Apple TV 4th Generation - Initial Thoughts

Well, it has been a long time since Apple released its 3rd Gen Apple TV (announced back in March 2012), so there has been a lot of pent up demand from a lot of us Apple TV fans.  This box is better than the 3rd Gen in many ways, but there are still some issues that I hope Apple resolves in the coming months.

Features

​The new Apple TV is a bit thicker than the last two Apple TVs.  It also dropped the digital optical output that a lot of people still need.   Of course, that issue can be remedied with a device like this one, but that will add to the overall cost of using the device.  

List of the ports and interfaces:

HDMI 1.43
802.11ac Wi‑Fi with MIMO  
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
Bluetooth 4.0 wireless technology
IR receiver
USB‑C for service and support
Built‑in power supply 

Below are a couple pics comparing the front and back to an Apple TV2 (the fat one is the Apple TV4)

Apple Music

​If you have a subscription to Apple Music, it may be enough to get you to shell out the $150-199.  Its implementation is fantastic.  If you have used the app on another platform, you should be very comfortable with the way it is setup on the AppleTV.  It uses “For You”, “New”, Radio”, "My Music”, ”Playlists”, “Search” (Siri search in Apple Music is rumored to be coming in 2016) and “Now Playing” in a very similar way to the iOS app.  I do not see a “Connect” tab, but there are some “Connect” video and audio choices on the “New” page.  The “New” page also has a link to different genres, so I was happy to see that they were able to adopt that feature.  

It appears that Apple has decided to keep the resampling to 48khz feature from the older Apple TVs.  For audiophiles, this is a major problem since it won’t allow you to put out a standard 44.1kHz (Redbok CD) signal.  That being said, I have listen to it for a few hours and it sounds great in my setup.

I also want to mention that I felt the desire to use the music video features a lot more on this platform.  The iPad’s implementation of Apple Music videos is awful.  There is no full screen mode, instead, it is presented in a small box in the middle of the screen.   You can’t even Airplay it to a TV.   However, having the feature built into the Apple TV means you get full screen videos right on your TV with great sound quality.  In the past, the videos were a worthless feature, but now, I will be using them a whole lot more.  
(click on the pics below for larger images)

Home Sharing

​While you can access your own cloud music library (in 256k AAC)  through Apple Music, if you have an account.  The new Apple TV has also included Home Sharing through its “Computers” icon.  I was very happy to see this because I have all of my music in Apple Lossless format and I would typically rather just stream from a Mac Mini to Apple TV rather than using my internet data when I want to listen to my own music.

Home Sharing has podcasts, home videos, and movies included, as well.

Search Functions

​There are two ways to interact with the AppleTV.  You can do that through Siri or through a remote.  For movies, Siri is pretty darn awesome.  You can say something like “Jason Statham on Netflix" and it will pull up his movies and you can click on any of them.  It will give you a quick description of the movie, who it stars, the director, a preview, and the ability to play or open it in Netflix.  It also includes a bunch of “related” movies below.  I also tested it by saying “Michael Keaton on HBO" and it works as well, using the HBO GO app.  Notice how quick the feature is in the short clip below: 

Siri can also launch apps, give you sports info, and tell you the weather.  See the short clip below for a couple of examples:

The downside to the AppleTV right now is that Siri doesn’t work with all apps.  Your own video collection, for example, isn’t included in the search.    This is where the real pain of using the remote comes into play.  Apple, for some reason has decided to make the onscreen keyboard one row of letters.  This is a real issue if you want to manually search in an app like HBO Go because the letters are so large that they trail completely off the screen.  While I could live with this if the AppleTV worked with the Remote app (which has a keyboard for typing on the older AppleTVs), but it doesn’t. 

This really becomes a headache when you have 16 character passwords that you have to type in when you install an app that requires a password…which is most of them.  The Apple TV has Bluetooth which comes in handy for the initial setup, however, from my understanding, you still can’t pair a keyboard with it.


NOTE:  I tried to pair a Targus Bluetooth Keyboard with it and it never showed up in the settings.

Podcasts

​One of my favorite apps on my old Apple TV was the Podcast app.  It was unique because you could go through many different categories and save specific shows as your favorites and they would automatically update.   I have always preferred this approach over having tons of different apps that have one individual show you want to watch.  Not to mention that you could start a program and then exit it and resume it on any iOS device or AppleTV. 

On the other hand, the new Apple TV does not currently have the Apple Podcast app.  I was very surprised and disappointed by that fact, to be honest.  Instead of pulling up “MacBreak Weekly” in the Podcast app, the way to get it now would be to get the TWIT app.  There are three different TWIT apps on the AppleTV (one of them is currently free).  However, I don’t want to install another app on all my devices to get the resume play features.  

