Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1shooner | Hacker News Reader

Tangentially: Is there a FireTV implementation that is anywhere near e.g. Apple TV in basic performance? Every FireTV device I have used has seemed practically unusable, but it could be there is just a low bar for what hardware they let go to market.

View on HN

Nah, most Android TV sticks and boxes (bar Nvidia) ship with underpowered chipsets that lack the raw performance to render smoothly at 4K, using HW acceleration to at least get acceptable video decode performance.

Apple, being in control of the software and hardware, has better optimisation, as well as imho, a more fluid animation system on their OS.

The stick and dongle streaming device variants in particular are astonishingly weak. The current Chromecast 4K dongle for example is handily outgunned by a first gen Apple TV 4K, which this year will be a 7 year old device.

Wow, thanks for pointing that out - didn't realize I'd had these ATV 4Ks since 2017. They feel a bit sluggish.. probably just that everything else got faster.

Time to upgrade.

> They feel a bit sluggish.. probably just that everything else got faster.

Either the 4K videos of today are "heavier" than the ones from 2017 somehow, or Apple's system updates have slowed down your ATVs to convince you to buy new ones.

On this I will say they are far more snappy than they used to be, battery life is great if you ask me.

But in real terms I moved my home streaming app of choice to infuse. 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.

I will say that it is tucked inside a cupboard and hooked up to Ethernet but aside from that it’s leaps and bounds ahead of the other solutions I looked at /tried over the last few years.

I had both an Android TV device some years back, and am now exclusively on Apple TV. Man. The difference is night and day. I'm not going back.

True but both the Nvidia and Apple offerings are kinda long in the tooth now and in need of an update.

It's rumoured that a new apple TV will come out soon. I've been looking at the options because I'm getting sick of the many ads on my fire TV stick.

I only have a 1080p TV so the rendering isn't really an issue for me.

The latest Apple TV SoC (released in late 2021) is the same one used in the iPhone 13 and 14 (non-Pro). 2x 3+ GHz P-cores and 4x E-cores and 4GB of memory. I haven’t noticed any issues.

https://theapplewiki.com/wiki/T8110

Yeah but if I spend that much money (not sure about the US but here in Europe it's really expensive, 170 or 190 euro) I really want something recent :) for longevity also. It will have to last a good few years after all. 3 years in for the same price is just not a great deal. It's still a 3 year old cpu (I don't use iOS so I don't really follow what's SoC generation is what)

So I'll wait for the next version.

Fire and Android TV are terrible. If you want lower end but actually useful streaming device Roku is so much better. I either buy a Roku smart TV or get the $30 Express for all my TVs.

Google TV seems pretty great to me. I explicitly chose a TV with it over roku

Google TV impressed me by having a "Basic TV" option for sets that come with it, that disables most smart features, which is useful in a pinch when you can't find a dumb TV (such as a Sceptre) or monitor usable as a TV. It's kinda weird to praise Google for implementing something that halfway respects privacy, but here we are.

Are you saying Google TV has a OTA channel option? This is exactly what I'm looking for, but I assumed since there wasn't an antenna input on the Google TV then there wasn't a way to watch OTA using it...am I misunderstanding what you meant?

*edit* Aha, I didn't realize Google TV was also included on some TVs and wasn't the just the Google TV dongle with a remote.

agreed

No they're not. In fact I'd even say their vastly superior to the closed Apple TV ecosystem. The ability to use SmartTube with Sponsorblick blows away anything on the Apple Tv.

To use what with what now?

Not trying to be snarky—or maybe just a little—but I own an AppleTV, it’s fantastic albeit very closed. I can’t parse your statement in part because I haven’t googled those things yet (I will) but also because many years of experience have led me to disregard statements like this.

SmartTube - a 1 person project that plays video files on Android devices

SponsorBlick = SponsorBlock - an ad blocker

Need not worry tvOS has ample alternative https://www.reddit.com/r/Yattee/comments/13d3lj7/how_to_set_...

I just installed Yattee on my iPhone and my what a horrible app. I then pasted a a valid YouTube link and got the error message that it "Failed loading video". If Yattee is the best you have on iOS then I truly feel sorry for people that have to endure with a subpar app and an even more subpar experience. SmartTube with Sponsorblock is the only way to watch YouTube.

Then you are doing yourself a disservice. Smarttube alone makes me stay on my Nvidia Shield over my AppleTV. It would have taken you a minute to google and you would have saved yourself some embarrassment. Doubling down on ignorance is a wild move.

I did look it up. It’s a 1-person project with many caveats about installation and functionality. It looks impressive for what is, but not an alternative to AppleTV, certainly not if I expect anyone else in my house to use it. I’d put Kodi as a lot closer.

SmartTube is a YouTube app replacement, not an AppleTV replacement. It has a far superior interface and functionality than the default YouTube app. This is relevant to this conversation because you cannot install an app like this in an AppleTV.

I've been happy with my FireTV cubes... they feel like the right amount of horsepower thrown at a TV...

Obviously, performance scales with price... the $20 HDMI sticks are the bulk of the devices out there, but honestly, it's surprising what they can do for $20. (The "Lite" is currently 2 for $35)

FireTV 4k max is pretty descent and costs a fraction of Apple TV.

I’ve had Five stick 4k for almost five years now as well and its performance still holds pretty good.

Same, but it’s been tanking the past year with the huge amount of bloat Amazon keeps shoveling onto it.

As a side note, my Insignia TV (best buy store brand) with fire tv built in is basically unusable.

Echoing a previous comment I made too, about “smart tvs” and the “streaming sticks”:

Hey, have you ever thought of why even the $149 Black Friday loss-leader no-name-brand TVs all have Amazon Fire, Roku, or are now "Smart" in some way? Certainly isn't because they need to incentivise you to connect it to the internet so it acts as a Nielsen-esq measurement device of all media you view on the screen via digital fingerprints that exist in all commercial media and advertisements. [1][2] [1] https://www.ispot.tv/ [2] https://www.samba.tv/

I have a 2nd gen Fire TV 4K Max gathering dust you can have. It's slow as fuck and barely faster than the first one. All Fire TV devices I've seen are slow, laggy, and shitty.

Where can I get it?

Amazon has sales regularly. They basically give them away. $19 is the usual sale price.

I was referring to

> gathering dust you can have

Can you send it to me? I have an iptv business and we have new customers always looking for FireTV 4K max stick.

Maybe it is not what you're looking for, but Fire TV, included within the Echo Show 15, is pretty snappy.

All my TVs have Apple TVs connected, but my Echo Show 15 in the kitchen does a fine job of plating YouTube TV, so I can watch shows and sports while I cook.

The Echo Show 15 is slower than either generation of Fire TV 4K Max and is around the speed of an older Fire TV 4K.

Echo Show 15 has a fatal flaw: the BBC News skill doesn't work with IPv6. It's just broken.

Also, it's a screen with terrible audio. It's no replacement for an HDMI output device.

I tried even the latest Fire TV 4K Max and the Echo Show 15 but they're laggy, unresponsive, and full of ads. Apple TV is smooth and reliable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com