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Apple TV |OT|
- Thread starter wachie
- Start date
Wrestlemania
Banned
Yes
infiniteloop
Member
FF is probably the most likely, the older ones being menu driven would make it pretty easy.
GTA would seem unlikely given apple's restrictive controller options.
DQ iOS seem to be built for the vertical phone screen, I can't see SE putting the work in to reconfigure it for the TV.
Technosteve
Banned
Why does the logo used in promos have a thinner font than the logo on the box? These things trigger me
.
Why is the apple tv box black on black on black. Next to all my other apple thing boxes it stands out
blast0rama
Member
If I had to guess in my most Jony Ive way - to blend in. To specifically not call attention to itself. In the most beautiful and magical way that...yeah, probably too far?
Glass Shark
Banned
I love the new Apple TV so far... just one issue. It will put my TV to sleep with CEC when I hold the Home button, but when I press the Home button to wake it again, it doesn't cause my TV to turn on.
Anyone else running into this?
Anyone else running into this?
Kung Fu Jedi
Member
Got a lot more time with the Apple TV last night, and overall I like it a lot. There are some rough edges, and I'm still working out how everything works, but for the most part it delivers on what I was wanting.
Siri search is still a bit off though. I asked to see the latest episodes of The Flash on Hulu for instance, and it said it couldn't play music. But when I said show me episodes of Arrow, it promptly brought up a page with links to the show in iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu. Hopefully the search continues to refine itself and improve over time.
Siri search is still a bit off though. I asked to see the latest episodes of The Flash on Hulu for instance, and it said it couldn't play music. But when I said show me episodes of Arrow, it promptly brought up a page with links to the show in iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu. Hopefully the search continues to refine itself and improve over time.
Nazgul_Hunter
Member
It's meant to disappear into your AV setup so it's purposefully understated
FlyStarJay
Member
thanks for all the advice. Checked the back of my tv and i had an optical connection 
and my speaker does as well. saved me a bit of cash.
and my speaker does as well. saved me a bit of cash.petethepanda
Member
How's Beat Sports? Didn't realize this was the Harmonix game.
DarkChronic
Member
Is there any way to search by genre? For example, can I browse EVERY horror movie across all apps in one location?
When I ask Siri to show me horror movies she gives me like, 20-30 max.
Also, real disappointing that when you are browsing in the iTunes store, it doesn't allow you to "open in Netflix" if available.
I guess what I'm asking is if there is a way to "universally browse". For example, here is EVERY horror movie in one location on all the apps you have downloaded.
When I ask Siri to show me horror movies she gives me like, 20-30 max.
Also, real disappointing that when you are browsing in the iTunes store, it doesn't allow you to "open in Netflix" if available.
I guess what I'm asking is if there is a way to "universally browse". For example, here is EVERY horror movie in one location on all the apps you have downloaded.
SmackCrackleNPop
Member
you're right, I was just remembering how to do it on the 2nd/3rd gen Apple TV. New one doesn't seem to switch to the characters when you click Play/Pause again.
It's the best Apple TV game in my opinion. It's been designed with the ATV in mind and isn't a port. It's like a love child between Wii Sports and a light, quirky rhythm game like Rhythm Heaven. I'm really enjoying it.
I'm really convinced there is indexing going on. There is a bit of randomness, but there's also a huge improvement from yesterday at first power in to like this afternoon now.
One thing to double check are the settings on your tv. Sadly CEC seems to be "maybe we support this, maybe we don't" across all manufacturers. So first check to see what options your tv gives you in settings.
You cannot universally browse genres, no. You can universally "browse" through related/linking, but yes. Once you go into an app (Netflix, iTunes, etc) you are no longer browsing universally. It would be a nice feature, and one of the tips it gives you when you press and release the Siri button is "what movie genres can I search". Unfortunately doing that right now just brings back a random selection of movies.
Ps press and release the Siri button and it gives you lots of tips.
infiniteloop
Member
Yup. Same issue. Not sure how to resolve it.
Oddity here as well.
If I set surround to auto, my receiver sets to multi-channel in (multi-channel PCM). If I set to Dolby, my receiver sets to Dolby Digital in on all sources/movies/shows. If I set to stereo, my receiver sets to PCM. My confusion is, is the system not supposed to pass Dolby Digital out from movies, and Netflix etc? Does it actually decode that stuff and send it out multi-PCM 5.1/7.1 etc?