In short, the lack of the Apple Podcast app is the biggest shortfall of this new Apple TV, in my opinion.  I am going to try to get my iTunes library Podcasts up to date (I still have 2011 Hypercritical programs in it) and use Home Sharing for Podcasts instead.  

Note:  The TWIT app looks great, but I still prefer just having all apps I like show up in one place on all my devices.

Apps

​The Apple TV 4th generation App store already has a lot of apps.  It will even find your “Purchased” iOS compatible apps and make them available for download to the Apple TV.   Many apps require a cable or satellite account to set them up, but I really like the ability to have NBC and ABC available on the Apple TV just for convenience.  However, cord cutters will have some of the standard stuff like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO GO.  

I also downloaded a couple games.  I tested out Asphalt 8:Airborne and it was a lot of fun using the remote as a controller (more on the remote later).  

I should mention that many “standard” apps are still not available.  There is still no Plex, Amazon, Pandora, or Vudu available.  

Remote

I have mentioned some of the features of the remote above.  However, to be honest, I am not  huge fan of the remote.  While I really enjoyed playing Asphalt 8 with the Wii style functionality, the remote is so light and tiny that it makes it harder to control than a Wii remote because there is no heft to it.  

Also, I am not sure why, but it seems to feel better in the hand upside down.  There is a lot of empty space at the bottom and top, so it feels a bit confusing, when you pick it up, compared to every other controller I have used (I have caught myself aiming the bottom of the remote at the TV a few times).  Also, the buttons could use a little more space between them, so it would have, IN MY OPINION, been nice to use that bottom space to make the controller more ergonomic.  That being said, I think it was a design choice that makes it look more symetrical.  I have to admit that I think it looks great, but I am more concerned with using it than looking at it.

Airplay

I tested Airplay and it still works great.  However, it worked pretty great on the old AppleTVs, too.  I was happy that Apple didn’t remove this feature, though.  

The Apple TV will still let you send the audio from the Apple TV to Airplay receivers, as well.  I was hoping that they would implement multi-zone Airplay from the Apple TV to more than one Airplay speaker, but right now, it is still one Airplay speaker at a time.

In addition to Airplay, you can also pair bluetooth headphones with the new Apple TV.  I tested this feature with Parrot Zik 2.0 headphones and they paired up without a problem.  However, with Bluetooth you do have to worry about a lag between the video and when the audio hits your ears.  With these specific headphones, I did not notice any lag when watching Youtube.

Note:  I get paid commissions for purchases made through any links to Amazon products in this post.

Interface

​I like the interface, but I think it could be better.  Right now it looks fantastic with its minimal design cues.  However, it only allows 5 apps on each line.  On my 65 inch TV, I can see 10 full icons and the top of 5 more icons (on a 32 inch display it shows only 5 full icons).   I personally bought the 64GB version of the Apple TV in anticipation of having tons of apps.  However, the Apple TV needs to be able to use folders.  I would  like to have 3 full lines of my 15 most used apps and then a line of folders for sports, games, videos, music, and others.  This has been the best way to organize numerous iPhone apps, so I would think it would work here, as well.  

I also want to mention the “Aerial Screensaver" features.  I yawned when they spent so much time discussing this feature during the Apple Keynote.  However, with Apple Music, I anticipate using the Apple TV quite a bit for music and that typically means that I want a screensaver to save my TV from burn in.  In the past, I have always just used Flickr as my screensaver (it is another “coming soon” missing feature), but these beautiful aerial views are a nice change of pace. 

​Final Thoughts

I have mixed feelings about this Apple TV.  It is priced higher than the Roku/FireTV and has less apps and doesn’t support 4k.  At this point, I would only recommend it for people already in the Apple ecosystem or for those that want to be on board as new apps and features are introduced over the next year and beyond.  In other words, I have no doubt that it will get a lot better in future months (Siri search in Apple Music alone will be a huge improvement).   Right now, for the price of the $199 version, you could get an Nvidia Shield (I will post a comparison soon) which would give you a lot of features that the Apple TV doesn't have.  

Note (12/15):  Apple made provided a major updated to the AppleTV, read about it here.

Below is a quick look at the positives and negatives with the current version of the AppleTV (I am sure updates will be coming soon):

​Upsides:
Apple Music (Siri integration would make it better)
Apple Music Videos
App store 
Interesting games
AirPlay
Home sharing
Siri - great for movies with certain apps
Arial Screensaver looks awesome
Apple Photos and the Apple ecosystem in general

Downsides:
Remote iOS app does not connect to the new Apple TV
Music - 48 kHz resampling (prefer on-the-fly bit rate switching for bit perfect audio)
Podcast app missing
Onscreen keyboard is strange (would prefer more rows)
​Lacks bluetooth keyboard pairing 
Lacks common inputs/outputs - no SD slot, no digital optical out, no way to connect external drive
Lacks 4k - probably not a big deal for most, but it is a feature that most competitors are adding
Pricey considering the lack of 4k