Apple TV 4K

If I got a dollar for every person suckered into buying Samsung products… But to stay on topic: never! [...] Since then, I run everything via an Apple TV 4K which works way better than LGs own software does anyway.

[...] Fortunately, my Samsung S95D doesn't (lovely matte OLED screen), and is perfectly usable without a network connection or even setting up the Smart TV features. [...] Like you, I use two AppleTV 4Ks as sources, one tied to my US Apple ID, one for the UK one. [...]

I value my time, learned the lesson some time ago. [...] For this case I still have my 7-8 year old AppleTV 4k (1st gen). [...] It threatened to install an AI update a while ago so took it offline. [...] No lag, no slowness, every major streaming provider has an app for it - no-one wants to ignore one of the largest set-top box markets. [...]

I've been running Plex on my AppleTV 4k for years with few issues. [...]

To add to this, the first-gen Apple TV 4K I use, which was first released back in 2017, still runs the latest tvOS and works great. [...] They're not the cheapest thing out there, but you get a lot of muscle (and longevity) for your money.

[...] Great picture with excellent color, contrast, and uniformity that has stayed as good as it was on day one for the past 6 years through probably thousands of hours of usage. (As it turns out, LCD TVs can experience picture degradation as bad or worse than OLED burnin[0]) It’s been perfectly happy to remain totally offline too and is built as if it’s expected to be connected to a streaming box and/or receiver, as opposed to some TVs where the manufacturer really pushes the onboard “smarts” over external sources. Works wonderfully with an Apple TV 4K, PC, and PS5 and can have its firmware updated offline with a thumb drive. [...]

Yup love my Apple TV I was able to dl all my streaming apps all in one place and watch everything in 4k ... I can't believe it took my 3 years before I took advantage of it and just relied on the the TV remotes app for Netflix, Prime Video which was NOT in 4k!!! And I had to Chromecast the other apps that was not programmed with my TV like Hulu, Peacock, etc.. So I am so happy I just thought to DL all the streaming apps onto my Apple TV ;-)

[...] Never got stuck or slow.. [...]

Performance was so-so, some minor degradations on my Studio. No change comparing today to half a year ago. But my Apple TV 4K 2nd Generation turned into a 15 fps mess until I turned off the worst parts of transparency effects.

[...] For example, I have an iPhone, an Apple Watch, a Macbook Pro (M2 Max, main workstation), an iPad, 2 Apple TV 4Ks, and a Mac Mini (M1, used as a secondary machine in my workshop). [...] Next year I anticipate replacing my iPad, the following year is the Mac Mini, and a couple years after that would be the MBP (which will be a $4300? [...]

[...] However, the one thing that could elevate it to an incredible level is improving the Picture In Picture feature. [...] I have an expensive Sony TV, four years old, and it doesn’t offer Picture in Picture. [...] If Apple TV could make this a universal feature, and add audio swap, they would become gods!

[...] Usually within the first three minutes of watching a show, the screen will go black and then pop back on. [...] I do enjoy being able to share from my iPad or my iPhone but that's really the only feature I want.

I have an 2017 apple tv 4k, the only apple device I have. will agree that this is the best streaming device, its just clean, powerful, smooth and no ads, even when some aps shows ads on my android phone, the same app with same login on apple tv does not. No streaming device comes closer, only regret I have is it does not support DTS, Shield does..

i used one for years & still have it now but i also bought a shield pro for stremio. i rarely use it anymore but with the ecosystem & homepods i’ve got it works with all the other hdmi ports. in terms of the interface apple tv it’s unbeatable tho.

[...] I point Infuse on Apple TV 4K's at it. [...] Downsides: you have to pay for Infuse Pro to play some formats and deal with some audio codecs. [...] Your non-technical friends and family can't do the initial setup themselves (it's shared over Tailscale, they can all use the same limited account on your plan), but anyone I'm going to let do this can ship me their Apple TV 4K and let me set it up for them.

As someone with a 4k tv and an Apple TV 4K, I thought that all of my streamed content was in 4k. [...]

