Roku, FireTV, Wii, WiiU, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and the Xbox One.
The consoles obviously cost more than $150, but provide the same services.
The consoles obviously cost more than $150, but provide the same services.
I got a Amazon FireTV Stick for my MiL. It seems like a nice device. The interface is really decent, though it pushes Amazon Videos harder than the AppleTV pushes iTunes I feel like. Netflix and Hulu on the latest AppleTV feel "first class" for example. Same number of steps as getting to iTunes content (or one extra if you have multiple Netflix profiles). And the search is universal. Whereas on FireTV the Netflix App is kinda off in a corner and most of the content you're presented on startup is inaccessible if you don't have a Prime account.
Anyways, hardware wise, the latest AppleTV feels more powerful/capable than most devices on that list. Not sure about the PS3 or 360 or original Wii since I didn't really use them as media devices, but it's definitely much more powerful than the WiiU (I've tried Netflix and Hulu on it for the kids and it's nowhere near as snappy or responsive).
Anyways, yes, the PS4 (I don't have an XBone yet) does most of what the latest AppleTV does. But it's less focused and more cumbersome. No voice search for example. The apps seem a bit slower. (Except for Youtube, which is far better than the crippled version made for TvOS.)
Not sure where I'm going with all this except to say the latest AppleTV has it's own strengths/weaknesses and is more of a media-device++ than a Console--.
My own pro/cons would be:
Pro: Boots way faster than the previous version. Just a few seconds. Con: Needs to be rebooted every other day or so when apps can no longer play video for unknown reasons.
Pro: Board games on the AppleTV with a young family are awesome. Con: Not enough of them.
Pro: Plenty of age-appropriate games for children. Crossy Road is one of the few games my 3yo and 7yo can really play well together, and the TV experience is great. Con: Not enough more in-depth games. Where's Kingdom Rush?!?
Con: The on-screen Keyboard is the worst ever designed in the history of on-screen keyboards. W.T.F. Apple. Seriously. Especially painful in Youtube since you can't voice-search there.
Pro: The optional Controller is great. Con: It's not used to it's fullest since most buttons map to things that'll kick you out of the current app.
I totally get not making the 3rd party controller required. But it's a rough compromise to be limited to NES level controls.
1: WTF, Netflix, why would you remove proper Kinect support from the Xbox One app?
I actually quite like the youtube.com/tv page as a good demonstration of a HTML5 app, though it has some navigation quirks. Before the Apple TV I had a NUC set up with Kodi and Chrome Launcher for when I wanted to use YouTube and I'd use the TV page exclusively.
I swear the Netflix app on Xbox is somehow being released in reverse order. Every single time it updates, features are ripped out.
Try looking for genres and separating tv shows from movies in Netflix on any of those platforms if you don't know what we are talking about.
I haven't followed the AppleTV at all but this seems interesting... do you have time to go into more detail regarding the game(s) you have found best?
That's really it that I've found for board games, but it seems like a great platform for it.
I mentioned the two-player mode of Crossy Road. My son (7yo) also enjoys "Goat". Which is like a modern Qbert? My daughter (3yo) digs the Thomas The Train "Express" game.
Then there's "Starwalk Kids" and "Solar Walk". Those manage to hold their interest a bit as well while I talk about the solar system with them.
It really does seem like a great platform for family time. The biggest issue is handing the very sensitive controller around and inadvertent rolls of dice or spins of a wheel.
I'm fairly excited to see how this develops... Hopefully the awful app discoverability doesn't crush otherwise worthy apps we'd be interested in.
Here's the Geekbench benchmark: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/4955785?ba...
Basically the A8 uses less power and is much faster in almost every case. It has a ton more fill-rate as well, which means short of a console, it's probably the most powerful setup graphically by a good margin currently.
They have the same amount of RAM.
I'm a fan of Amazon Video. I think in most ways their app interfaces generally beat Apple's. They appear to incrementally improve routinely where you're probably lucky to get a significant AppleTV interface improvement once a year (I don't hold out much hope for Apple fixing the keyboard, and I don't consider the recent Bluetooth keyboard support addition much improvement).
Anyways, the Qualcomm/nVidia vs Apple Ax series seems very much like AMD vs Intel to me. For a casual observer like myself, the Apple processors seem to pretty much always be the most energy efficient, and provide significantly more performance at the same time. So if cores and clock speed are the most important thing to you, you buy the Qualcomm or AMD (well, not cores so much, but work with me) CPU. But if you want the best performance with the most efficiency, you buy the Apple or Intel solution.
That's just my theory anyways.