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I hate to be that guy, but this is exactly why I happily paid for an Apple TV. Yes, it’s $100 more than basic streaming sticks, but I have never had to worry ab

I hate to be that guy, but this is exactly why I happily paid for an Apple TV. Yes, it’s $100 more than basic streaming sticks, but I have never had to worry about ads suddenly appearing after an update. This whole space is a race to the bottom with sticks being sold at or below cost because you are the product. For example, Vizio revealing in their first quarterly report as a public company that they get nearly as much revenue from selling ads and viewer usage data than from selling physical televisions. https://www.engadget.com/vizio-q1-earnings-inscape-013937337.html https://www.engadget.com/vizio-q1-earnings-inscape-013937337... A smooth, clean ad-free experience is certainly worth the extra price if you can afford it.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
Indeed. It's hard to sympathize with people upset about ads when they bought a platform made by an ad company. The outcome was obvious here.
- thiht 5y ago
  I bought a Sony TV, not a Google one. I would have expected Sony to disallow this somehow.
  - josefx 5y ago
    As far as I understand Googles Play Store comes with a viral license that forces preferential treatment for Google services on all Android devices made by a manufacturer unless they are sold in a country where that kind of anti competitive behavior is not tolerated. Basically Sonys choice is let Google rape its customers or kill all its Android based products over night.
- LordDragonfang 5y ago
  The majority of people on the planet have phones running an OS made by the same ad company, and they'd be rightfully pissed if their home screens were suddenly was dominated by ads.
- frereubu 5y ago
  This is pretty unsympathetic, and tacitly assumes that everyone has an understanding of the tech ecosystem.
- pier25 5y ago
  Apple products are luxury items for the vast majority of people in the world.
- timeinput 5y ago
  I didn't realize nVidia was an ad company. Their business model sure has changed.
Robotbeat 5y ago
Yeah, Apple products have a reputation as “luxury” products, but the value is solid. For instance, with few exceptions, their phones receive updates for at least 6 years after release. Cheap android phones will be lucky to see 2 and even Samsung only does like 4 (and that’s recent… before it was 3). The iPhone 4S was updated for 93 months, almost 8 years. I generally prefer more open ecosystems, but Apple has built a pretty strong reputation for not just being an ad company and for making solid products that are supported much longer than competitor devices.
- oezi 5y ago
  Also all manufacturers which are not tracking Google's updates in a monthly interval are essentially worthless from a security perspective. Nobody needs to care about the latest Android version, which is only bringing marginal improvements amyway.
gambiting 5y ago
>> but I have never had to worry about ads suddenly appearing after an update The problem is that Android TV users used to think the exact same thing. It's even said in the reviews explicitly by some people. I don't and I won't trust a corporation, be it Apple or Google, to not do something in a future update - if it works fine right now then unfortunately that has to be good enough.
- prepend 5y ago
  Not all companies are equal. Some make money by selling things so they have an incentive to keep happy customers. Some companies don’t.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Of course. But companies change all the time - today Apple is very privacy focused and we can reasonably say they wouldn't do such a thing. Can you absolutely guarantee that they won't in 2 years? In 5? in 10? What if the CEO changes and they think that ad-derived value is the best thing ever? Like, this isn't meant to be a post against Apple btw. Just that I don't see a point in saying "company X did a bad thing, that's why I buy company Y, they would never do this!" - they don't right now, that's what counts. But for the future? Who knows.
    - Engineering-MD 5y ago
      The future is uncertain, that is life. But while a company is privacy focussed, reward that behaviour so they (or their new competitors for when they stop supporting privacy it) know people vote with wallets.
    - prepend 5y ago
      Of course I can’t guarantee it, no one can. But it’s more likely if a company’s business model doesn’t involve ads vs does. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future performance, but it’s the best we got.
    - least 5y ago
fny 5y ago
Unfortunately Apple TV remotes are a nightmare to use. The touch UX is an absolute pain.
- gumby 5y ago
  Use your phone as the remote. I agree the ones they ship are dreadful.
- kmonsen 5y ago
  Just use the TV remote and hdmi cec.
- djrogers 5y ago
  The new one is great - your complaint is an old one.
  - eitland 5y ago
    Yep. But can we expect everyone to spend $$$ to upgrade their Apple TV boxes for this or can we be allowed to complain a little when we bought the old device for Christmas last year? PS: I don't actually complain :-) I'm a recent convert and compared to Chromecast I find Apple TV a massive upgrade.
- ypcx 5y ago
  On the Apple TV 2021 4K's remote you can disable the touch and just use the buttons, like I have done. Works a treat.
- Axsuul 5y ago
  The 2nd generation Siri remote adds click support back in again.
larusso 5y ago
Yeah sadly the Nvidia Shield is in the same ballpark when it comes down to the price. I have both an Apple TV 4K and an Nvidia Shield. I bought the shield when Apple had no 4K device as an alternative to get 4K HDR on Netflix. But I decided to shell out money again for an AppleTV 4K because they offered better support for HDR in movies and the general support to adopt features like Dolby Athmos is way faster on Apple. With Nvidia one had to be lucky to be in a partnership group as they were with the HDR adoption on Netflix. My PS4 was not able to play the content in HDR at the time since the Netflix app needed and update. It took nearly 6 more month. I didn’t update the shield in quite some time as most new features are of no interest to me. And from the looks of it that won’t happen anytime soon. It’s worse enough that google did the same with the YouTube app …
- larusso 5y ago