If I set surround to auto, my receiver sets to multi-channel in (multi-channel PCM). If I set to Dolby, my receiver sets to Dolby Digital in on all sources/movies/shows. If I set to stereo, my receiver sets to PCM. My confusion is, is the system not supposed to pass Dolby Digital out from movies, and Netflix etc? Does it actually decode that stuff and send it out multi-PCM 5.1/7.1 etc?
SmackCrackleNPop
Member
HDMI-CEC is kind of hit or miss for anything I've tried it on. It works all the time sometimes
Jax Teller
Banned
This was what I noticed last night. This has to be fixed ASAP. It's unforgivable that this made it past testers. The Apple forum is full of people experiencing the same problems.
Yeah, same here and wondering about this too.
I've only tried it on my Twitch app and that definitely didn't work. The AirPlay icon is gone (still see chromecast) from within the app and the only AirPlay function that's worked is mirroring the whole device, which did function as a workaround while in twitch. Still clearly not working as well as it used to, man I just hope Twitch gets a proper TVOS app soon.
I managed to get it to work by turning on AirPlay in control panel and leaving mirroring off. Using an app that has AirPlay support automatically just sends it to the Apple TV. No idea why it's not just showing up like it used to but at least this works.
Just setting mine up and I could have sworn someone said a few pages back that this wouldn't be useful for people that cut the cable cord. I am surprised I can use the NBC App with no TV Provider Login BS. Their App even says that without a provider login you'll be able to watch, and that most new episodes are available 8 days after airing (instead of 1). I just tried watching Heroes and it works and they have all the episodes available for streaming.
I already have CBS All Access, but even without that it seems you can watch a lot of stuff.
PBS too, no TV Provider BS login - just activate it on PBS.org!
I already have CBS All Access, but even without that it seems you can watch a lot of stuff.
PBS too, no TV Provider BS login - just activate it on PBS.org!
Jax Teller
Banned
The NBC app is great. You can watch current episodes until they go away after a few weeks. I believe the app even tells you when they're going away.
Jax Teller
Banned
Best Buy and Apple stores have them.
I haven't been able to watch Project Runway either unless I bought the season on iTunes since I don't have Lifetime anymore, but their App is letting me watch past seasons that I do not own. It seems only the current season requires purchase, but if it's like the past seasons it will be available for free eventually.
I am SUPER impressed in the couple hours I have been checking to see what is available to me as someone that does not have cable TV. I had been watching stuff OTA (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS) recorded to a DVR (Mac Mini running EyeTV) for a couple years, but I might not even need that anymore with this new AppleTV! woohoo
brianmcdoogle
Member
I hope now they get back to work on the iPhone and iPad version since it has been on the back burner for a while (especially if they need to rewrite their video renderer to support PiP or something).
eyeball_kid
Member
And yet my day one preorder is still Preparing for Shipment. I don't know what's going with Apple's logistics, but they really messed up this launch.
Shiroi-San
Member
According to their developer, now that the tvOS app is out they are working on multitasking and pip features for iOS 9. No timeline was given, but it is coming.
holygeesus
Banned
Airplay has been flawless for me so far from Mac (Youtube video and Apple Music) and iPhone.
Slight tangent, but I was watching The Verve's review for the Apple TV... What kind of projected space-age screen or TV thing are they using in their review video? I feel lost. Unless it's faked?
faked
Should have figured that, but I was thinking if anyone had a futuristic, fancy TV thing to review other fancy things on, they might.
petethepanda
Member
Recorded a bit of Beat Sports, one early level from each mode. Liking it a lot so far. It definitely does have a kind of Bit.Trip or Rhythm Heaven feel to it as MercuryLS said, it's not really the kind of game you'd think it is at first glance.
I got mine at the store yesterday. I thought it was cute that the store employee wanted me to "take it for a demo". I just looked at her and said "no need, I know what I want, let's ring it up." She seemed stunned somehow.
So not much to say that other people haven't said already. It's fast, responsive and for the most part a joy to use.
