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Comment by pridkett | Hacker News Reader

I’m really pleased the author called out the Apple TV as a device that lets you avoid ads. We tried to go cheap on another of our TVs and get an Amazon Fire Stick and in addition to it being not as smooth (combo of UX and speed) at the Apple TV, it had a good amount of ads all over the place.

There’s lots of griping about the cost of an Apple TV 4k, but I’ll pay that extra $100 to avoid ads and not be tracked so extensively.

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Yes - I wish Apple would just make a TV. Call it a living room screen or a living room monitor or something.

Make it OLED, dumb TV, instant on, Apple TV box plugs in. Separate box with front facing ports that connects to screen with one cable. A remote designed by someone who thought about it for ten seconds (why do modern TVs have dozens of buttons no one ever uses?).

This entire market is in desperate need of someone to make something decent.

The best available option today is LG and it’s still laden with ads and takes a few seconds to boot up.

As much as I want this to happen. And I have been advocating for it [1] for many years. The more I read into the whole TV, display panel and electronic industry the grimmer it is for such Apple TV set to exist.

An Apple branded TV, even if it is without the TV part or just a monitor would have to be at least 2-3x the price of today's similar TV sets. And if anything OP were only willing to paid an extra $100 is probably why Apple didn't make one.

Some of the TV in the industry isn't just on Low Margin. They are entering negative margin territory if you are discounting Data Selling and software / partner sponsorship.

Unless the cost electronic part continue to raise to the point where Apple has an advantage with their SoC.

I think one of their original purpose or intention for ProXDR was the use the Dual Layer LCD technology to create something like a true Reference Display Monitor. But the technology and cost never got to that point. At least I hope they could continue their investment in that area even if they do not intend it to be in consumer usage.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10710734

The thing is, Apple could charge 2-3x, because the prices have gotten so cheap.

People would absolutely pay $1000-1200 for a 55" Apple TV with nice software, and maybe a nice brushed aluminum frame that looks nice on the wall.

(For comparison, the cheapest 55" I could quickly find from a major retail is around $300, with a "name brand" starting around $400).

The $300 TV that you found probably has poor audio, viewing angle, contrast ratio, support, etc. From the limited research I did before buying my TV, a 55" TV with good reviews for panel and sound quality that you can rely on for 5-10 years costs C$1,200 today.

Good sound probably requires a sound bar. I'm not sure the physics of flat panel TVs allows for great sound quality. Getting a sound bar went from me mostly using my wall mounted TV as a digital picture frame (which was my primary thinking when I bought it) to actually being the TV I use for streaming most of the time.

5-10 years? I know I'm not on the latest technology step. But 4K isn't worth me upgrading perfectly functional TVs. Maybe if we get to reasonably priced OLED panels but I'm not in a big hurry to upgrade TVs that are working.

You can get a 55” TCL QLED 4K TV for around $500 - Amazon currently has them for $534, I paid $460 a few months back. All the specs are amazing, as is the software - minimal, intuitive, and effective. And the sound is actually rather impressive out of the box, but if you want any low frequencies you need bigger external speakers that cannot physically fit in a flatscreen TV.

I actually took home quite a few (3-4) more expensive TVs from Costco before buying the TCL, and it was far and away the best set while also being 1/2 to 1/3 the price.

I'd say 1500 dollar TV is a viable purchase given that a TV has a life of 15+ years as against to 1000 dollar iphone or any other mobile which actually has a life of may be 4-5 years.

It would be the best of Apple product to show off.

they were talking about OLEDs, so 3000-5000 would be a more realistic estimate with that markup.

Agreed - Apple could easily charge 3-5k. The LG TVs I mentioned cost that much.

They could offer three sizes. Mini, Normal, Max.

They could use it as a jumping off point to own the “living room” if they wanted.

All OLED TV, including non LG OLED currently ships about 5M unit per year. The volume of those high price range OLED are tiny in total shipping volume.

And if that specific LG model charges 3 to 5K, Apple will have to sell it at 6 to 10K.

I don’t think so - Apple has a better supply chain, more committed users, more scale, etc.

