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Honestly speaking, the problem with Apple TV is that chips like A12 are such a overkill for TV box use cases. I recently purchased a $30 Roku and find it has al

Honestly speaking, the problem with Apple TV is that chips like A12 are such a overkill for TV box use cases. I recently purchased a $30 Roku and find it has almost 99% of the features that an Apple TV would have (including airplay2). Yes, Apple TV would have better color, visual quality, etc, but that's way into the realm of dismissed return for the investment IMHO.

conception 5y ago
It’s insane they don’t package a first party controller and just take the video console space over with it.
- goodcjw2 5y ago
  Yeah, sounds like natural next step. But building a game console ecosystem turns out to be 10x harder than building the hardware itself.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    That's true, but Apple already has a rich and successful game ecosystem on iPhones which are roughly the same hardware as the Apple TV. They have all the ingredients, and they've even made a visible attempt by offering Apple Arcade on the Apple TV. Wireless console controllers also work on Apple TV. It's just clear that the resources and effort haven't been made to get their Arcade developers to do the extra work to really make their titles work well on big TVs with console controllers.
    - fomine3 5y ago
      Games on iPhone is really succeeded but I doubt it's thanks to Apple's effort.
    - gurkendoktor 5y ago
      I had an Apple TV 4K and a couple of compatible gamepads, and I loved some of the early tvOS games! Rayman, Icycle (!!), Alto's Adventure, Badlands... Then I tried Apple Arcade and it's just terrible. First, performance for all the 3D-heavy games is exactly what you would expect on a 4K screen with an iPhone 7 GPU. The iPhone XR GPU won't solve that. But I'm also convinced that Apple fundamentally doesn't get games. A lot of the content was just interactive storytelling. With a few notable exceptions, I felt like a suit who never owned a console or Steam account had picked games for me based purely on the marketing materials.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Wireless Xbox controllers work fine with Apple TV. The bigger problem is that the games simply are not designed with a TV and console controller in mind. Even the Apple Arcade titles, which are generally very polished on iPhone and iPad, are pretty janky with a controller, and nearly unusable with the Apple TV Siri Remote (even though they claim to be designed for these input devices). But yes, it's very frustrating to me that the Apple TV doesn't have a rich gaming ecosystem. I'm pretty sure the hardware is powerful enough to deliver great performance and modern graphics for everything except the most photorealistic and flashy triple-A titles. Given that they offer Apple Arcade on the Apple TV, it's one of those surprising corners of the Apple ecosystem where you feel like a second-class citizen.
  - NaN1352 5y ago
    It’s also kind of half assed for Apple surprisingly, specifically some games from Apple Arcade are downright unplayable on my before-last gen ATV. To a point where it feels like a scam that Apple didn’t simply exclude some titles from the older ATVs, it’s just bad user experience. I remember one 3d game was super puxellated due to upscaling and like 10fps :/. Why even allow users to get this game on aging hardware? Now I wonder if it’s worth upgrading for AA. I hate mobile games but there are a few good ports of pc games. And if i could play a good rogue game on my tv for smaller 20-30min sessions I’m sold. I’m still going to upgrade because you can feel even simple apps like twitch tv are laggy on before-last gen.
  - corysama 5y ago
    This is the classic chicken-egg problem inherent in starting up a new game platform. Why invest in your game's controller experience and compromise the touch experience when billions of players have touch and a negligible amount have controllers? The only way to bootstrap the ecosystem is to prime the pump with large investments from the platform holder. Pay devs directly to add support. Give hardware to users way below cost.
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      Yep, I don’t fault the game devs at all! I would expect Apple to use the Arcade program (plus their infinite cash) to incentivize devs to really polish the Apple TV experience.
- corysama 5y ago
  I've heard an insider rumor that there was a plan years ago to make an Apple TV that would compete directly with the PS4. It was shelved because the person in charge of the App Store simply hated games and believed that music is the only art form worthy of respect. This led to that person demanding the limited set of Bluetooth channels be allocated in such a way that sufficiently responsive game controllers would be impossible. And, thus the concept was shelved. That person was later moved to be in charge of Apple Music.
