AppleTV - Siri, tell me what to watch - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > AppleTV - Siri, tell me what to watch

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Thwomp posted:

I predict that most reviews will settle on this: "Faster and easier to navigate than past AppleTVs, Siri universal search is a great addition, and App Store holds the future of the device but is currently bereft of killer apps."

Verge Score: 8.0/10

I imagine they'll have display units out by Friday (since that's when the first buyers will be getting them), but they're being coy about when they start selling in-store.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2015 16:55

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 03:05

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

He needs to find a better phrase to use than "it is unclear."

And really, WHAT POSSIBLE USE COULD AN IR RECEIVER HAVE? BOY, I JUST CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING!!!

# ¿ Oct 26, 2015 21:43

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Yeah, I'm betting the "restriction" can be pretty easily worked around.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2015 23:20

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

My credit card has been charged, so maybe they're shipping earlier than expected.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2015 00:37

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Feenix posted:

All the bits get delivered the same way... via download... So I'm not sure how it makes a difference overall.

200mb downloaded from the App Store and 2gb downloaded once the app launches is still 2gb and 200mb of bandwidth.

I don't think you would have seen anything.

It's going to depend on the app, obviously, but they won't necessarily download all on-demand content immediately. The example Polygon used is a game with, say, 10 levels. It will download a tutorial and the first few levels, and then start downloading later levels as you approach them, assuming you ever do. It will also delete unused or less-used data slices if you start to run out of storage. How much this will impact storage use remains to be seen, of course.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2015 02:21

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

TheJoker138 posted:

When will I be able to walk into the Apple store and hand a person money and have them give me one of these?

They haven't said, but Friday at the earliest.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2015 11:59

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Supposedly it pulls a lot of info from your iPhone or iPad, so a lot of it will easy enough.

May be taking a trip to the Apple Store Friday depending on when this thing ships.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2015 18:59

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Martytoof posted:

Wait, what?

What technology does this use?

Somehow I didn't know this was a thing.

e: Oh just BT. I wonder how it knows the tap happened though.

It probably has a BT connection open and the iPhone's accelerometers pick up the tap and connects and sends whatever. I actually wouldn't put it past Apple to include the sensors in the ATV for just this purpose.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2015 21:21

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Well for starters you don't need a separate device for it to do literally anything.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2015 01:55

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Damnit, mine is still preparing!

# ¿ Oct 29, 2015 23:25

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

I hope that's right. Best Buy is closer than the Apple Store.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2015 03:56

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Can someone check if WWE Network has an app yet?

I imagine Remote.ipa will get updated sooner or later.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2015 19:07

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

flipoff posted:

My order from Monday still hasn't shipped, what the hell was the point of taking preorders if they aren't shipping them until after they're in stores?

Mine hasn't either, so I'm going to pick one up at Best Buy. Unfortunately, I'll have to go to the Apple Store, anyway, to return it. Blah.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2015 20:44

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Feenix posted:

This is intriguing. I wonder if that's not a really great idea. Vacation house or hotel or friend's house.

Does Airplay use Wifi or does it use an ad-hoc direct connection?

If both devices are on the same network, it will run over that, but if not, it can set up an ad-hoc connection as of iOS 8.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2015 21:22

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Yeah, the Netflix app isn't as good as it was on ATV3, but it also just seems like the Netflix apps on various other devices, so I guess they're just unifying in that regard.

Anyone know how to skip songs when playing Radio? I might be missing something really obvious but there doesn't seem to be a way.

Also, I taught it to use the IR to change the receiver volume, which is neat.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2015 06:33

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

I don't think Apple did develop the old ones. I think they put very tight design restrictions on the companies putting up channels. There was still quite a bit of variance in how they looked. For instance, the WWE Network app on here is identical to the one on the ATV3, which looks nothing like either the previous Netflix channel nor the current Netflix app.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2015 14:43

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Siri can be male, too, you know. :colbert:

# ¿ Oct 31, 2015 21:00

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Scrolling through Music is awful. Makes me wish it could use a simulated scroll wheel or something.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2015 23:56

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Mine is doing the same thing but I have no idea why since I'm pretty sure my TV doesn't have HDMI-CEC. I turned off controlling the TV and receiver, so we'll see what happens.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2015 01:50

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Unless Amazon sucks it up, pretty much. I got a FireTV Stick when they were on sale for $20, so I at least have that as an option, but I get not wanting another device. (Plus you have the PS4, so that's kinda pointless, anyway.)

# ¿ Nov 3, 2015 00:29

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Don Lapre posted:

Go to usps.com. Do a change of address to your existing address from any address you randomly pick. Get the 10% off bestbuy coupon and use it.

If you have an amex card you can also get $20 back if you spend $200 or more at bestbuy.

Or just walk into a post office and grab the packet they have sitting out.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2015 17:09

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

noirstronaut posted:

so what's the verdict is this thing poo poo or what

Well, as an Apple Watch owner, you clearly have a low bar for "good" so it should be well above your standards.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2015 16:14

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

I didn't realize I could use my HDHomeRun with Plex. I might have to mess around with that. It would be nice to be able to watch TV through my Apple TV instead of messing around on my PC.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2015 20:26

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

noirstronaut posted:

I still don't understand the sizes of apps. Some people are saying the biggest app they've gotten in 200MB. At that rate, I'd need 320 apps to fill up 64 GB of space. It seems plausible on a phone, but I can't even begin to imagine what the hell is being done on an ATV to fill that space.