  I just realized that android tv and Nvidia shield experience are two different things. So it did and auto update. Bloody …
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Can you sideload? Is there NewPipe? Pass. No ads but no choice. It solves one issue but creates another.
- novok 5y ago
  Yeah i agree, s-tube and newpipe are really great and you’d never get that on an apple tv. Would’ve gone for an apple tv otherwise
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    Same. If Apple opened up their devices I'd switch everything over in a heartbeat.
- dre85 5y ago
  I totally agree. I can't imagine paying the price of a premium laptop for a phone without newpipe.
swiley 5y ago
I hate to be that guy (no I don't) but this is why I just plugged one of the spare outputs on my PC into the TV with a 20ft HDMI extension cable and use a bluetooth keyboard/mouse to open movies from the living room.
- djrogers 5y ago
  That’s really a solo person solution. Anyone with a family in the house will need better, and anyone with family elsewhere can’t exactly recommend such a kludge without opening up a ton of support issues.
  - swiley 5y ago
    In that case just get a cheap computer (that's all these set top boxes are anyway) to keep in the living room.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  So now I can’t use my computer when my kids watch tv?
  - swiley 5y ago
    Xorg supports multi headed setups. I don't personally do that since there are only two people in my house but you should be able to set it up pretty easily.
sedatk 5y ago
I think this would be a great time for Apple to release an actual TV. I know of no major TV brand that doesn't employ some kind of tracking or advertisement. Even LG has devolved into that pit.
rglullis 5y ago
You know what else can give you a smooth, ad-free experience and freedom? Any cheap mini-pc with Kodi installed.
- djrogers 5y ago
  Yeah, but can it do that out-of-the-box with zero effort for the rest of my family? Sadly, no. Futzing with Kodi updates, patches, updates to the OS, drivers, etc is all way too much to be considered ’smooth’ for most.
  - throwzaway20102 5y ago
    The number of people who don’t understand this is shocking.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    Oh, yes, the old America's motto: "Give me convenience or give me death!" Joking aside, there is not much futzing around to do if you just go with LibreElec, and you can even buy pre-installed boxes nowadays.
  - crtasm 5y ago
    We've got a RPi running https://osmc.tv/ https://osmc.tv/ (based around Kodi) - other than pressing yes to install updates every so often it hasn't needed touching. There might even be an auto update at 1am type option. It only gets used for local media + radio, twitch and youtube streams though - I don't know about other services.
- emptyparadise 5y ago
  https://hard-drive.net/spend-80-snes-classic-can-install-emulators-raspberry-pi-never-shut-fuck/ https://hard-drive.net/spend-80-snes-classic-can-install-emu...
- vladvasiliu 5y ago
  Does it support Full HD (at least) streaming from Netfilx and / or Prime? My setup is like GP's, ie I play the videos on the computer, but what bothers me personally is that I have to boot windows to get the high quality streaming. I've looked specifically at Kodi maybe a year ago and it didn't seem to support this. I'm OK with tinkering if I know it's actually possible to get this working.
pier25 5y ago
The Nvidia Shield Pro is more expensive than the Apple TV...
knolan 5y ago
I recently bought my first Apple TV after dumping our Virgin Media cable box. I still have an ancient 1080p LG smart TV that that the smart features are effectively unusable on. I’ll never buy a smart TV again if I can help it. I’ve always used my PS4 for streaming services but the bloody thing was so loud. I’ve replaced the PS4 with a PS5 but it doesn’t have the national broadcaster’s crappy app and we wanted to keep access to these channels. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the Apple TV. It surfaces shows across my streaming apps without pushing TV+ in your face. It integrates beautifully with the Apple ecosystem, I can ask Siri on any device to play $show on Disney+ in the living room and it just works. I’ve heard how bad the old remote was but the new one is really nice. I’ve paired my dualshock 4 controller to it for Apple Arcade and it works great. The Apple TV is a device that doesn’t get much attention but I think it’s really impressive.
fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
A correction - the article says Visio makes almost as much profits on ads and data ($38M) as hardware ($48M). In my view, the surprising thing here is how little money the hardware business makes. TVs are a low-margin product, so the revenues there are certainly higher. Visio sold 7 million TVs last year, and TVs last some years, so I’d estimate they have an install base of tens of millions and are making about $1 per TV per year in ads and data, which is obviously less than a TV costs. My takeaway is that this is a terrible business to be in, given that a leading brand is making so little per TV.
- dingaling 5y ago
  You can't really compare headline profits without seeing the full breakdown of revenue and expenses that led to those results. For example Visio's hardware side could be reinvesting vast sums of revenue back into TV R&D. Or they could have invested in upstream component manufacturers. Maybe they spent a large amount on recruiting new staff. All those expenses are deducted before profit. Meanwhile the ad division might have made no investments for the future and took the tax-inefficient choice to show a large profit instead.
whatgoodisaroad 5y ago
Apple TV is ad free so long as you don’t count the un-dismissable 1p promos for Apple TV+ trials and Apple Arcade trials.
lern_too_spel 5y ago
Apple TV shows Apple TV+ ads on the homescreen. The big difference is that Android TV lets you replace the launcher entirely, while Apple TV leaves you to Apple's whims.
neuk 5y ago
I love my Apple TV but the Shield is my go to player simply for the audio passthrough of audio formats such as TrueHD and DTS-HD which last time I checked are not supported by the Apple TV!
- hellisothers 5y ago
  Yea I have Apple everything except for this one Shield Pro because the audio quality (esp Atmos) is clearly better than AppleTV. Even my wife who really doesn’t care about audio notices.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

