Apple tries to rein in Hollywood spending after years of losses | Hacker News Reader

Apple tries to rein in Hollywood spending after years of losses

bloomberg.com

64 pointsmgh2177 comments

To be clear, because the article isn't obvious about it: the $20B figure is total expenditure since its inception, not a yearly figure.

For comparison, Netflix spent $17B in 2022, and $13B in 2023 (it was lower due to strikes). Disney spent $33B on content in 2022. Meanwhile, Apple spent $7B in 2022. (All numbers from Google top results).

So Apple's still spending significantly less than main "competitors", of course.

It's extremely weird for an article to give an all-time spending figure and then call it "unsustainable", when obviously sustainability depends entirely on spending per year compared with revenue per year, and this article doesn't even talk about the revenue side at all (Apple TV+ costs $9.99/mo. standalone.)

It's also hard to define "sustainability" when it's not even clear that Apple's goal is to make a profit directly, but may be to take a loss that is less than the perceived marketing value that this adds to the Apple aura/brand.

EDIT: my comment is referring to the original URL for this post which was https://wccftech.com/apple-tv-expenditure-crossed-20-billion... , not the Bloomberg article which the URL has since been changed to

Yeah, the opaqueness of the profits and losses of Hollywood's production process have been infamous since Mel Brooks' The Producers - in 1967.

A few stars, directors, producers or etc can determine the success of a production when there's full competition - maybe, everything is uncertain. The gist of the discussion is that Neflix is will to pay less by virtue of having become such a monopoly it can just dictate the winners. But as the parent says, what's happening with Apple is likely much more opaque.

> this article doesn't even talk about the revenue side at all (Apple TV+ costs $9.99/mo. standalone.)

Apple TV+ isn't the only way to monetize the projects either. One hopes at least some of these will come out on disc, and many of them are likely to show up on other streaming and perhaps even broadcast. Media has a long tail of revenue, although it's often unclear who has rights to that revenue.

Many of the movies e.g. Killers of the Flower Moon have theatrical releases.

It needs to for Oscar contention though but I am sure some money can be made.

Apple TV+ has 0.2% of US TV views compared to 8% of Netflix. So Apple's monthly viewership is less than a day views of Netflix. In that context 20 billions is big amount.

Streaming fatigue is real. All streaming services are feeling this. And that's why so much of HBO content re-appearing on Netflix. Disney, Paramount will follow suit in search for money.

> when it's not even clear that Apple's goal is to make a profit directly,

I mean that sounds like calling We can't make money as `We don't want to make money*

Personally ive canceled all streaming svc (in 2023) and just watch youtube and FB reels. I think that's where it's all going and soon Hollywood will continue to increase the amount of content on youtube (have it all there) possibly break their shows into short form content or create short form content tv shows and movies. I have trouble watching long form content alone. It now has to be a social endeavor for myself to watch it one sitting.

Seems like lot of people are heading in same direction (content fatigue) even if for different reasons. I have 3-4 streaming services + cable but I am not watching much.

Interesting. I had the same thought recently. It seems so weird that I used to sit there for 30mins to an hour. And sometimes a lot more. I see family members doing it and it’s weird to me now.

Netflix was pretty much allowed to run uncontested for years.

When the industry finally figured out Netflix was eating their lunch it was too late to catch up.

It’s not at all, does anyone even think Netflix is a good offering anymore for what you pay.

Content wise they could absolutely be competed with if you built good content consistently, it’s just most players in the game don’t seem bothered to do that and want to get to where Netflix is today (content wasteland resting on past numbers) without the golden age of Netflix.

The recent estimate of Apple TV+ paid subscriber is 25M from 2022, with additional 50M on trial from other promotions. Let say we have 30M now, at $10 a month, this is at best $3.6B per year. Considering Apple didn't charge anything for the first 20 months, and the initial price was $4.99, $6.99 by October 2022 before coming to $9.99. And that is excluding yearly discount from subscriber, iTunes Account Top Up Credit discount etc. I dont think Apple would have $10B of Apple TV+ revenue since its inception. i.e Apple is now at a loss of $10B in total excluding the encoding and delivery expenses which I expect to be a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.

>sustainability.......but may be to take a loss

I dont record any single feature or product that Apple provides and uses a loss leader. You may get freemium type of services that is iCloud but even that is accounted for in their book in every single Apple products sales. Their culture has always been paid for the product or services. It is very rarely a loss.