There is only one OLED TV display panel maker. That is LG.

Edit: I think I need to spell things out a little more clearly. If Apple were to use OLED and aim at a top tier market, then it would be competing directly with LG TV, which also happens to be gaining momentum in terms of both OLED display panel ( LG Display ) and TV set ( LG Electronics ). LG Display will also need to built new Fab for Apple. The recent expansion at Guangzhou doubling their capacity, AFAIK has already been booked and has no relation to Apple. i.e LG has little interest to do it with Apple given they are already fully booked on capacity. And Apple doesn't seems to be interested in pushing LG to partner.

The answer to if Apple could do something will always going to be yes given they have hundreds of billions of cash and has little idea what to do with it other than buying back stocks.

The answer to if Apple will do it is always going to complex. And nothing in the supply chain and BOM cost analysis suggest it is a good strategy worth going for.

I do wish Apple prove wrong though.

Why would it be 2 or 3 times more? Apple phones are between 10 and 15 times the price of the cheapest Android alternatives (iPhone 12 $999 from Apple, Samsung Galaxy A01 $55 from Amazon). Apple could, and probably would, sell a $4000 television.

Which puts it in spitting distance of some of the highest end Samsung TVs (or short throw projectors) anyway.

(Samsung LSP7 is $3,500)

2x to 3x at a comparable model on Hardware level.

What? Just no, that's like how a Vespa moped an alternative to a Porsche car?

...and that would only play Apple content.

The Apple TV plays content from other providers just fine.

I've got a 3rd generation apple TV, which is EOL and apps are being slowly discontinued (no disney, youtube is going soon)

However I can still watch Disney on it using airplay from my OG iphone SE (2016). As far as consumer electronics go, apple is well ahead of the pack.

Google is adding a “dumb TV mode,” but I’m skeptical.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/the-best-feature-of-...

Presumably will still boot slowly and only the topmost UI layer loads differently, and until they confirm otherwise I’m guessing that even with a simplified UI it still includes all the creepy tracking of everything you watch.

I would imagine people would conflate "dumb tv" with privacy (sort of like "incognito"), when google doesn't actually say that.

How will they track you though, some sort of real time content id of everything you watch? Is there any evidence that they do this? If it’s in dumb tv mode and the display stream is coming from a separate device like an Apple TV then it seems much less trivial to track you than if you’re using the builtin smart features.

Yes, they’re basically all doing this. “Automatic Content Recognition,” called various things by the different brands, lets them know what you’re watching even if it’s coming from another device over HDMI instead of using the TV’s apps.

https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smar...

Android TV might not build it in, but much like android phones, you get extra “features” from pretty much every OEM.

> Is there any evidence that they do this?

Evidence is a high bar. But I can tell you my f...ing smart tv asks me on behalf of tv stations to accept cookies when I switch to some german tv stations. Yes, I'd say they are tracking what I am watching. That is with TV over satellite in Germany.

> The best available option today is LG and it’s still laden with ads and takes a few seconds to boot up.

Sharp offers (most of) their range as dumb TVs[1]. They still take a few seconds to turn on, but not notably longer than a typical computer monitor.

1. https://sg.sharp/products/tv?filters%5B33%3A36%5D=33%3A36

In the U.S., Sharp TVs aren't actually made by Sharp. They are made by Hisense and then rebranded Sharp. The link you posted is the Singapore site.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sharp-to-americans-you-dont-wan...

I had no idea that was a thing, though it's not altogether surprising given where Sharp was back then.

At any rate, according to Google it seems to be over[1] and Sharp took back control in 2019.

1. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sharp-hisense-idUSKCN1SE1...

> In 2015, Sharp signed a deal with Hisense giving the Chinese company the right to use the Sharp name on TVs sold in the U.S. through 2020.

Hopefully that means there are better options this year?

> A remote designed by someone who thought about it for ten seconds

I love that a sibling comment to yours calls out the remote as dealbreaker terrible, but I agree with the sentiment that I would love a remote that was really well-designed.