[...] When going back to the main screen, it can take upwards of 30 seconds, maybe more (it feels like an eternity), for the “watch next” to update. If I don’t wait for it to update, it will start playing an old episode the next time I try to launch it. This lag also persists over app switching. [...] Sometimes I try to switch back and forth to force and update and it feels like I’m back on 56K. [...] I have an Apple TV 4K in the house as well, which I’ve been meaning to migrate to, to see if it’s any better. [...] Peacock as a service seems to have an extreme amount of lag.

Apple TV 4k has an idle power draw of 0.49W and a 4k streaming power draw of 2.31W. [...] Plus keyboard and mouse are generally terrible couch devices. [...]

For similar reasons many years back when I broke the bank for a G2, I decided to disconnect it forever. Besides the always-on spyware, every update broke something, which is incredibly frustrating considering the amount I spent. For instance, I got a GX soundbar for free with the TV which worked fine for 1–2 months until some update borked it and made it glitch out randomly. To date, none of their updates seem to have fixed it. I now only connect it back to the web — if needed — once a year or so but even this needs plenty of careful research across the web to see if the update package breaks something else I take for granted. Hooking up an Apple TV 4K to this thing was the best decision I ever made and the sheer performance of this thing puts every TV vendor to shame. [...]

[...] I've used Walmart's "Onn" Google/Android TV boxes on both 1080p and 4K televisions. [...] Projectivity Launcher set to default and advert-buttons on the remote control overridden in software. [...] It's honestly better than my experience with Apple TV 4K. And if Google continues to close down and wall off AOSP, there's already at least one community build of Lineage OS with Android TV for the Raspberry Pi.

[...] My son’s school laptop is my old 8gb 2020 M1 Air, which continues to have stellar performance and battery life and could run Tahoe if I was crazy enough to want to upgrade it. My work machine is a 2021 M1 Pro that runs just as great as the day I bought it (thanks, Al Dente!). My 3 Apple TV 4Ks are I-have-no-idea-how-old but they are still being updated and just get out of the way like a TV box should. [...]

[...] I use Apple TV 4K and I can use my iPhone as a remote, use it for color calibration, use it as a dedicated camera for FaceTime on TV 5. I use Apple Watch to receive important calls/ notifications when my phone is not around. [...] Photo sync and iCloud are pretty easy to replace with Google Photos/G drive, so I’m not worried about that part. [...]

I have two Apple TV 4Ks and both started dropping Bluetooth connections every minute or so after a recent upgrade. [...] My Apple Watch regularly has a glitched Home Screen too. [...]

[...] It works fine connected to an AppleTV 4k and and appleTV is the only smart TV software I'll use. [...]

I got an Apple TV 4K a while back to replace my Roku. [...] On top of that, it let me recalibrate the colors using my iPhone camera. Anyway, I bought it to reduce ad tracking, and was pleasantly surprised that it was roughly equivalent to buying a new TV.

After over 25 years of building various HTPCs (with various assortments of timeshiftimg PVRs like Windows Media, XBMC, Kodi, SageTV, SnapStream, MythTV, TVheadend etc, and futzing with MPEG video-in cards on Windows, RSS feeds, etc), various other TV boxes like Popcorn Hour, and nasty Android TV boxes, I finally settled on the AppleTV 4K paired with Plex server running on Debian on an old HP EliteBook laptop. Life is too short for messing around with these sort of sub-optimal workarounds in 2024, when there are now finally great affordable fuss-free tech out there.

[...] The charts you link to show game sales that lag way behind the xbox. [...] I only say this because I got my ps3 for free with the purchase of a Sony television at a Sony store (remember those?) in late 2009 and never purchased more than a bare handful of games which I almost never played. [...] Skyrim was one the games I bought and it was so buggy, even for Bethesda, on the ps3 due to ram limitations (I've read) that I purchased it again for pc. [...] My ps3 was, and based on those yearly charts a lot of other peoples' ps3s were also, extremely powerful streaming boxes and I only retired mine when I upgraded to a 4k tv and got an appletv 4k.

I just fired up my AppleTV4k, navigated to my Apple TV app, so that I could view my AppleTV+ service. [...]