But I have been saying for now close to a decade the whole point of Apple Music, Apple TV+ etc were to increase their Services Revenue while diluting down their Services Profits margin since a lot of these Services are razor thin margin, but for App Store and Google Search placement are both at 90%+ Gross. By combining them together and bundling these products as Apple One they have managed to substantially increase their subscription base to 1 billion+.

The only problem is both Google Search Placement deal and App Store revenue are under heavy attack and scrutiny by officials and politicians.

> I dont record any single feature or product that Apple provides and uses a loss leader.

Sure, I think Apple TV+ might be their only product like this. In a lot of business analysis of streamers, Apple and Amazon are the two that are widely believed they won't get shut down (or sold/merged) even if they never make a profit at all -- because of the marketing value to Apple, and the Prime stickiness value for Amazon.

So just because Apple has never done it before, doesn't mean they aren't doing it now. Apple TV+ is unique in a lot of ways for Apple. The rest of Services, and Apple TV+, seem to have such different business models that it doesn't make a lot of sense to combine them when analyzing Apple's strategies (even if they are combined in quarterly reports).

The free 5GB of cloud storage must be considered a loss leader. It’s essential 5GB for free for the lifetime of your device, which can easily be 10-15 years when you consider secondhand devices.

It's a shame because Apple TV is producing some wonderful sci-fi right now, arguably they're about the only ones doing it to this level. And I'm sure it'll be first on the chopping block while the inflated budgets for the star-studded Morning Show are more likely to be maintained.

I hope I'm wrong and that Apple sees value in producing wonderful, niche TV. But at the same time that's not really Apple's ethos.

As long as we get season 3 of Foundation and they don’t leave us hanging I’ll be happy

To be fair Asimov himself kept us hanging with the books and only completed the series (making it worse imo), just because the commercial publishers wanted the money.

Sometimes less is more.

True but they have filmed season 3 already. Just hope it makes it out of the edit room and onto the screen.

To be fair, Asimov’s Foundation and Apple’s Foundation are almost completely unrelated.

Indeed. One is an all time great science fiction series thats inspired a host of imitators. The other is whatever fluff Apple have bowdlerised its name with. It's genuinely closer to the YA fanfic level screenwriting of the new Star Trek series than Gibbon's Decline & Fall in space.

Asimov Foundation books near impossible to adapt to TV series or movies. It has no typical hero's arc. Even in Gibbon's Rome book you able to follow say Nero rise and downfall. As a generic idea book, Asimov books were ahead of his time. As a good scifi novel? He was several magnitudes below Cixin - and majority would even place Ursula way way higher than Asimov. Apple Foundation literally blast through Asimov story telling. To me, at least Apple succeeded as YA or within a potshot of Cixin. Asimov literally failed in adult scifi by today's standard. What holding you is nostalgia. Evaluate the story in contemporary terms.

Why does a book need a hero's arc?

I've read the "Second Foundation trilogy" written by other renowned sci-fi authors, as well as the later Foundation books written by Asimov. They had typical main characters with hero's arcs driving the story. I much preferred the originals.

Especially the first book. It's refreshing to read a story where events occur because of unstoppable historical forces instead of the superhuman actions of a hero.

If I wanted a story about a hero, I could read...well...just about any other book ever written.

A book doesn’t, and Foundation makes excellent use of every inch of the novel as a medium to explore itself, but the commenter above was specifically referring to what made the book difficult to adapt into a television series. And while Malick et all can def do “rumination on a theme” as a feature film, an ongoing tv series requires the audience to invest and keep coming back week after week, episode after episode.

Generally that takes the form of characters who experience things — ideally growing or changing in response, although many genres and formats don’t require that part. It’s unnecessary since part of the medium of television, unlike the novel, is people putting on a show to entertain you which is different from reading, an inherently more-individual experience. Part of what TV is selling is a group of people to hang out with every week. Generally.

Which is not to say always — shows like Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt proved the anthology format has a wide audience. But they had the advantage of a brand new paradigm each week, which creates a relationship with the show itself (but even TZ allowed the audience Serling).

Foundation def be done as anthology style episodes with some crossovers/overlap, but again practical realities make it difficult to guarantee narratively-necessary access to actors due to contract and scheduling factors, and you have the issue of both too big for standard structure and “not big enough” for a true anthology at its core. Not saying it couldn’t work it’d just be more difficult, which is not a quality that makes studios likely to invest.