That being said, my personal quibbles:
- on the prior ATV, there was a way to mark an episode as watched or unwatched manually, by hovering over an episode and holding in the primary button. This feature, unless I'm "doing it wrong", seems missing. Which is annoying, since I bought Scream Queens at its current $20 discount price, but I've watched all the current episodes at my friend's place and want them marked as having been already watched.
- Home Sharing is garbage now. Everything about the device is fast until you get to this part of it, and then it's just unusable. The UI is ugly compared to the rest of the device, Home Shared content doesn't get included in results in Universal Search and it actually fails to even stream music properly in its current state (skips parts of songs that didn't stream correctly and keeps playing past the unstreamed sections... EWW). It doesn't appear to be a Wi-Fi issue, and I'll test more to confirm, but the whole Home Sharing experience is jank and broken and desperately needs fixing. Seems like a total afterthought in the design right now.
- I find the touch pad is overly-sensitive for games. Playing Rayman Adventures has been a bit more of a chore than I'd like because of this.
- I don't mind the keyboard as much as others, but that doesn't mean it's good, just a different set of quirks and issues over the prior implementation.
- I'm not as enthralled with the Aerial screensaver as others are. Find them bland. More options aside from photo reels would be nice, and even photos appear to have fewer options for how to display them in screensavers.
- some of the apps that have been created were obvious rushed port jobs. Crunchyroll looks almost exactly like it did on the prior Apple TV, and that's not a compliment to it. My hope is that the new interface and remote will encourage developers to re-think their app designs somewhat.
I'm sure there's other things that I'm forgetting, though.
As others have said, it's a 1.0 product in a bunch of ways, with most of the quibbles being software issues that I can expect to be ironed out. Overall, though? A great product and several steps up from the prior Apple TV, which is what this product line desperately needed.
Universally better, outside of the time it takes to load things through Home Sharing.
So not much to say that other people haven't said already. It's fast, responsive and for the most part a joy to use.
That being said, my personal quibbles:
- on the prior ATV, there was a way to mark an episode as watched or unwatched manually, by hovering over an episode and holding in the primary button. This feature, unless I'm "doing it wrong", seems missing. Which is annoying, since I bought Scream Queens at its current $20 discount price, but I've watched all the current episodes at my friend's place and want them marked as having been already watched.
- Home Sharing is garbage now. Everything about the device is fast until you get to this part of it, and then it's just unusable. The UI is ugly compared to the rest of the device, Home Shared content doesn't get included in results in Universal Search and it actually fails to even stream music properly in its current state (skips parts of songs that didn't stream correctly and keeps playing past the unstreamed sections... EWW). It doesn't appear to be a Wi-Fi issue, and I'll test more to confirm, but the whole Home Sharing experience is jank and broken and desperately needs fixing. Seems like a total afterthought in the design right now.
- I find the touch pad is overly-sensitive for games. Playing Rayman Adventures has been a bit more of a chore than I'd like because of this.
- I don't mind the keyboard as much as others, but that doesn't mean it's good, just a different set of quirks and issues over the prior implementation.
- I'm not as enthralled with the Aerial screensaver as others are. Find them bland. More options aside from photo reels would be nice, and even photos appear to have fewer options for how to display them in screensavers.
- some of the apps that have been created were obvious rushed port jobs. Crunchyroll looks almost exactly like it did on the prior Apple TV, and that's not a compliment to it. My hope is that the new interface and remote will encourage developers to re-think their app designs somewhat.
I'm sure there's other things that I'm forgetting, though.
As others have said, it's a 1.0 product in a bunch of ways, with most of the quibbles being software issues that I can expect to be ironed out. Overall, though? A great product and several steps up from the prior Apple TV, which is what this product line desperately needed.
Universally better, outside of the time it takes to load things through Home Sharing.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
It is decoding and sending out in multichannel. On my AppleTV 2 when watching Fury Road it sent a Dolby 5.1 signal. On the new one it is sending a PCM 7.1 track.
The set up with phone was very nice. Now to get the phone to work as a keyboard.
eyeball_kid
Member
Pretty much every app was a rush job (except for the developers that got access to SDK prior to public announcement), as we only had about a month and a half to develop something on a new platform with completely new human interface paradigms. And that's on top of having to push out iOS 9 and watchOS updates around the same time. TVML let companies focused around content viewing build something quickly, but native apps need more time to get it right. At least I don't feel so bad for not making the launch date after seeing how the store's app discovery is pretty non-existent right now.
iPhone and Apple TV are not the same thing.