Indeed. It's hard to sympathize with people upset about ads when they bought a platform made by an ad company. The outcome was obvious here.

thiht 5y ago
I bought a Sony TV, not a Google one. I would have expected Sony to disallow this somehow.
- josefx 5y ago
  As far as I understand Googles Play Store comes with a viral license that forces preferential treatment for Google services on all Android devices made by a manufacturer unless they are sold in a country where that kind of anti competitive behavior is not tolerated. Basically Sonys choice is let Google rape its customers or kill all its Android based products over night.
LordDragonfang 5y ago
The majority of people on the planet have phones running an OS made by the same ad company, and they'd be rightfully pissed if their home screens were suddenly was dominated by ads.
frereubu 5y ago
This is pretty unsympathetic, and tacitly assumes that everyone has an understanding of the tech ecosystem.
pier25 5y ago
Apple products are luxury items for the vast majority of people in the world.
timeinput 5y ago
I didn't realize nVidia was an ad company. Their business model sure has changed.

Robotbeat 5y ago

Yeah, Apple products have a reputation as “luxury” products, but the value is solid. For instance, with few exceptions, their phones receive updates for at least 6 years after release. Cheap android phones will be lucky to see 2 and even Samsung only does like 4 (and that’s recent… before it was 3). The iPhone 4S was updated for 93 months, almost 8 years. I generally prefer more open ecosystems, but Apple has built a pretty strong reputation for not just being an ad company and for making solid products that are supported much longer than competitor devices.

oezi 5y ago
Also all manufacturers which are not tracking Google's updates in a monthly interval are essentially worthless from a security perspective. Nobody needs to care about the latest Android version, which is only bringing marginal improvements amyway.