Nah there’s at least a few hundred gigs available at any given time. Usually the breakage has to do with plugins just ceasing to function or Plex somehow forgetting its library exists, which results in only the free-stream-crap channels showing up in clients. Also, everything in my library can be direct-played by the clients I use (primarily Apple TV 4k) too, so transcoding pretty much only happens when I’m loading up my iPad for a trip (once or twice a year tops).

On this I will say they are far more snappy than they used to be, battery life is great if you ask me. [...] Between that app and the Apple TV 4K I’ve had since just before they moved the remote to usb c it’s been great. [...]

At least with my setup I prefer Amcrest over Reolink (based on compatibility and setup and plugins with the software I use). An open source option that just requires cameras, a computer, and a network is Scrypted + Frigate (+optional Google coral). [...] If you have Google coral frigate can also do AI object detection (it can do it without but slower). Since Scrypted is the rebroadcast point I also have it hooked up to Apple home kit since I have an Apple TV 4K. [...]

Step 1: use appletv 4k as much as it pains a certain set of nerds, using a dedicated stream device is still the best way to bypass the arbitrary hurdles that streamers throw at you. To build a general pc that gets Dolby vision and atmos working right requires at best some very specific hardware/software choices and at worst sometimes just don’t work at all on pc (unless you are willing to do things like hackintosh). The audiovisual space has just always been intensely proprietary, even something as basic as divx was something you paid for or pirated back in the v3.x or v4.x days. [...] Ironically the A17 also might be my fastest processor (in single-thread) at the moment, lol - definitely faster than my laptop, might be faster than my gaming desktop. [...]

[...] I been using apple tv since the 1st gen and upgrade without fail to latest gen... [...] I never experience any software or hardware Issues!! [...]

Hi, I've tried a few TV boxes for Apple TV and I found it strange that no one talks about the sound (real sound) from Apple TV. For those who have home theater receivers, Apple TV presents a problem with the distribution of sound 9.1 cn (Apple TV 2024-2025. [...] It's not a problem, but I'm only talking about audio and video, yes, I've tried both.

[...] Mine couldn't so totally worthless. [...]

One note to all in here, Apple TV 4K normally get stuck to one channel after 10 minutes and won't change channels in the Spectrum App. [...]

[...] It works amazingly as a Karaoke Machine when paired via Bluetooth to a speaker with microphone. [...]

plex buffering or failing to play due to transcoding or other shit is one of my biggest source of frustration I bought an apple tv 4k on ebay for $60 and I just got it connected Steven Universe still buffered. started seeing red checked the model number and it's an apple tv hd, not 4k fuming

I've used a clever tactic exploiting CEX's christmas returns policy that has essentially allowed me to rent an apple TV 4K and sonic dream team for 50ish days for free (the things I do for shadow) The entire time I've been playing it I've been sobbing "please come to PC and console"

It also is clearly hitting CPU limits given occasional hiccups in audio processing Can we talk about this more? I have spotify running on a 2nd gen apple tv 4k (the N-1 model), which goes to an LG OLED TV. I hear the buffer underruns, but I haven't bothered to dig into whether it's: The spotify app missing its audio callback deadline tvOS doing a poor job scheduling the audio callbacks Some fuckery on the LG side that is dropping audio samples It's incredibly annoying to have "higher end" media equipment that can't even play a song without audible pops and skips in it.