You can go too far in the other direction too, however. Apple TV remote infamously has no mute functionality. And if you do an internet search on how to mute the Apple TV using the remote (because of course there’s a way, right? No one would design a TV remote that has volume control without mute) you get either one of two answers:

- it’s impossible/difficult to do with current tech (not true)

- the classic Apple forum response of “why would you want to do that?”

This turned into a bit of a rant but I’ll conclude the thought by saying that there’s certainly some sort of happy medium between a gajillion buttons on the remote and lack of absolutely critical functionality. In fact if you invest a bit of extra money into the Sideclick add-on to Apple TV remote you achieve exactly that.

Personally I find the problem with the apple remote to be the symmetric design (I would have though the puck mouse would have taught that lesson)

I put some gaffer tape on the bottom of my Apple TV remote to make it obvious which end is up. I'm personally not a fan of the touchpad. In principle, it's a decent solution to the problem, but Apple's implementation is somehow not sensitive enough and too sensitive at the same time.

This, it’s like the designers tested it only outdoors.

Who would’ve thought it’s necessary to be able to grab the remote when it’s dark and know what orientation it is in.

I bought some silicon sleeves that fix this issue (the bottom half of the remote face with no buttons is covered by silicon). It also resolve the issue that the remote is very slippery in your hands as well as the issue of being unable to tell which remote goes where if you have multiple Apple TV’s (you can get different color silicon for each TV).

This is a great suggestion, but it is also surprising that it is necessary.

That's why I love the Nvidia Shield remote. It is triangle shaped, and it has accelerometer that lights up the buttons once you grab and move it.

I had to look up a picture because I didn't realize they'd updated the remote at some point. I apparently have a previous generation remote which has all the controls at one end and is pretty usable in the dark. It's sad (but not shocking) to see design usability regress like that.

New versions of the new design have a raised white circle around the menu button which makes it obvious which side is the top (if you couldn’t tell from feeling the trackpad).

People on HN complain about this a lot, but I’ve used it for years and had parents use it without issue. I think it’s a made up problem.

I’d probably do something that’s a large dial like an Apple Watch crown for volume that takes up most of a square remote and you push down for mute/unmute.

The other buttons I’d have on it would be power, and input switch.

I’d have an Apple HomePod sound bar which connects to the tv so you don’t have to configure any of that.

Then you’d use the Apple TV remote like normal for everything else. The regular dial remote is just always sitting on the coffee table.

Alternatively they could extend the existing Apple TV remote a bit to add a mute and volume knob or reconfigure to be the one remote for the dumb tv and the Apple TV.

I remember a universal remote that I had on the 90s to control my small bedroom CRT TV. it has only 7 buttons, and had mute button.

I never use the mute button. I just turn the volume down because I know where that button is without looking.

Much as their adware laden TVs drive me crazy, I have to admit that their remote is absolutely amazing. A nice piece of aluminum with a minimum number of buttons, and yet you can control Netflix, Prime, TV etc

Amazon FireTV remote is pretty good, latest gen added a volume control inc. mute button (so you don't need your TV remote). Source switching uses CEC over HDMI. You don't need to point the controller for most tasks as it's Bluetooth. If I had a TV that used CEC I wouldn't need the original remote at all.

The best option that I know of today (in terms of resulting usabilty and long term reliability) is using a dumb computer monitor and roll the rest yourself with a Raspi.

While this option is certainly not available to all, it is the only thing that will really fit your needs. I completely gave up on finding anything decent in that market.

The best for who? This is a ridiculous take, nobody wants to roll their own TV UX except HN users looking for a weekend project.

What usability / long-term reliability perk does your own software running on a RPI have over an Apple TV plugged into a dumb TV / monitor?

The best for me obviously. I was the one who made the comment and declaring an object "the best" of any category is always a subjective statement.

My own solution has the pros:

- I control precisely what I need and what not, both in terms of features and in terms of usability

- I control when it gets changed/updated

- I control which data flows in and out of the system

- Your device is not a brick when the manufacturer decides to end the support or shuts down the wrong server

The obvious downside is that it means work and requires a certain set of skills. Whether it is worth it or not depends on how important that thing is for you and how much all the TVs suck at doing what you want in the way you want it done.