gambiting 5y ago

>> but I have never had to worry about ads suddenly appearing after an update The problem is that Android TV users used to think the exact same thing. It's even said in the reviews explicitly by some people. I don't and I won't trust a corporation, be it Apple or Google, to not do something in a future update - if it works fine right now then unfortunately that has to be good enough.

prepend 5y ago
Not all companies are equal. Some make money by selling things so they have an incentive to keep happy customers. Some companies don’t.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Of course. But companies change all the time - today Apple is very privacy focused and we can reasonably say they wouldn't do such a thing. Can you absolutely guarantee that they won't in 2 years? In 5? in 10? What if the CEO changes and they think that ad-derived value is the best thing ever? Like, this isn't meant to be a post against Apple btw. Just that I don't see a point in saying "company X did a bad thing, that's why I buy company Y, they would never do this!" - they don't right now, that's what counts. But for the future? Who knows.
  - Engineering-MD 5y ago
    The future is uncertain, that is life. But while a company is privacy focussed, reward that behaviour so they (or their new competitors for when they stop supporting privacy it) know people vote with wallets.
  - prepend 5y ago
    Of course I can’t guarantee it, no one can. But it’s more likely if a company’s business model doesn’t involve ads vs does. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future performance, but it’s the best we got.
  - least 5y ago

fny 5y ago

Unfortunately Apple TV remotes are a nightmare to use. The touch UX is an absolute pain.

gumby 5y ago
Use your phone as the remote. I agree the ones they ship are dreadful.
kmonsen 5y ago
Just use the TV remote and hdmi cec.
djrogers 5y ago
The new one is great - your complaint is an old one.
- eitland 5y ago
  Yep. But can we expect everyone to spend $$$ to upgrade their Apple TV boxes for this or can we be allowed to complain a little when we bought the old device for Christmas last year? PS: I don't actually complain :-) I'm a recent convert and compared to Chromecast I find Apple TV a massive upgrade.
ypcx 5y ago
On the Apple TV 2021 4K's remote you can disable the touch and just use the buttons, like I have done. Works a treat.
Axsuul 5y ago
The 2nd generation Siri remote adds click support back in again.

larusso 5y ago

Yeah sadly the Nvidia Shield is in the same ballpark when it comes down to the price. I have both an Apple TV 4K and an Nvidia Shield. I bought the shield when Apple had no 4K device as an alternative to get 4K HDR on Netflix. But I decided to shell out money again for an AppleTV 4K because they offered better support for HDR in movies and the general support to adopt features like Dolby Athmos is way faster on Apple. With Nvidia one had to be lucky to be in a partnership group as they were with the HDR adoption on Netflix. My PS4 was not able to play the content in HDR at the time since the Netflix app needed and update. It took nearly 6 more month. I didn’t update the shield in quite some time as most new features are of no interest to me. And from the looks of it that won’t happen anytime soon. It’s worse enough that google did the same with the YouTube app …

larusso 5y ago
I just realized that android tv and Nvidia shield experience are two different things. So it did and auto update. Bloody …

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

Can you sideload? Is there NewPipe? Pass. No ads but no choice. It solves one issue but creates another.

novok 5y ago
Yeah i agree, s-tube and newpipe are really great and you’d never get that on an apple tv. Would’ve gone for an apple tv otherwise
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Same. If Apple opened up their devices I'd switch everything over in a heartbeat.
dre85 5y ago
I totally agree. I can't imagine paying the price of a premium laptop for a phone without newpipe.

swiley 5y ago

I hate to be that guy (no I don't) but this is why I just plugged one of the spare outputs on my PC into the TV with a 20ft HDMI extension cable and use a bluetooth keyboard/mouse to open movies from the living room.

djrogers 5y ago
That’s really a solo person solution. Anyone with a family in the house will need better, and anyone with family elsewhere can’t exactly recommend such a kludge without opening up a ton of support issues.
- swiley 5y ago
  In that case just get a cheap computer (that's all these set top boxes are anyway) to keep in the living room.
cortesoft 5y ago
So now I can’t use my computer when my kids watch tv?
- swiley 5y ago
  Xorg supports multi headed setups. I don't personally do that since there are only two people in my house but you should be able to set it up pretty easily.

