
Ghost31 said:
I thought that too, but my lg tv gets updates all the time. Quite often when I click on Netflix or something a pop up message goes “there’s an update for this app. Would you like to install”.
Click to expand...

Some apps (like Netflix) get updated frequently in all platforms, not so the TV OSes. On Bravia we have got Android TV 8.0 only recently while it has been available for Nvidia Shield months ago. And only the 2016+ models have been updated. The older models will get it, but months from now. I am not sure but I think they have got Android 7 one year later than mine.
 
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For me, the only thing missing is full Apple media compatibility. And the latest Samsung TVs can load iTunes-purchased movies and music directly; while many other brands can now do AirPlay video. I just bought a new TV literally a few days before the announcement, though - from one of the brands (LG) that isn't adding it to their older TVs. :-(

If LG were to do a firmware update for my 2018-model TV to add AirPlay, I could ditch my AppleTV. The only thing I use it for any more is iTunes purchases. (And thanks to "MoviesAnywhere" there are fewer and fewer of my iTunes purchases that are now locked in to Apple. About 3/4 are now available on other video providers that my TV has native apps for. Now if only Paramount would get on board with MoviesAnywhere, I'd be set.)
 
I have a 2018 Sony Android smart TV, I prefer to use it with my Apple TV 3. I don’t yet have enough internet speed for 4K media so the 1080P of the ATV3 is not a problem yet. I find the apps on the ATV are better designed, more consistent and easier to use than on the Sony TV, also I like the ATV remote better. When I use the Sony TV smart apps I need to diddle with my audio system ARC (hdmi audio return channel) settings, which is inconvenient.

I don’t know if I will buy the latest ATV when I eventually want 4K, because it’s rather expensive, more than double what the ATV3 cost me.

I do find it annoying that Apple has not added many new apps to the ATV3, obviously they consider it dead even though it’s still a very useful 1080P device, they want people to fork out $$$ for the latest 4K version.
 
steve23094 said:
Most people consider the LG OS one of the best, so imagine how you would feel with a different brand.
Click to expand...
From what I see, I think the main reason behind that statement is that webOS performs really snappy. Not necessarily because it is a nice ligtweight piece of code. LG may be running it on a beefy V12 powerhouse. After all, it can do things like dual-layer Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and such.
UI is a matter of taste, but to my eyes the teardrop-cursor is downright hilarious.
 
priitv8 said:
From what I see, I think the main reason behind that statement is that webOS performs really snappy. Not necessarily because it is a nice ligtweight piece of code. LG may be running it on a beefy V12 powerhouse. After all, it can do things like dual-layer Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and such.
UI is a matter of taste, but to my eyes the teardrop-cursor is downright hilarious.
Click to expand...

Things have changed indeed with the Sony Bravia Master Series TVs, which have a much more capable SoC and twice the RAM. It's still Android, so... Also, I have run the Antutu benchmark on my Bravia. It reached 27K. Even if the new SoC has 3 times the power it's still stuck at 81K. The ATV4K (well, the A10X Fusion) performs at around 200+K...
 
kissfan said:
If you like android, go for it.

I’d rather my TV not openly spy on me.
Click to expand...

Yup, personally I prefer my TV to be a big dumb display and have the internet connected smarts lie elsewhere, be better on security and privacy, and get better and more frequent security updates. Since buying an actual dumb TV is pretty difficult these days I've settled for not giving the TV internet access and using an AppleTV for the smarts

Also the atv acts as a homekit hub, integrates well with the rest of my apple gear, and doesnt require me to create yet another additional account somewhere
 
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It's necessary for connecting to a receiver for the best audio possible. Depending on the TV and receiver you can feed some audio back via ARC but it's mostly just DD. Some maybe lossy atmos.
TV apps also don't get updated as often. And eventually those updates will stop while the streaming boxes get updated for far longer.
For that reason alone I'll always use an external streaming device.
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Shadow%20Mac said:
I have a brand new LG OLED ThinQ Smart TV. The panel is incredible. The Smart TV os garbage.
Click to expand...
The smart TV function of a LG OLED is the best you can get on a tv. If you don't like that then you'll hate everything else.
 
My new Sony Z9F has what is called “Netflix calibrated mode”. This is described as the ability of the TV Netflix app to read metadata encoded in the Netflix stream that describes the compression algorithms used, and is supposed to result in the app being better able to decode the video stream. And the more powerful processor in Sony’s latest Reference series makes the Android OS very responsive. I tend to favor the TV app for Netflix, and the AppleTV 4K for Amazon Prime and other apps.
 
I came to this epiphany a year ago, I use my Sony's built-in Android TV for everything that Apple TV used to do for me except for a) streaming my home movies from my notebook to the Sony TV and b) Apple Music.

Now that Apple has announced that they are going to create an app for iTunes content in Sony TV's and allow Sony TV's to take advantage of AirPlay, it's bye-bye Apple TV (the set-top puck) and hello Apple TV (the piece of software it's morphing into).

It's fine by me; Apple TV is a service more than a piece of hardware anyway. My Sony's built-in Android is fast and the developers update Android apps faster too.
 
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