4 ms·

Roku, FireTV, Wii, WiiU, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and the Xbox One. The consoles obviously cost more than $150, but provide the same services.

by NDizzle 11y ago

ssmoot 11y ago
The rest aren't nearly as powerful as the latest AppleTV though are they? I got a Amazon FireTV Stick for my MiL. It seems like a nice device. The interface is really decent, though it pushes Amazon Videos harder than the AppleTV pushes iTunes I feel like. Netflix and Hulu on the latest AppleTV feel "first class" for example. Same number of steps as getting to iTunes content (or one extra if you have multiple Netflix profiles). And the search is universal. Whereas on FireTV the Netflix App is kinda off in a corner and most of the content you're presented on startup is inaccessible if you don't have a Prime account. Anyways, hardware wise, the latest AppleTV feels more powerful/capable than most devices on that list. Not sure about the PS3 or 360 or original Wii since I didn't really use them as media devices, but it's definitely much more powerful than the WiiU (I've tried Netflix and Hulu on it for the kids and it's nowhere near as snappy or responsive). Anyways, yes, the PS4 (I don't have an XBone yet) does most of what the latest AppleTV does. But it's less focused and more cumbersome. No voice search for example. The apps seem a bit slower. (Except for Youtube, which is far better than the crippled version made for TvOS.) Not sure where I'm going with all this except to say the latest AppleTV has it's own strengths/weaknesses and is more of a media-device++ than a Console--. My own pro/cons would be: Pro: Boots way faster than the previous version. Just a few seconds. Con: Needs to be rebooted every other day or so when apps can no longer play video for unknown reasons. Pro: Board games on the AppleTV with a young family are awesome. Con: Not enough of them. Pro: Plenty of age-appropriate games for children. Crossy Road is one of the few games my 3yo and 7yo can really play well together, and the TV experience is great. Con: Not enough more in-depth games. Where's Kingdom Rush?!? Con: The on-screen Keyboard is the worst ever designed in the history of on-screen keyboards. W.T.F. Apple. Seriously. Especially painful in Youtube since you can't voice-search there. Pro: The optional Controller is great. Con: It's not used to it's fullest since most buttons map to things that'll kick you out of the current app. I totally get not making the 3rd party controller required. But it's a rough compromise to be limited to NES level controls.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  For both the AppleTV and FireTV, is the Youtube app just a thin wrapper around youtube.com/tv? There doesn't seem to be that many "native" Youtube apps around - it kinda suffers from the same problem that Netflix does in that someone's decided to code for the lowest-common-denominator device [1]. I've heard the Netflix experience on AppleTV is pretty good. 1: WTF, Netflix, why would you remove proper Kinect support from the Xbox One app?
  - randomacct44 11y ago
    The YouTube app on AppleTV is a native app, not a wrapper. I don't know about the FireTV (on a side note, the YouTube app for Android TV is also a native app and not a wrapper). I actually quite like the youtube.com/tv page as a good demonstration of a HTML5 app, though it has some navigation quirks. Before the Apple TV I had a NUC set up with Kodi and Chrome Launcher for when I wanted to use YouTube and I'd use the TV page exclusively.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    >WTF, Netflix, why would you remove proper Kinect support from the Xbox One app? I swear the Netflix app on Xbox is somehow being released in reverse order. Every single time it updates, features are ripped out.
    - zupreme 11y ago
      It's not just happening on XB1. I am seeing that on Ps4 and even on iPad. Try looking for genres and separating tv shows from movies in Netflix on any of those platforms if you don't know what we are talking about.
  - cstejerean 11y ago
    The new tvOS does not allow web views of any kind (at least not through public APIs), so you can't have any apps that wrap websites. All apps have to be native. I'm not sure about the motivation behind this.
- j_s 11y ago

Roku, FireTV, Wii, WiiU, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and the Xbox One. The consoles obviously cost more than $150, but provide the same services.

by NDizzle 11y ago

Roku, FireTV, Wii, WiiU, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and the Xbox One. The consoles obviously cost more than $150, but provide the same services.

ssmoot 11y ago

The rest aren't nearly as powerful as the latest AppleTV though are they? I got a Amazon FireTV Stick for my MiL. It seems like a nice device. The interface is really decent, though it pushes Amazon Videos harder than the AppleTV pushes iTunes I feel like. Netflix and Hulu on the latest AppleTV feel "first class" for example. Same number of steps as getting to iTunes content (or one extra if you have multiple Netflix profiles). And the search is universal. Whereas on FireTV the Netflix App is kinda off in a corner and most of the content you're presented on startup is inaccessible if you don't have a Prime account. Anyways, hardware wise, the latest AppleTV feels more powerful/capable than most devices on that list. Not sure about the PS3 or 360 or original Wii since I didn't really use them as media devices, but it's definitely much more powerful than the WiiU (I've tried Netflix and Hulu on it for the kids and it's nowhere near as snappy or responsive). Anyways, yes, the PS4 (I don't have an XBone yet) does most of what the latest AppleTV does. But it's less focused and more cumbersome. No voice search for example. The apps seem a bit slower. (Except for Youtube, which is far better than the crippled version made for TvOS.) Not sure where I'm going with all this except to say the latest AppleTV has it's own strengths/weaknesses and is more of a media-device++ than a Console--. My own pro/cons would be: Pro: Boots way faster than the previous version. Just a few seconds. Con: Needs to be rebooted every other day or so when apps can no longer play video for unknown reasons. Pro: Board games on the AppleTV with a young family are awesome. Con: Not enough of them. Pro: Plenty of age-appropriate games for children. Crossy Road is one of the few games my 3yo and 7yo can really play well together, and the TV experience is great. Con: Not enough more in-depth games. Where's Kingdom Rush?!? Con: The on-screen Keyboard is the worst ever designed in the history of on-screen keyboards. W.T.F. Apple. Seriously. Especially painful in Youtube since you can't voice-search there. Pro: The optional Controller is great. Con: It's not used to it's fullest since most buttons map to things that'll kick you out of the current app. I totally get not making the 3rd party controller required. But it's a rough compromise to be limited to NES level controls.

voltagex_ 11y ago
For both the AppleTV and FireTV, is the Youtube app just a thin wrapper around youtube.com/tv? There doesn't seem to be that many "native" Youtube apps around - it kinda suffers from the same problem that Netflix does in that someone's decided to code for the lowest-common-denominator device [1]. I've heard the Netflix experience on AppleTV is pretty good. 1: WTF, Netflix, why would you remove proper Kinect support from the Xbox One app?
- randomacct44 11y ago
  The YouTube app on AppleTV is a native app, not a wrapper. I don't know about the FireTV (on a side note, the YouTube app for Android TV is also a native app and not a wrapper). I actually quite like the youtube.com/tv page as a good demonstration of a HTML5 app, though it has some navigation quirks. Before the Apple TV I had a NUC set up with Kodi and Chrome Launcher for when I wanted to use YouTube and I'd use the TV page exclusively.
- rhino369 11y ago
  >WTF, Netflix, why would you remove proper Kinect support from the Xbox One app? I swear the Netflix app on Xbox is somehow being released in reverse order. Every single time it updates, features are ripped out.
  - zupreme 11y ago
    It's not just happening on XB1. I am seeing that on Ps4 and even on iPad. Try looking for genres and separating tv shows from movies in Netflix on any of those platforms if you don't know what we are talking about.
- cstejerean 11y ago
  The new tvOS does not allow web views of any kind (at least not through public APIs), so you can't have any apps that wrap websites. All apps have to be native. I'm not sure about the motivation behind this.
j_s 11y ago