I think your description of television much better fits the mould of 90's network TV (24 weekly episodes per year) than prestige era limited series or narrative arc TV. Foundation could absolutely be done as an anthology show in the vein of American Horror story - where each season covered an era of an unfolding narrative, with characters like Hari Seldon and R.Daniel recurring as audience favourites.

Either way though, there are issues with the adaptation that are quite distinct from eschewing the episodic arc of the original trilogy. It's full of spiritual woo for one, which is entirely antithetical to Azimov's vision. It's also more than fond of sadistic violence. Azimov's whole method as a writer was to have smart characters solve difficult problems intellectually. 'Violence is the last resort of the incompetent' after all.

I hear where you’re coming from, but you will note that AHS, while being an anthology, pulls continuously from the same group of audience favorite actors — which goes back to the “people putting on a show” variant I described above. The audience has a relationship with those actors. Very meta, as befits a Ryan Murphy shindig.

That recurrence that wouldn’t be possible for a Foundation series without suggesting characters themselves are repeating through time, which would seem to lean even harder into woo, which I’m sensing is not your bag.

Agreed - but as I said with Foundations specifically, that you could change the characters each series and keep your anchor characters (i.e.: those that live on literally by being robots, or through projection). It's also pretty amenable to cutting back and forth in time. In other words multiple parallel timelines, which a number of shows have pulled off. There are enormous underserved audiences for clever complex formally innovative TV, and a whole bunch of money going into fluff that (at least in Apple's case, seems like it isn't drawing an audience now - let alone in future rereleases, as the prestige shows of the 90s did).

What's so interesting about Cixin? I could barely finish the books.

On goodreads Foundation (which IMHO is not even among the best Asimov works) is rated noticeably higher than The Three Body Problem, and as a reader I feel it is justified.

If you take into account the novelty factor, it will probably sink to the average rating of mediocrity in a couple of decades.

Having read all of Azimov - but only the Dark Forrest trilogy by Liu Cixin, I actually think they're more comparable than you suggest. Both are hard science fiction 'ideas men'. Fairly uncomfortable with deep characterisation or 'literary' writing. Capturing vast scopes of time and space in space operas that are somehow more charming and interesting than their broad scope and concept heavy setups have any right to be. Azimov is more of a well rounded intellectual - the man literally wrote hundreds of general knowledge and popular science books. And it shows in his depth of reference and context. Cixin seems more rooted (inevitably) in authoritarianism and historicism. These critiques are obviously subjective. I've greatly enjoyed the work of both, but Cixin has a long long way to go before he can demonstrate the longevity let alone influence of an Azimov. They do share one other thing in common though - the adaptations of their work have been enormously disappointing, arguably entirely missing the point of the original series.

Re: A hero's journey, hard disagree. There are numerous heroes in the original foundation series, and the later books have one very well drawn one - Golan Trevize, in addition to a host of memorable characters.

Agreed. Getting season 3 of Foundation is literally the only thing Eddy Cue needs to do. Hope he's reminded every day. Once Foundation is done, they can shut down all the Apple TV+ servers.

Rather put the money into an Apple Robot. The robot needs to have Eddye Cue eyes and that constant grin.

Silo is also really good

I hope they deviate from the books because I found the second book really jarring.

I'm curious how the next season will go, because from memory, they still have the back half of the first book to go, and fuck-all happens in it. Will they commit to a prequel season or try to string some plot together while telling the prequel story through flashbacks?

They did, people died who should be alive. People are alive who died in the books.

And there are extra characters who are not in the books at all.

So I'm pretty sure they're adapting heavily just to avoid the second and third book things.

So is the Big Door Prize (not strictly sci-fi, but asks some really good questions about how we see ourselves as people)

It’s too dark. I can’t watch it on my crappy TV

I disliked the ending of Silo so much it ruined the rest of the series for me.

The ending of the book series or just the TV adaptation?

I haven't read the books but I've heard a lot of people say the ending of book 3 sucks a lot, so I'm assuming GP means the books

Dunno why people say it sucks, it's (no real spoilers) a genre staple ending pretty much. Leaves stuff open for a sequel, as they do, but still finishes off the main plot.

Just the TV show I haven't read the books

It'll get real interesting in the next two seasons (I've read the books). The world is really cool but story-wise the books do stuff you can't do on TV, so we'll see how they can wrangle it.

I would hope so, they just wrapped up filming yesterday.

It's a reddit link but some details in the comments and the original source did seem a bit tabloidy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/s/SP85IxZmiy

Really last I check filming had stopped and crew had been sent home over budget crisis.