I know plenty of folks who run kodi.

I would say not "hn user" level folks, more like "i have a gaming pc".

Or just buy a smart TV and just never connect it to the internet.

That doesn't stop it from spending a minute trying at every boot, or from using a cellular whispernet.

This comment is a part of why TV sucks so hard - ridiculous users.

Everyone's idea of 'simple' is rather asinine, unimaginative.

The latest Pis come practically preinstalled with everything, just have to load Kodi.

But someone who has found 'their' solution i.e. some crap by Apple e.g. assumes this is how everything should be... And we all get stuck with crappy 'smart' TVs (or don't own one - I have survived 10+ years without a TV - absolutely nothing about TVs today makes me want one. So much hot garbage)

In my experience getting Kodi set up is a massive time sink, to the point that the programmer time needed to set it up would easily double the total cost of a typical home theater setup. Admittedly my experience with it is a few years out of date, but a quick search for incredibly basic functionality like running the big streaming services makes it clear that this hasn’t really changed. On top of most of them being limited to 720p, it looks like the canonical solution nowadays is to run them in Chrome from Kodi, which (1) phones home to Google, unlike an Apple TV and (2) necessitates a mouse or other pointing device since you can’t rely on “keyboard” navigation with a remote - this alone would be a dealbreaker for me.

Does this cause issues with HDCP2?

Are the graphics on a Raspi really that good?

The Raspberry Pi 4 can drive 4k displays and easily run Kodi[0].

[0]: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/build-the-ultimate-4k-home-...

Full-screen Streaming is much less compute intensive than rendering and compositing.

A Raspi 4 can run two 4k HDMI streams at once. What do you mean?

> I wish Apple would just make a TV.

But that would be a TV which you can't use to watch adult content. And Netflix and HBO would be 30% more expensive.

And yet I can do all of that on my iPad without extra cost.

And cast it to a TV using Chromecast and/or Apple TV. I basically never use the "smart TV" features on my TV.

What do you think this device would cost? I’m guessing starting around $7999 for 45”

OLEDs are much cheaper than that. Or do you mean an Apple markup?

Look at recent trends in the price of the mac pro, or how much their headphones cost.

Heck, the stand for the mac pro monitor is $999.

A tv is not a Mac Pro.

Look at the price of Mac mini.

They can't. They already used up the name 'Apple TV' for another of their products (which oddly enough doesn't actually seem to be a TV at all).

“For another” sounds singular. Was that intentional? It’s already got a plurality of meanings

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21438152

Apple TV Pro Max

> A remote designed by someone who thought about it for ten seconds (why do modern TVs have dozens of buttons no one ever uses?).

I'd prefer the remote as an app on my phone. My desk is covered with remotes. Remotes are so 1980s :-/

Physical remote > any app. By far.

Die apps, die. I want dedicated remotes for lights, stereo, curtains, garage door, and TV.

Apps won’t be around – forget 20 years, 5 years if you’re lucky. A company can disappear along with its stupid fucking app.

About the only advantage an app has is a keyboard.

Hi systemvoltage!

We heard you like remotes, so how about a remote with dedicated, non-reprogrammable buttons to open apps you never use that don't even exist anymore?

Sincerely, Roku

Maybe one that isn’t tied to a box that stuffs ads in the UI?

How about arrow keys and an ok button?

     ^
  < OK! >
     v

> A company can disappear along with its stupid fucking app.

Absolutely true, which makes a good argument also for going back to websites and pages (HTML5 helps a lot) instead of the apps business model that basically brought us back to the pre-www era. Also regarding the phone (mis)use as remote, why nobody mentions latency? Every smartphone I tried had an absolutely atrocious UI latency even compared to my 30 years old Amiga 500, why should I want to use it instead of a dedicated device that does the job immediately and I can substitute with 5€, and sometimes even repair?

> A company can disappear along with its stupid fucking app.

They can also disappear and when you lose your remote, too bad. (That's why remotes go for $$ on ebay.)