200 MB is the maximum file size of the initial download. That said, developers can, after the initial install, download up to 2 GB of data to your Apple TV (and are given 20 GB of iCloud space per app). Obviously, this will largely be limited to games, so if you're not expecting to play a lot of those, you probably won't run into space constraints. Even then, tvOS is supposed to actively delete code slices from things that haven't been used in awhile if you're running out of space.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2015 03:43

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

ATV Siri will also tell you the weather.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2015 15:49

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Jose Oquendo posted:

Did you accidentally go back in time?

Actually, he has an operating system that doesn't exist.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2015 20:28

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Martytoof posted:

It seems like this is the kind of thing where a remote app on iOS would be really useful HMMMMMMMMMM

The unsourced rumor I heard is that Remote.ipa was written by like one guy who has since left Apple, so making it work with the new Apple TV will largely require rewriting it.

That still makes it barely excusable that they didn't get on that as soon as they could.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2015 03:28

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Martytoof posted:

Yeah it sure seems like the Apple announcement of the new AppleTV left the.. Apple developers surprised.

I mean, Apple's various groups are intentionally secretive to each other so it's not really shocking.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2015 05:26

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

TheJoker138 posted:

Is it a thing that you even have to charge? I figured it was the same style battery the previous models had where you just get a new one when it finally dies.

Yes, it has a Lightning port. It's good for months on a charge according to Apple.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2015 22:09

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

I do hope it will give you a warning when it's running low.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2015 22:31

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Feenix posted:

It gives you an on screen pop up when it connects, I don't see why that sort of UX wouldn't also be how it told you "Hey, battery is low".

Especially since OS X does the same type of thing with Mice and Keyboards.

Yeah, but maybe they just didn't think about it. I know it should be possible, but I don't think even the early dev units have been in the wild long enough for a battery to die.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2015 00:27

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Yeah, I have a Harmony, also, but never really use it.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2015 14:37

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

I seem to have it working with the devices that have it? The minus side is my cat keeps turning everything on by stepping on the Siri remote.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 02:38

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

TBF, they could, theoretically, make a shorter PIN you have to input rather than your full password.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 17:58

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Having gotten a 4K smart TV that's surprisingly decent, about all I can see myself using it for is Watch ESPN, Airplay, and Apple Music.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 19:25

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Choadmaster posted:

I've been playing with my friend's for the last few days and it's a lot nicer than they used to be but still not good enough IMO (but the remote did come with a full [mini] hardware keyboard on the back side!). The inability to resume from where you left off after you turn off the tv might drive you crazy after a while. And don't forget to disable the track-what-I-watch-and-sell-it-to-advertisers feature.

Mine is just built-in Android TV, and it's not really noticably slower than my ATV. It does, in fact, resume where I left off after I turn off the TV, at least for the apps. It doesn't do it for things on inputs.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 20:39

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

qirex posted:

from what I can tell android tv is kind of lame but compared to what a tv maker will write when left to their own devices it's a masterpiece

This is fairly accurate. It's vastly better than an ATV3, but not quite as good as an ATV4. It has a decent keyboard, at the very least. I'm honestly quite impressed with how well it performs. I don't know what Vizio uses - it might be based on Android, but it's not full Android TV like Sony.

I was actually surprised that when I turned it off and on in the middle of watching Jessica Jones (for the sole purpose of timing how long it took to turn on) that it was right where I was when I turned it off. I assumed I'd have to go back into the app.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 21:09

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

Oh hey, the idea I had is already there!

# ¿ Dec 2, 2015 16:43

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

dutchbstrd posted:

I like my nVidia Shield much more than my friends ATVs. It has pretty much the same poo poo besides the ESPN app, from what I can tell.

The big upside of the Shield is 4k support and since it's android you can do whatever. For example I have Kodi installed to stream from my NAS, which is much better than PLEX imo. Kodi also has AirPlay which was the killer Apple feature on ATV for me.

Also I can run every emulator you can think of which plays all the ROMs from my NAS as well. I can also stream Steam poo poo.

I love the thing.

Cool.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2015 18:42

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 03:05

Endless Mike: Aug 13, 2003

OldSenileGuy posted:

Quoting myself a little over a month later to see how we're doing:

Slingbox App NOPE

Official Plex App YAY!

Pandora App NOPE

Spotify App NOPE

Twitch App NOPE

VLC App NOPE (but I don't really care about it anymore anyway)

HockeyStreams App NOPE (also don't really care about it anymore)

Remote iOS app integration NOPE

HomeKit integration NOPE

Non-sucky Netflix App NOPE

Siri Search to include Plex/Home Sharing/etc (Siri API essentially) NOPE

Overall not too much progress made yet. I wonder what's taking a lot of these app developers so long to get tvOS apps out? I thought for sure we'd have Pandora and Spotify by now. Then again, I thought for sure we'd have an updated Remote app by now, so

Lack of Pandora and Spotify are strange, for sure. Don't get your hopes up on a different Netflix app, though. It's identical to what every other device has, though I do agree it's a big step down from the ATV3 app.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2015 19:10

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