I'm endlessly amused about how the most compelling aspects of Foundation are those disconnected from the source material. It's not how things go usually, but they made some great content.

Dark Matter was really good. I hope there's a season 2.

Severance was outstanding. Next season coming 2025, fingers crossed.

It does feel like Apple TV has gained a reputation for science fiction (and just generally nerdy things), there are multiple articles out there on it. Putting out the type of content we used to expect from HBO.

So my hope would be they would realize that, lean into it, and cut their other experiments or just not do movies as much.

I know for me anytime I see a new science fiction show on Apple TV I feel like it is at least worth checking out the first couple episodes, and I have not been upset yet.

This seems like an odd spin/reeks of PR and politics more than the reality. $20B spend is just fine if you have the revenue to justify it. They've just struggled with the revenue. Killers of the Flower Moon brought in $157 million at the box office --that's without streaming revenue, but I think even that would still be considered a failure... and some of the others have been huge stinkers.

AppleTV+ is a tiny business. It's nowhere near of generating enough revenue to cover a $20B hole in content production costs.

Yes, Apple generates LOTS of revenue overall, but that doesn't justify bleeding cash on a business line that hasn't produced material returns and has no significant positive trajectory in sight.

It's clear that Apple saw this as their Prime Video bet on their services strategy, but that hasn't worked out. Just look at AppleTV+ market share. It's hilariously miniscule.

Apple can afford to play the long game here though.

TV+ is nice value add on their bundled subscription package so may be driving more people to opt for that. I know it was a major factor in my decision and now I am playing Apple Arcade games and use Apple Music as my primary music service.

Operating TV+ as a halo or loss leader product to get people to try other services within the ecosystem could be a winning strategy for them. Also likely drives some hardware sales.

In what world does Apple need a “loss leader” to “drive hardware sales”.

They have some of the highest sales for high value products in the world.

What the goal of this was obviously to scoop $10 more cream a month from a % of those huge sales numbers.

“Loss Leader” theory makes no sense next to Apples financial and sales reality.

The hardware sales I was talking about is their streaming box which is in no way dominant but is really nice. Also we have pretty much reached peak iPhone or close to it. These subscription services help keep people in the ecosystem as it raises switching costs a bit.

The article is implying that TV+ is losing money. I don’t know that it is but my point is that for Apple it is likely still worth keeping and growing the service even if they are losing money on it at the moment.

Apple TV doesn’t matter, I’m sure iPad watching dwarfs ATV many hundreds if not thousands of times over.

AppleTV exists to make existing mega fans happy the ecosystem extends to their TV not to sell things.

It's a "tiny" part of a services business with a billion subscribers, that generates $20B of revenue in a quarter. $20B in production costs over 4.5 years works out to less than $5B/year in costs, against competitors like Netflix and Disney+ that are spending $20B a year.

I actually haven't seen any numbers on their current marketshare, but I'll give you that they aren't anywhere near their competitors. I don't think the problem is that they're spending too much money.

> Killers of the Flower Moon brought in $157 million at the box office

And how much did it cost to make that movie[0]?

"Budget $200–215 million

Box office $157 million "

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killers_of_the_Flower_Moon_(fi...

Take with a pinch of salt because people like to pretend they don't make profit in order to not give some proportion of that profit to others.

Budget doesn't typically include marketing and associated overheads.

You typically would double it i.e. about $400 million needed to break even.

It would be considered a flop if it was just a theatrical release.

There are plenty of movies that were considered a flop at the box office, yet becomes a cult fave once it reached home video. I don't know how much money they are licensing to the streamers for, but I'm sure they're losing a lot of revenue as sales from physical media continues to plummet

Does it have to be a money maker if it’s doing its job in bringing more value to the Apple ecosystem? I see it as more of a marketing budget.

It certainly _could_ be a loss leader but I can't think of a single instance I've heard where someone switched to an iPhone/Apple TV because of an Apple TV show they wanted to watch.

(wouldn't even make sense to, they have an Android app)

It doesn't necessarily have to lead to any specific "I'm buying an Apple device because of Apple TV+" to be positive ROI marketing, the same way not all adverts have to be aimed at direct conversion to be useful.

Just getting Android users to have a daily reminder of "Apple makes something that is high quality and I enjoy" could be enough to influence future purchasing decisions even if those people wouldn't explicitly consider their enjoyment of Apple TV+ to be the reason they eventually bought an Apple device.

(I have no reason to specifically believe that Apple TV+ is ROI-positive in this way, just pointing out that non-conversion brand awareness marketing is a huge part of the marketing world, with often very positive results.)