A lot of the responses disagree. I generally prefer physical remotes, but a touchscreen remote could be pretty sweet for very complex systems (think whole-room/whole-house systems that integrate A/V with lighting, HVAC, etc.) if implemented well. But the whole interaction model with phones and apps is just... wrong for this usecase. The delays, the many swipes and taps just to get to the right screen, the delays, waiting for the app to load and connect to the network, and also the delays.

I've been meaning to hack an old phone to be an instant-on remote with some custom software, but there are always dozens of higher priority projects. If anyone wants to hire/partner with me to build such a thing though...

Logitech's line of Harmony remotes were (are?) great for this. Physical buttons, programmable sequences, and a touch screen.

The AppleTV lets you use your iPhone as a remote. I always reach for the physical remote first. The phone remote is just a huge pain — the physical remote just works.

^this. Though I do enjoy having the app as a backup for when I can't find the damn remote and am too lazy to look for it.

You'd prefer it until you try using it. When you want to reduce the volume the last thing you need to do is go looking for the app. Now a watch app, that's something.

My HTC One M8 back in the day shipped with a universal remote app that used the built-in IR blaster and it was fantastic. HTC's subsequent discontinuation of that app (and its replacement with a third-party app that was basically useless) is what immediately drove me to never want to buy an HTC product again.

I had that phone too and I vaguely recall that wasn't HTC's decision to cripple the IR but rather the result of HTC infringing someone else's (because naturally someone would have a patent about something as obvious as using a smart phone as an IR remote....)

we measure innovation by the number of patents given, so gotta keep up the statistics

On iPhone, there is a built in remote app in control center, then you use the volume buttons on the phone to adjust the TV volume. It’s part of the OS, not the remote app from the App Store, and I’ve found it to be a good fit for those emergency volume adjustments. Sharing so others can benefit from what took me a while to discover :)

For that situation, wouldn't you use voice control? I can say "OK Google mute" in less time than it takes to reach for a remote.

Sure. Assuming your voice assistant works first time. Otherwise the dialog would go a little more like this:

Me OK Google mute

Me> OK...Google....mute

Me> OKGOOGLE mute

G> Sorry, I don't understand

Me> mute...

Me> MUTE MUTE MUTE MUTE MUTE

Me> OKGOOGLE MUTE

G> What would you like to mute?

Me> The TV

Me> Mute the fucking TV Google

Me> OKGOOGLE MUTE THE FUCKING TV

G> Sorry, I don't understand

Me> Fuck it. I should have just looked for the controller to begin with.

This comedy piece usually sends my family into laughter when I try to ask Google Auto to play a song or to call someone.

I end up with some vulgarities and ask my children to do it the old fashioned way (that is to tap the name on their phones, not to use smoke signals)

I stopped wondering where kids pick up vulgarities after I caught myself years ago yelling at a guy in another car.

And we usually end up insulting Alexa as well.

I got into a very similar conversation with Chase's robo call the other day. Went like this:

C: bla bla bla, if you want to speak to a representative say "representative".

Me: representative

C: sorry i couldn't understand, please chose an option or say representative to speak with one

Me: re-pre-sen-ta-tive

C: (same answer as before)

Me: REPRESENTATIVE

C: (same answer as before)

Me: GO FUCK YOURSELF

C: Ok, I'll call a representative

I want to believe that their system either sensed the tension in my voice or saw the expletive and decided to call for adult supervision.

I'm not an native English speaker so I have an accent (which isn't too heavy, but still). Using any form of speech recognition is an instant fuck-show.

The standard polite way to request an agent is: "operator operator fuck fuck fuck"

If I roar "I WANT TO SPEAK TO A HUMAN" into the phone, this works about 66% of the time.

But have you even seen an app that remained paired to any piece of hardware whatsoever for more than a few minutes?

Using any form of technology? Without dropping one side or the other into an irreparable state that requires power cycling one or both ends at least once and then hoping for the best?

It’d be cool if it worked, by my expectation is that it’ll be implemented by the guy in charge of that YouTube “cast” app that has only theoretically worked one time in a lab in Palo Alto.

Physical remotes are better, particularly if your hands are dirty (like during eating). A physical remote can be used easily without looking at it and it can be cleaned later easily too. Though it's also true that a lot of remotes are difficult to handle.