defaultname 5y ago
I recently moved my Apple TV to another room (for Fitness+ use) so we started relying upon a Chromecast with Google TV. What a downgrade. It made me remember how horrid AV components often were, where multi-second delays, slow loading, horrid transitions, etc, were just normal. The Chromecast Google TV device has a 4 core, 1.9Ghz device, yet it seems extremely underpowered. Having a beefy processor in an AV device is hugely beneficial. I don't want lag. I want everything to work effortlessly.
- tootie 5y ago
  My experience with streaming sticks or other micro devices is that they get super hot and degrade over time pretty quickly. A small brick like Roku Ultra is much more durable. Bonus points for having an ethernet port. I'm also a fan of the Roku remote with the headphone jack built in and TV volume controls.
- ziml77 5y ago
  The Nvidia Shield basically uses the same SoC as the Nintendo Switch. Yet somehow even though the chip is powerful enough to run 3D games, Android TV can't manage smooth 2D animations on it. As I said in another comment I switched to using the apps on my LG TV. That sluggishness was a huge reason why.
  - minhazm 5y ago
    It's possible it's not powerful enough for a 4K tv if that's what you have. The Switch does 720p, or 1080p when docked. 4X the resolution is a big difference.
    - phendrenad2 5y ago
      Not in 2D it isn't. Sliding some 2D textures around a 4k screen should be easy for any GPU from the last 2 decades. Problem is likely the apps do silly things like (I'm guessing) load 8k textures and draw them in a tiny box, and then try to load 100 of these boxes at once every time you thpe a character in the search box. Just guessing based on blog post deconstructions of modern games and apps I've seen.
PeterStuer 5y ago
It is one of the more cost effective options to run Zwift. More power would be very welcome.
willseth 5y ago
Depends on how you're leveraging their ecosystem. If you have HomeKit cameras, your Apple TV might also be running 24/7 realtime object detection for 5 simultaneous 1080p video streams. And your ROI is way off. The new auto-calibration feature brings an otherwise cost-prohibitive service into the consumer mainstream. Even if you happen to have one of the few higher end TVs that supports AutoCal, you still need $150 calibration software plus a $250 colorimeter. If your TV doesn't support it, then you have to either pay a professional even more to manually calibrate your TV or buy a dedicated 3D LUT box for hundreds more.
- rconti 5y ago
  Can you elaborate on that first point? I'm not a Homekit or security camera person. Almost every word of that statement blows my mind.
  - wil421 5y ago
    The AppleTV works as a sort of hub for HomeKit. They run some of the automation I have for different smart plugs. I assume it can do what OP said for HomeKit cameras. I use homebridge to enable HomeKit on devices that don’t support it so I’m not about native object detection.
  - willseth 5y ago
    Sure. There are a handful of cameras that support a feature called HomeKit Secure Video (HSV). If you buy an HSV camera and you have an AppleTV, you can configure the camera to detect people, pets, and vehicles, set activity zones, and some other features. All the processing is done securely using the ATV's CPU, and anything you choose to record and save is encrypted and stored in iCloud. You do have to have a paid iCloud account to record the streams. This is a super slick feature that not only "just works," but AFAIK it's the only security system with object detection AI that doesn't do it on the vendor's servers. This saves incredible amount of upload bandwidth, since you are only storing the segments of video that trigger detection. Plus, no one else has the decryption key to your video. Also, IIUC the HomePod and maybe even HomePod mini can act as HSV hubs as well.
ziml77 5y ago
With a smart TV I actually don't see any reason to use Apple or Google's solutions. I stopped using my Nvidia Shield when I realized that the experience from my LG C9 was as good or better. Even has support for AirPlay. Of course in some years it's likely to stop receiving updates and fall behind, but I can wait until that happens to look into an external box again.
Hamuko 5y ago
I bought the Apple TV 4K specifically for the fast SoC.
javier2 5y ago
I'm not sure. My Apple TV with A10X will hang and generally the UI feels like its frame dropping every now and then. I would really like it to be smoother like my phone...
phendrenad2 5y ago
I thibk the problem is, app developers tend to write inefficient apps, so Apple is just throwing hardware at the problem, to keep their edge in terms of apparent UI speed.