sedatk 5y ago

I think this would be a great time for Apple to release an actual TV. I know of no major TV brand that doesn't employ some kind of tracking or advertisement. Even LG has devolved into that pit.

rglullis 5y ago

You know what else can give you a smooth, ad-free experience and freedom? Any cheap mini-pc with Kodi installed.

djrogers 5y ago
Yeah, but can it do that out-of-the-box with zero effort for the rest of my family? Sadly, no. Futzing with Kodi updates, patches, updates to the OS, drivers, etc is all way too much to be considered ’smooth’ for most.
- throwzaway20102 5y ago
  The number of people who don’t understand this is shocking.
- rglullis 5y ago
  Oh, yes, the old America's motto: "Give me convenience or give me death!" Joking aside, there is not much futzing around to do if you just go with LibreElec, and you can even buy pre-installed boxes nowadays.
- crtasm 5y ago
  We've got a RPi running https://osmc.tv/ https://osmc.tv/ (based around Kodi) - other than pressing yes to install updates every so often it hasn't needed touching. There might even be an auto update at 1am type option. It only gets used for local media + radio, twitch and youtube streams though - I don't know about other services.
emptyparadise 5y ago
https://hard-drive.net/spend-80-snes-classic-can-install-emulators-raspberry-pi-never-shut-fuck/ https://hard-drive.net/spend-80-snes-classic-can-install-emu...
vladvasiliu 5y ago
Does it support Full HD (at least) streaming from Netfilx and / or Prime? My setup is like GP's, ie I play the videos on the computer, but what bothers me personally is that I have to boot windows to get the high quality streaming. I've looked specifically at Kodi maybe a year ago and it didn't seem to support this. I'm OK with tinkering if I know it's actually possible to get this working.

pier25 5y ago

The Nvidia Shield Pro is more expensive than the Apple TV...

knolan 5y ago

I recently bought my first Apple TV after dumping our Virgin Media cable box. I still have an ancient 1080p LG smart TV that that the smart features are effectively unusable on. I’ll never buy a smart TV again if I can help it. I’ve always used my PS4 for streaming services but the bloody thing was so loud. I’ve replaced the PS4 with a PS5 but it doesn’t have the national broadcaster’s crappy app and we wanted to keep access to these channels. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the Apple TV. It surfaces shows across my streaming apps without pushing TV+ in your face. It integrates beautifully with the Apple ecosystem, I can ask Siri on any device to play $show on Disney+ in the living room and it just works. I’ve heard how bad the old remote was but the new one is really nice. I’ve paired my dualshock 4 controller to it for Apple Arcade and it works great. The Apple TV is a device that doesn’t get much attention but I think it’s really impressive.

fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago

A correction - the article says Visio makes almost as much profits on ads and data ($38M) as hardware ($48M). In my view, the surprising thing here is how little money the hardware business makes. TVs are a low-margin product, so the revenues there are certainly higher. Visio sold 7 million TVs last year, and TVs last some years, so I’d estimate they have an install base of tens of millions and are making about $1 per TV per year in ads and data, which is obviously less than a TV costs. My takeaway is that this is a terrible business to be in, given that a leading brand is making so little per TV.

dingaling 5y ago
You can't really compare headline profits without seeing the full breakdown of revenue and expenses that led to those results. For example Visio's hardware side could be reinvesting vast sums of revenue back into TV R&D. Or they could have invested in upstream component manufacturers. Maybe they spent a large amount on recruiting new staff. All those expenses are deducted before profit. Meanwhile the ad division might have made no investments for the future and took the tax-inefficient choice to show a large profit instead.

whatgoodisaroad 5y ago

Apple TV is ad free so long as you don’t count the un-dismissable 1p promos for Apple TV+ trials and Apple Arcade trials.

lern_too_spel 5y ago

Apple TV shows Apple TV+ ads on the homescreen. The big difference is that Android TV lets you replace the launcher entirely, while Apple TV leaves you to Apple's whims.

neuk 5y ago

I love my Apple TV but the Shield is my go to player simply for the audio passthrough of audio formats such as TrueHD and DTS-HD which last time I checked are not supported by the Apple TV!

hellisothers 5y ago
Yea I have Apple everything except for this one Shield Pro because the audio quality (esp Atmos) is clearly better than AppleTV. Even my wife who really doesn’t care about audio notices.