Originally published at: Fourth-Gen Apple TV 4K Brings Hands-Free Siri AI at a Whopping $299 - TidBITS As part of its “Welcome Home” product launch on 13 October 2026, Apple introduced the fourth-generation Apple TV 4K, the first update to its streaming box since 2022 (see “Third-Generation Apple TV 4K Boasts More Storage for Lower Prices,” 18 October 2022). Apple’s press release says the new Apple TV 4K is “supercharged by Siri AI,” and it may be, but you don’t need the new hardware for that. The updated Apple TV 4K adds an A19 chip for faster performance, three far-field microphones for hands-free Siri, a Siri Remote that can audibly advertise its location, and support for four-speaker HomePod surround sound. Those features won’t come cheap, and the price would have seemed absurd a year ago. You can pre-order a 128 GB fourth-generation Apple TV 4K with Wi-Fi and gigabit Ethernet for $299, and it ships on 13 November 2026. In comparison, the third-generation model started at $129 for 64 GB with Wi-Fi and $149 for 128 GB with added Ethernet. In June, Apple raised those prices to $199 and $249 (see “Apple Raises Prices for Many Products,” 26 June 2026). Apple eliminated the lower-capacity option, so now we have only the higher-end model at twice its initial price. Siri AI on Apple TV Unlike the HomePod mini 2, which will arrive before the software update needed for Siri AI (see “HomePod mini 2 Adds Siri AI, S10 Chip, and Sound Glow,” 14 October 2026), Apple says the Apple TV 4K will support the beta of Siri AI with tvOS 27.2. [...] Siri AI will be available in English in the US, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and the UK. All of Apple’s examples for using Siri AI on the Apple TV revolve around searching, discovering, and learning more about content. [...]

My basic advice for media consumption in 2026: - Buy the biggest LG C -series OLED TV you can afford and/or fit (WebOS, no Android TV crapola to deal with) - Never connect it to the internet, LG wants to add all kinds of AI crap to it. [...] I still use my 10 year old Apple TV 4k daily and it works like new, no slowdown, every single relevant streaming platform supports it with a dedicated app. [...]

Oh no, I just bought the older version .. .. new Apple TV 4K, supercharged by Siri AI With built-in far-field microphones, Apple TV 4K also lets users talk to Siri completely hands-free Oh, okay, never mind

Too pricey, as many others have noted. I was waiting for this model to consider upgrading from the previous generation, but I can’t justify it at this price. [...] I don’t see Siri AI as a big positive differentiator when compared to third generation Apple TV 4K from 2022. Anecdotally, Siri AI has gotten slower and worse from the time the OS 27.x were released. Apple TV is the smoothest way to navigate, run apps, etc., without having to use whatever sluggish tracking crap that comes with Smart TVs. [...] This hits harder for Apple’s own apps, which tend to be of poor quality and have no attention paid to bug reports for years.

The issue here is that the app developers design & test for the latest Apple TV 4K models, which have about 10X the performance (and 2-4X the RAM) compared to the old HD models. Apple left a large generational gap because they kept selling the HD for many years (until 2022) as an entry-level device alongside much more capable 4K models. ”it's very difficult to figure out what's the active selection” Yes, based on my observation this seems to be one of the biggest challenges people face with the AppleTV interface, along with accidentally changing the selection when they try to select it (because of the sensitive touch controls on the remote).

[...] Music actually worked quite good regarding positioning (and yeah, to get that kind of precision from speakers they'll have to be well positioned, room calibrated and any strong flaws in room acoustics corrected, otherwise phase info is all over the place and it gets as muddled as you describe) - but there still was noticable coloring of the sound that didn't go away after recalibration. [...] The usage scenarios though...well, basically everything not an AppleTV 4k I can connect to an AVR, i.e. [...] From what I've read, at least the app compatibility with spatial audio on ATV4k has gotten better ('bout time, Amazon!), but several european streaming providers still don't seem to work (e.g. Sky, Dazn) Spatial audio on the go is admittedly not a priority for me, though

[...] Three Apple TV 4Ks, a Mac Studio. [...] "Spotify holdouts" kinda makes it sound like you see them as misguided. [...] - oh good, I can listen to the soundtrack to.... [...]

[...] Another fun issue I have with it is that my Apple TV 4K will randomly (1 time in 3-4 hours?) tell the receiver to change input when I'm on another. [...]

[...] If I got a phone call I often wanted a quick way to pause my media but chromecast made this super inconvenient, slow and stressful when the phone is blurting out it's ringtone. [...] In the end I realized that since I've already chosen between a rock and a hard place (went with the Apple ecosystem), I could just screenshare using an old Apple TV. [...] I have an Apple TV 4K and just mostly use the native apps from various services. [...]

The client I use is Apple TV 4k and Plex does not have reliable playback for that device. It’s pathetic this has been broken for so long. [...]