For one the iPhone owns a nice chunk of the mobile userbase. Not being available on iPhone at all is obviously problematic from a business point of view. But while iOS devices may get a significant number of eyes in the portable market, what we're talking about here is the 10' UI market - devices that are utilized on a TV. The broader market consists of 'smart' TV's, BD players, consoles, specialty devices like TiVo, and dedicated settop box / stick ''streaming' devices. Amazon does have pretty wide exposure here, with apps on at least some devices in all of those segments. And for currently released devices, it has exposure on a large number. Even if you narrow the market for 10' UI devices to strictly be where Apple has an offering, ie. settop box / stick ''streaming' devices, Apple doesn't own the category. That would be Roku, and even Fire OS devices are doing reasonably well versus Apple currently. So strictly from an eyeballs perspective in the overall segment, there simply isn't the same business need.
The bigger point though is the actual differences in expectations between the mobile and 10' UI categories. A majority of video rentals and purchases are made from devices hooked up to a monitor or TV ... not a phone. And that's where the main sticking point is with the 30% charge. While a number of companies may feel compelled to have video 'playback only' apps available for mobile, how many such apps do we see on 10' UI devices (obviously discounting sub-only offerings)? There are simply different expectations on functionality and feature-set between the two. And offering an app that doesn't meet those expectations can actually be worse than not being there at all. You break discoverability for the capabilities of your service if you don't have features on the platforms they are expected on.
Here's a simple real world illustration. Apple is offering 'universal' search as part of their API. Now let's say Amazon were to offer a playback-only app. What happens when someone does a Siri search for a movie that is available for rental / purchase on Amazon but isn't on Prime? Does it simple not show up on that cool placard of what apps have the video available and how much it costs? Or does it instead actually show up there with the price, but when you click it to make the purchase you instead go to a screen that says 'This movie is unavailable for purchase through this device, please log onto Amazon.com to purchase this item'?
Both of those options suck for the users and for Amazon or any similar video services company. The first one kills discoverability which obviously harms users' knowledge of what the service offers. That's a business no-no. The second is simply a bad user experience, which obviously harms peoples' general view of the usefulness of said service. People are lazy. Unless there's a substantial savings, people are going to choose the path of least resistance which is obviously the app where they can simply click and buy.
What I find most confusing though is the ire that's specifically directed at Amazon. Quite literally they should not offer rentals and purchases while giving up 30%, and I submit the above reasons why making a viewing-only app is not a good business decision, yet here we are singling out Amazon specifically. So far I don't see any of the non-sub video services lining up to hop on Apple TV. So why aren't they being similarly criticized? Is it simply because Amazon made their position public and stopped selling competitor's devices?
Let's say we get stricter and single out companies that have their own app store and sell video rentals / purchases. That seems to be a common rationale cited for Amazon's hesitance to make an app here. For whatever reason that particular reality is used as a rally point to criticize them more, instead of being seen as a reasonable business rationale, but I suppose that's neither here nor there. The point being Google finds themselves in that exact same position, yet there doesn't seem to be the same outcry that they aren't offering up an app on Apple TV. Is it because of Amazon's popularity? If anything, doesn't that mean they're logically in an even better position to dictate terms?
Of course then there's Apple themselves. They literally do not offer their video service on basically anything that isn't an Apple product. They scoff at the idea of paying some other store a fee to access their content ... all while at the same time demanding the highest fee to put apps on their own store (not to mention charging what's likely the highest margin for their own device that does have access). I don't know if it's some sort of expectation born out of iOS's popularity, where Apple basically gets what Apple wants in terms of app offerings, but the hypocrisy in all of this is hilarious. Apple TV is not iOS, sorry, and the fact that Amazon is being singled out in this situation is laughable.
Hey, I'd love for all services to be everywhere ... that would be the best for consumers. But to pretend they're being 'babies' instead of considering the very real business reasons behind this stuff is silly. If anyone is being a baby, it's the people whining and ridiculously oversimplifying the situation.
Apple has made crazy amounts of money due their margins, both from their own services and devices, and by the fees they make from others to put apps and services on their products. Of course demanding such high fees isn't going to always work out for them, particularly when it's in a market they aren't coming from a true position of strength.