What we need might actually be a single remote for everything.

I'd argue the opposite: in my experience, a uniform glass surface is a lot easier to clean (and avoid getting dirty in the first place) than some bumpy surface with crevices into which crumbs inevitably sneak in.

Re: a single remote for everything, the term for that is "universal remote", and not once have I been satisfied with one due to the difficulty and fragility of programming it. Maybe in this day and age we can finally make that programming dead simple and robust; Logitech came close with its universal remote from years ago, but even that still wasn't quite easy enough to setup and use to fully replace all my remotes. That HDMI-CEC or whatever it's called also comes close, but it's restricted to HDMI, obviously leaving non-HDMI devices in the dust.

I had an app on my Palm Pilot for that, it was really reliable but it was annoying to light up if I was watching something in the dark. One nice thing was that the (rechargeable) battery was always charged up, unlike the physical remote which seemed to be dead more often than it should have been.

I like the apple tv interface, but I really disliked the remote that ships with it. The touchpad like interface feels really awkward, i would lift it up the wrong way pretty much every time. I remember reading about an apple certified 3rd party remote that was more like a traditional tv remote but that was only sold in the european market for some reason. If they ever decide to switch back to a proper remote i'll take a look at apple tv again. I'll keep running a roku til that happens.

I bought a silicon sleeve[0] for my remote - it makes it much easier to find in the dark, and it makes it really obvious which way is the right way to grab and use it.

I generally use the built in remote app on my iPhone though - it’s accessible from control center, and my phone is usually easier to find than the remote at any given moment.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Remote-Generation-Silicone-Controller...

Not a huge fan of the Apple TV remote either (But I also don't hate it). The good news is that the Apple TV plays nice with stock TV remotes + game console controllers — I use my 8bitdo Sn30 Pro, but PS/Xbox controllers should work fine too.

If you already own an extra gamepad, then it's worth a try and doesn't cost extra. There's a few gems in Apple Arcade, which was a surprise.

> Not a huge fan of the Apple TV remote either (But I also don't hate it). The good news is that the Apple TV plays nice with stock TV remotes + game console controllers — I use my 8bitdo Sn30 Pro, but PS/Xbox controllers should work fine too.

Thanks, this is nice to know! I'll keep this in mind for whenever I'm ready to replace my Roku.

I didn’t like it at first, but now it’s my favorite tvbox remote ever.

Mainly because it doesn’t take batteries, is flat, works great with my phone, and I can use the touchpad without finding the specific button in the dark.

I do pick it up the wrong way a lot, but it’s better than all other devices I’ve tried- fire, roku, tv, wd.

Just not having to find doubleA batteries in the past few months has made me accept it.

The built in batteries are indeed nice and I did like that aspect of the remote.

> and I can use the touchpad without finding the specific button in the dark.

Interesting! This goes to show how the same design feels so different to different users :)

I think I could've gotten used to the touchpad if I spent a lot more time with with the apple-tv/remote, but at the time it felt like a big regression. Compared to the roku remote, i'd lose a mute button, a headphone jack for private listening, and ended up with a touch heavy interface that was more frustrating than useful considering me and wife would pick it up the wrong way a lot. At the end of the day I decided to stick with a Roku and have something that doesn't frustrate my wife, instead of trying to get used to the remote just to have the apple tv interface :)

The Apple TV 4k supports HDMI CEC (and I'd assume the earlier models do too?)

My normal LG TV remote works fine for controlling it

I had gotten used to my Apple TV remote. Sure, it kinda sucked not being able to instantly orient it but I kind-of got used to that too. Sure, it kinda sucked when I would accidentally brush my finger against the trackpad and do something unintended but I kind-of got used to that too.

But it being made out of glass. What where they thinking?! You know how I orient the Apple TV remote now? My fingers know where the broken glass is on it. Making that out of glass was so beyond a dumb idea that I can't begin to imagine what they were thinking.

The end result is, I love the Apple TV, but I don't know that I'll ever buy another one if the remote continues to be made of glass.

I initially preferred the old, aluminium Apple TV remote when I first got the new one. But now, especially with kids I really appreciate the new one.