conception 5y ago

It’s insane they don’t package a first party controller and just take the video console space over with it.

goodcjw2 5y ago
Yeah, sounds like natural next step. But building a game console ecosystem turns out to be 10x harder than building the hardware itself.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  That's true, but Apple already has a rich and successful game ecosystem on iPhones which are roughly the same hardware as the Apple TV. They have all the ingredients, and they've even made a visible attempt by offering Apple Arcade on the Apple TV. Wireless console controllers also work on Apple TV. It's just clear that the resources and effort haven't been made to get their Arcade developers to do the extra work to really make their titles work well on big TVs with console controllers.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Games on iPhone is really succeeded but I doubt it's thanks to Apple's effort.
  - gurkendoktor 5y ago
    I had an Apple TV 4K and a couple of compatible gamepads, and I loved some of the early tvOS games! Rayman, Icycle (!!), Alto's Adventure, Badlands... Then I tried Apple Arcade and it's just terrible. First, performance for all the 3D-heavy games is exactly what you would expect on a 4K screen with an iPhone 7 GPU. The iPhone XR GPU won't solve that. But I'm also convinced that Apple fundamentally doesn't get games. A lot of the content was just interactive storytelling. With a few notable exceptions, I felt like a suit who never owned a console or Steam account had picked games for me based purely on the marketing materials.
tshaddox 5y ago
Wireless Xbox controllers work fine with Apple TV. The bigger problem is that the games simply are not designed with a TV and console controller in mind. Even the Apple Arcade titles, which are generally very polished on iPhone and iPad, are pretty janky with a controller, and nearly unusable with the Apple TV Siri Remote (even though they claim to be designed for these input devices). But yes, it's very frustrating to me that the Apple TV doesn't have a rich gaming ecosystem. I'm pretty sure the hardware is powerful enough to deliver great performance and modern graphics for everything except the most photorealistic and flashy triple-A titles. Given that they offer Apple Arcade on the Apple TV, it's one of those surprising corners of the Apple ecosystem where you feel like a second-class citizen.
- NaN1352 5y ago
  It’s also kind of half assed for Apple surprisingly, specifically some games from Apple Arcade are downright unplayable on my before-last gen ATV. To a point where it feels like a scam that Apple didn’t simply exclude some titles from the older ATVs, it’s just bad user experience. I remember one 3d game was super puxellated due to upscaling and like 10fps :/. Why even allow users to get this game on aging hardware? Now I wonder if it’s worth upgrading for AA. I hate mobile games but there are a few good ports of pc games. And if i could play a good rogue game on my tv for smaller 20-30min sessions I’m sold. I’m still going to upgrade because you can feel even simple apps like twitch tv are laggy on before-last gen.
- corysama 5y ago
  This is the classic chicken-egg problem inherent in starting up a new game platform. Why invest in your game's controller experience and compromise the touch experience when billions of players have touch and a negligible amount have controllers? The only way to bootstrap the ecosystem is to prime the pump with large investments from the platform holder. Pay devs directly to add support. Give hardware to users way below cost.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Yep, I don’t fault the game devs at all! I would expect Apple to use the Arcade program (plus their infinite cash) to incentivize devs to really polish the Apple TV experience.
corysama 5y ago
I've heard an insider rumor that there was a plan years ago to make an Apple TV that would compete directly with the PS4. It was shelved because the person in charge of the App Store simply hated games and believed that music is the only art form worthy of respect. This led to that person demanding the limited set of Bluetooth channels be allocated in such a way that sufficiently responsive game controllers would be impossible. And, thus the concept was shelved. That person was later moved to be in charge of Apple Music.