From Apple's point of view lowering their fees now to get everyone on board, only to raise those fees later once they are in a position of power would be pretty problematic. So as a business one can argue it makes sense to do what they're doing; hope the device reaches sufficient numbers to improve their negotiating position later on. Of course the corollary is also true for Amazon. Apple is currently not in a position of strength here, so there's no reason make a bad business move by hoping on right now. Certainly not without a much better fees contract.
Also, I wish that it had a prompt at the end of an iTunes episode to select to just play the next unwatched episode. Not autoplay like Netflix, just something that doesn't immediately kick it back to the main interface if you know you're going to watch more. Seems like a small addition, but more improvements to using it are always beneficial.
Ah the joys of natural language ambiguity
When I said 'all the set-top box makers ...', I meant all the ones that fit the criteria being discussed ... not all of them in general.
But yes, you are most certainly correct. Fire TV does pay the fee thankfully.
Got the Shakes
Member
Ah the joys of natural language ambiguity
When I said 'all the set-top box makers ...', I meant all the ones that fit the criteria being discussed ... not all of them in general.
But yes, you are most certainly correct. Fire TV does pay the fee thankfully.
If it does DTS they don't list it in the specs which is weird. You'd think they'd want to let people know that they are one of the few boxes to offer it.
And yet, Amazon also shuns one of the fastest growers in the segment, Google, which takes no share of the revenue generation from the app. So Amazon clearly isn't even looking at unit sales of STBs when making these decisions.
This is, of course, entirely valid. If the lack of an Amazon app was only affecting Apple. What's the rationale elsewhere?
Because that's quite clearly not the primary motivation, as their excluding Google in the EXACT same way dictates, despite Google not offering the 30% revenue cut impediment.
Because Apple makes it clear that they have no intention of offering their services outside of their own ecosystem, whereas Amazon does not. It's because Amazon tries to have it both ways, promoting its service as more of an "anywhere you want to see it" solution when it clearly isn't, and not just for revenue-based reasons.
And I don't know what internet you have access to, but there's quite rampant critique of Apple's way of doing business. I don't know what gave you the impression that there wasn't.
Google, once again, makes it clear that it service is only available on devices that use Google software. There's no ambiguity about it. The moment you promote a service and then allow ambiguity of its availability to creep in, it becomes a sticking point.
And considering the major draw of Amazon Instant Video is... y'know, VIDEO, and it has an app on other devices that compete with it in the app market anyways, that's a weak excuse for the lack of presence and people call them out on it. Again, more ambiguity in the marketing message.
Oh, there is a business decision being made. But the issue is that Google and Apple aren't trying to have it both ways. They very clearly draw lines in the sand of where they intend to operate their business, while Amazon tries to market its service as a "content anywhere" solution that it very clearly is not, trying to have its cake and eat it too by blaming its competitors for them not living up to their own marketing message when it's very clearly Amazon's decision to do what it's doing.
And Amazons history with ebooks also taints the expectations of how people expect Amazon to approach other media. This whole amazon video business seem so petty. Theres other ways for Amazon to compete in hardware than this.
JrBaconCheeseburger
Member
I have used it quite a bit today and went back to the previous version just to compare.
This new apple TV is fast and will be great eventually but currently i believe the older one is more polished.
This one just seems rushed and i am having a hard time seeing the purpose of all the blinding white UI.
I know apple and Ive have been going crazy with the white space on everything but on apple TV it sucks.
But that is just my opinion.
This new apple TV is fast and will be great eventually but currently i believe the older one is more polished.
This one just seems rushed and i am having a hard time seeing the purpose of all the blinding white UI.
I know apple and Ive have been going crazy with the white space on everything but on apple TV it sucks.
But that is just my opinion.
Would it be too much to ask for a dark/night theme?
JrBaconCheeseburger
Member
Even the apple TV box is all blacked out.
I would welcome it and we can ask for it all day.
Will we get it from apple is the question?
Yeah I noticed on "auto" Hulu gets sent as PCM2.0 (Hulu doesn't do Dolby at all) whereas Dolby 5.1 gets sent as multi-channel 7.1. I am fine with it... Just the ambiguity of what's being passed along with the limited options is annoying. I guess I'll just assume Apple is decoding the discrete audio correctly and sending it as 7.1