- My four year old can search for shows by asking Siri instead of needing to type

- When we're all watching together you can slide your finger over the touch surface to make one of the icons wobble in 3D. It's great when you're asking which episode someone would like to watch, you can highlight and focus the UI for them

- No batteries and charges by lightning. I never had those R2032 batteries for the Aluminium remote whenever it ran out

Agreed on lifting it up the wrong way every time. I bought a few cheap silicon covers for mine in bright colours and it really helps

Of all the apple remotes, I liked the old white one because it was tactile and clicky. (although they overloaded too many features on the buttons)

The non-Apple equivalent is the Nvidia Shield TV. Excellent piece of hardware that gives you access to basically every streaming app, plus integrates with Android's casting setup.

Also fun fact, the Shield TV is the longest supported Android device in existence

(https://www.androidauthority.com/nvidia-shield-tv-25th-updat...)

> Android

I wouldn’t trust the world’s biggest tracking company not to track me.

You’re kind of moving laterally there. (From trusting Smart TV to trusting Google.)

I have been using an Apple TV and a Chromecast for a long time.

I've never seen an ad on the Chromecast - it simply plays a stream as instructed by an app on the phone. Is it different with the Fire Stick?

The Chromecast does some gross shit. You see it in Pihole if you force it to route its dns through the Pihole.

It has some black magic whereby it ignores local dns setting as far as I can tell. I blocked port 53 at firewall and sent it back to a Pihole.

Good times.

> I blocked port 53 at firewall and sent it back to a Pihole

Im betting my savings this is far from enough, its Google sw, they smart AF. Send that thing back to where you bought it better :)

Better melt it down just to be sure :)

At the rate things are going you're likely going to want to just blackhole all of the public DNS-over-https providers[0] to ensure that it's not switching to DoH to get around your rules.

[0]: https://gist.github.com/roycewilliams/dd13c8f4a3371a57f8dd82...

I don’t think it’s black magic. They just do DNS over HTTPS.

You know you are tracked, right? It's just all the tracking information goes to one big monopolist instead of multiple providers. This may make it feel as if there is less tracking going on but it really isn't.

You can adjust the privacy settings so that you’re not tracked: https://support.apple.com/guide/tv/adjust-privacy-settings-a...

Beyond Apple, you should expect individual Apple TV apps to track by default.

I agree that you are still being tracked on an Apple TV, but that's because the YouTube app is still made by Google, and the Netflix app is made by Netflix, etc.

Apple probably has some sort of tracking system, but they're hardly a tracking monopolist, not even on their own devices.

> We tried to go cheap on another of our TVs and get an Amazon Fire Stick and in addition to it being not as smooth (combo of UX and speed) at the Apple TV, it had a good amount of ads all over the place.

If we're talking about the original, non-4k Fire TV Stick, then yes. The 4k version is speedy, but still laden with ads.

I recently purchased a Roku Streaming Stick Plus ($39 USD on Amazon — that's ~20% the price of an Apple TV) because I found out that they natively supported AirPlay 2. If you're looking for an ad-free experience, VPN out to an unsupported country and create a Roku account there. You'll be able to add less "channels", but Roku also stops trying to hard-sell you on subscriptions.

Yep plus when you start to stretch the Fire Stick and a few other products you find a number of issues. For example I've spend probably in the region of 40 hours trying to fix issues with Firestick and Echo Studio. When they work well they are excellent value for money products. But then you get a glitch (like audio dropping because of a lack of sync) and it becomes a morass. Hours upon hours and no solution (eventually getting to, we need to send this to our Devs). Apple stuff just works. Not as cheap and maybe not as hackable in some ways but it just works.

I never had a single issue with my roommates' Samsung smart TV (casting or otherwise) besides some buggy apps. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on "just works."

Great except for the fact that smart TVs connected to the Internet have all sorts of privacy concerns:

* https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/01/fbi-smart-tv-security/

Samsung actually released a TV app to tell you what it's doing:

* https://fortune.com/2020/01/18/samsung-smart-tv-data-privacy...

Which is nice, in a way, but it'd be better if they just didn't.

