Generally speaking, reviews are done in a very short period of time, as we only are allowed a loaner product for just a few weeks. So, if we want to get a feel for a product for a longer time than allowed, we buy our products for review. I've made no secret that I'm a
big fan of the Apple TV, so I jumped on a first-day delivery of the 32GB fourth-generation Apple TV, and
wrote about it. Now, a few software updates later, how is it faring?
The Good: the Apple TV application ecosystem
This has greatly improved. As time as gone on, more of our previously-owned apps have Apple TV versions, and many more have been added. The ability to identify an app as compatible with the Apple TV has grown, and shopping for apps on the Apple TV itself is much, much better.
Third party streamers are arriving. Plex is wonderful, and bypasses one of the problems we've seen with the Apple TV -- more on that in a bit. VLC is coming, and is in beta testing now. Both of these, and a host of other applications, removes the H.264 "lock-in" of video formats that the iOS and now tvOS have been criticized for.
Netflix works better than it does on the third-generation Apple TV, but is still very sensitive to network conditions, and pops up a "this item isn't available for streaming right now, try again later" dialog as a generic failure error, necessitating backing out to the main menu and re-starting Netflix. Still, its an improvement over the crashtastic version of Netflix for earlier Apple TVs.
Overall, the application situation on the Apple TV is good, and getting better. Gaming is nice to have, but as of yet, does not stand up to even 2000-era consoles for the most part.
The Bad: Apple-compatible Media Playback
We're going to cut right to it. The fourth-generation Apple TV is a fine player -- assuming you've bought into iTunes, served from Apple's farms, utterly and completely. We're running into situations where the Apple TV just stops playing on both wireless and wired networks, requiring a reboot.
We'd think it was a network problem, but we've tried it in the simplest of networks -- consisting of an Apple Airport Extreme router, and one of two servers -- and we'd still have the problem. We swapped out Apple TVs with Apple, and we still had the problem. During all this time, the second- and third-generation Apple TVs had no issue playing back the media from the server, with no hangs or crashes. Therefore, the crashing isn't a network issue.
More problematically, on both the main use environment, and the test environment, videos streamed from Apple's servers as iTunes purchases worked fine, every time. Even marathons of multiple episodes spanning days and days of continuous playback didn't hang the Apple TV like stored media did. Interestingly, however, the same videos downloaded through iTunes and stored on the home server crashed the Apple TV, just the same as user-encoded video did. So, its not some problem with encoding. Not much left, other than iTunes being the problem ... again.
The solution for Apple TV crashing on user video playback is the aforementioned Plex. Playing back the home-encoded videos works well through the third-party streaming combo, and hasn't crashed the Apple TV for us on either the home network or the test network -- at least not yet.
So, this is a mixed bag. When movie streaming works, it works great. When it just decides to stop working for reasons known only to itself? Yank the power, and start again. Not great.
The Ugly: The Siri remote
Just a few weeks ago, there would have been a paragraph here about the utter lack of Remote app support, but this was added (and welcomed) in the last revision. That patched, there's now a new issue, and it is the Siri remote, for so many reasons.
Siri still doesn't work as promised by Cook and company, but the last two patches have made it somewhat better. Adding to that, the Siri remote isn't readily discernible at a touch which side is up! The distance between the full buttons and the top of the remote is the same as to the bottom, so unless you get a good look at the remote as you pick it up, there's a 50/50 shot that you'll be clicking on hard aluminum before you situate the device in your hands. This is a lesson that Apple should have already learned with the hockey puck mouse, but alas, not so much.
There is no solution for poor Siri support that we can deduce, other than a future patch from Cupertino. As far as the symmetry of the remote, old Apple TV remotes, including the white plastic original one, still work fine and aren't problematic to identify which way is up in the dark.
TIE Fighter for scale. Seriously, though. Rummage for the remote on the left in the dark, and see what happens.
As much as I hate to say it, the best answer
right now for video playback on the television from the Apple ecosystem is the third-generation Apple TV. For only $69, you get an Airplay target, and a media streamer compatible with Apple's sold and rented videos. However, the third-generation Apple TV has no Apple Music support directly, and will likely not ever, as I suspect this support in the form of tvOS for the older device would have arrived by now.
Apps are good, and frankly needed, on this iteration of the Apple TV, because we need them to work around some issues with the set-top. However, given the other problems right now with the device, they aren't enough to push the fourth-generation Apple TV into a "must buy" at this time. Should Apple hammer out the playback crashes, and work on the Siri remote, then that will change the equation quite a bit.
-Mike Wuerthele
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