defaultname 5y ago

I recently moved my Apple TV to another room (for Fitness+ use) so we started relying upon a Chromecast with Google TV. What a downgrade. It made me remember how horrid AV components often were, where multi-second delays, slow loading, horrid transitions, etc, were just normal. The Chromecast Google TV device has a 4 core, 1.9Ghz device, yet it seems extremely underpowered. Having a beefy processor in an AV device is hugely beneficial. I don't want lag. I want everything to work effortlessly.

tootie 5y ago
My experience with streaming sticks or other micro devices is that they get super hot and degrade over time pretty quickly. A small brick like Roku Ultra is much more durable. Bonus points for having an ethernet port. I'm also a fan of the Roku remote with the headphone jack built in and TV volume controls.
ziml77 5y ago
The Nvidia Shield basically uses the same SoC as the Nintendo Switch. Yet somehow even though the chip is powerful enough to run 3D games, Android TV can't manage smooth 2D animations on it. As I said in another comment I switched to using the apps on my LG TV. That sluggishness was a huge reason why.
- minhazm 5y ago
  It's possible it's not powerful enough for a 4K tv if that's what you have. The Switch does 720p, or 1080p when docked. 4X the resolution is a big difference.
  - phendrenad2 5y ago
    Not in 2D it isn't. Sliding some 2D textures around a 4k screen should be easy for any GPU from the last 2 decades. Problem is likely the apps do silly things like (I'm guessing) load 8k textures and draw them in a tiny box, and then try to load 100 of these boxes at once every time you thpe a character in the search box. Just guessing based on blog post deconstructions of modern games and apps I've seen.

PeterStuer 5y ago

It is one of the more cost effective options to run Zwift. More power would be very welcome.

willseth 5y ago

Depends on how you're leveraging their ecosystem. If you have HomeKit cameras, your Apple TV might also be running 24/7 realtime object detection for 5 simultaneous 1080p video streams. And your ROI is way off. The new auto-calibration feature brings an otherwise cost-prohibitive service into the consumer mainstream. Even if you happen to have one of the few higher end TVs that supports AutoCal, you still need $150 calibration software plus a $250 colorimeter. If your TV doesn't support it, then you have to either pay a professional even more to manually calibrate your TV or buy a dedicated 3D LUT box for hundreds more.

rconti 5y ago
Can you elaborate on that first point? I'm not a Homekit or security camera person. Almost every word of that statement blows my mind.
- wil421 5y ago
  The AppleTV works as a sort of hub for HomeKit. They run some of the automation I have for different smart plugs. I assume it can do what OP said for HomeKit cameras. I use homebridge to enable HomeKit on devices that don’t support it so I’m not about native object detection.
- willseth 5y ago
  Sure. There are a handful of cameras that support a feature called HomeKit Secure Video (HSV). If you buy an HSV camera and you have an AppleTV, you can configure the camera to detect people, pets, and vehicles, set activity zones, and some other features. All the processing is done securely using the ATV's CPU, and anything you choose to record and save is encrypted and stored in iCloud. You do have to have a paid iCloud account to record the streams. This is a super slick feature that not only "just works," but AFAIK it's the only security system with object detection AI that doesn't do it on the vendor's servers. This saves incredible amount of upload bandwidth, since you are only storing the segments of video that trigger detection. Plus, no one else has the decryption key to your video. Also, IIUC the HomePod and maybe even HomePod mini can act as HSV hubs as well.

ziml77 5y ago

With a smart TV I actually don't see any reason to use Apple or Google's solutions. I stopped using my Nvidia Shield when I realized that the experience from my LG C9 was as good or better. Even has support for AirPlay. Of course in some years it's likely to stop receiving updates and fall behind, but I can wait until that happens to look into an external box again.

Hamuko 5y ago

I bought the Apple TV 4K specifically for the fast SoC.

javier2 5y ago

I'm not sure. My Apple TV with A10X will hang and generally the UI feels like its frame dropping every now and then. I would really like it to be smoother like my phone...

phendrenad2 5y ago

I thibk the problem is, app developers tend to write inefficient apps, so Apple is just throwing hardware at the problem, to keep their edge in terms of apparent UI speed.