I'd be much more trusting of Apple TV being connected to the Internet than with a smart TV.

As a bad alternative. By the smart TVs, add a Pihole to the network. Block port 53 if it isn’t from the Pihole and add an as list like the one below.

It seems to work well.

https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/blob/master/Smar...

That is a bad alternative, as in no alternative at all really. I don't want a device that requires me to do network engineering to prevent it from doing things I didn't ask for or want.

1. I'm not going to tell my parents to get a Pihole.

2. Wait until your smart TV starts using DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) to by-pass it. (Paul Vixie will be proved right eventually IMHO.)

Just works vs. just works and also uploads screenshots of what you’re watching for ad targeting analysis isn’t much of a contest.

Bought a Samsung TV that purports to support Airplay. It works... except for some apps can’t stream to it. Turns out that some apps can only Airplay to official Apple devices and not the Samsung TVs despite marketing. I was planning to neuter the network from my TV and go with an Apple TV anyways, but that sealed the deal.

I’m fairly sure that’s DRM getting in the way. I use an open source tool to emulate an airplay target but it won’t work on copyright content.

My parents have a Samsung TV and it’s incredibly slow to the point it’s difficult to change the volume. I think they pushed out OS updates that made it slower.

To be fair tvs are a very low margin product and without the ads it would be profitless for anyone but apple (or another manufacturer that sold as a premium to avoid ads). I don't know how big the market for that is, personally I'm happy with a dumb tv connected to a video game console that has all my streaming services.

To be fair, TVs are a decades old market that have paid off great for many companies and they didn’t have ads until recently.

TVs used to much more expensive, and they only became cheap when TV manufacturers realized there’s a ton of money to be made by selling your personal information. A manufacturer that doesn’t do this would not be competitively priced I’m afraid.

“Why TVs Have Become So Inexpensive“ => https://youtu.be/NWwawTnT7LM

I don’t agree with this video. I bought a 55” plasma for $800 over 10 years ago. And I bought a Sony Triniton for $1000 around 2000. The price of TVs seems to be fixed around this price point and we seem to get more features, bigger screens, etc and the price stays about the same.

The highest end TVs I see also have ads. So I don’t think this factors into the price at all. It’s just bonus profits on top of existing profits.

If ad data subsidized prices significantly, I wouldn’t expect it in $4,000 TVs. Am I supposed to believe that the TV would be $4,050 without ads? It seems strange that high end TVs would care about these small amounts.

I think this is just a cover story by marketers to garner sympathy.

i can't help but think it is like bundleware and the PC, which would subsidize the cost of the system, maybe by $50.

same thing is happening with TVs. This crap subsidizes the price of the TV, so then the $279 tv looks more attractive than the more expensive tvs without ads/tracking/data gathering (which then disappear)

What kind of ads do you have on the fire stick?

I am curious because in France at least there is only the top banner on the home screen, which I do not even see as I directly jump into an app.

Ehn, no vp9 though (last I checked)... so if you watch a lot of YT in 4K, it uses more bandwidth than say Google TV.

I don't think most people care about vp9 or codec wars. It's not something on almost anyone's minds.

h.264 and h.265 are the dominant codecs, regardless.

And Netflix found that h.265 consumed less bandwidth than vp9, not more: https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?Art...

People should care if they want to watch YouTube in more than 720p resolution...

tvOS has supported vp9 since last year, the youtube app however has been slow getting that message...

https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/18/4k-youtube-videos-still-not-c...

Somehow, google has made it so that the best way to watch YouTube on an Apple TV is to open YouTube.com in a browser on another apple device and airplay to the Apple TV.

Looks like it's been supported since October 2020:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/3/21500399/apple-tv-youtube...

Are ads on firestick a US only thing or have I been blind to not notice any ads in my firestick?

The only ads I see are the banners, but I don't pay any attention to those. There aren't any video ads, which is all I really care about.

(My dumb TV is a projector, one of the best decisions we've made in the past 5 years.)

Which projector did you go with?

apple still tracking you. i like the fire tv because you can side load apps that aren't in the store. great for us hackers.

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