It’s just part of the apple one family plan i have so an added bonus

They don't just have an Android app, they have an app everywhere. Apple TV+ is as ubiquitous as Netflix at this point. Hell, they have an Xbox app! How minuscule is the confluence of I have an Xbox, and I pay for Apple TV+, but I don't have an Apple TV device.

I'm wondering if at some point Apple doesn't look at how much engineering effort goes into all those useless apps for a service that is bleeding money and decides to reassign the workforce. Money is basically infinite for Apple, but good engineers are its most valuable resource.

On one hand, yes, exactly. It’s building a brand and the company has money to burn.

On the other hand, that brand boost had an estimated value associated with it, and it’s wasting money to overpay for it, hence “Company Executive Taking Various Measures To Bring Costs Down Considerably” — only worth running a loss leader if it’s overall profitable.

Is Apple really eating "years of losses". Or are they making a strategic play to pick up most of the prestige television market, without needing to push an M&A through the FTC (and they're doing it, just as David Zaslav is finishing killing the historic-largest player there, as HBO dies on the vine at Warner Brothers)

To me, it sure feels like the latter.

Apple spending $20 billion to pick up all this prestige TV and Film, is kind of a great deal, when compared to say, the $43 billion Discovery just paid for Warner, just to kill half of it (and then lose another $7 billon on it over the past 2-3 years)

The entire steaming sector has become unsustainable. On the one hand, for a service to be successful in the space they have to dump millions if not billions of dollars towards developing content. The problem is that with so many streaming platforms doing the same thing dilutes the value of that content and makes it unsustainable.

Netflix is doing OK. Their stock price might be wildly inflated, but they have been able to show profits since 2003.

I think you are painting with a very broad brush. In general Wall St keeps very close tabs on every big streamer and is pushing them all to be profitable yesterday. There was a time when investors were happy to subsidize customer acquisition, but that time is over and I think you haven't updated your outlook. That said, there is still some room to run.

There's also so much good existing content across all the streaming services that a typical adult with a job and responsibilities has enough to watch right now for the next several years, without watching anything "new".

When I had a mail-by-DVD Netflix account, I don't think my queue ever dropped below 20. I have a sizeable watchlist / saved list on every streaming service I have used, and it also never goes down to zero.

Same with all media to be honest. Literature, videogames, music. There's been an uncountable number of masterworks over the past decades and you could fill a whole lifetime with incredible content. We're drowning in slop and we don't need the floodgates fully open for another decade to find the occasional nugget.

How does it dilute the value of the content? Dilution occurs when you add more meh-level content to your pool of content. These studios are trying to produce very high-prestige content like Rings of Power (which flopped) or Game of Thrones / House of Dragons, which increases signal.

I don't know if I'd say it dilutes the value of the content per-se. But more that when you add it all up, to see everything, you have to spend quiet a bit in stream services. By the time you pay for Hulu, Disney, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, Amazon's PrimeTV, and who knows how many other service. We ended up in a space where to have access to most content, its gotten almost just as expensive, if not more expensive, than having cable.

It's worse than a that! Nobody wants/needs to "see everything." They typically want to see 5-10 different shows or movies, but that content always seems to be spread across all of the services, so you have to buy each services just to access That One Show that's exclusively on that service. The overall product (streaming) is distinctly worse than Cable. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd almost believe that the companies work together on their content lists to make sure that the show a given person wants to watch is always on the service they aren't paying for yet.

Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle's Netflix deals make that point more than anything I've seen. Rock got $20M each for 2 specials. I think Dave has made that (or more) for a bunch of specials.

I really enjoy the programming on Apple TV+. I've also never paid for it. Through various promotions and bundles I've had it continuously for 5 years $0 spent on it. Just purchasing Apple products over time I racked up 3-12 month free offers and now its bundled in my internet package.

They are also doing that traditional HBO thing where they get AAA movies for a limited time and then poof.

I'm hoping they continue to update the UI to make it easier to find new shows and viewing history.

Hmm the only thing I really thought was worth watching was for all mankind. And they've kinda painted themselves into a corner (as the show runners said, there's only so much you can do to age the characters)

It was a decent show though. But it wouldn't make me subscribe. That would take a lot more.

Severance was good, but three years between seasons is too long.

They could also try Goldman partnership. I am sure they'd love to get in entertainment business just to be partner with Apple.

Every company that jumped into streaming has this issue and was warned about this from the start. Even Netflix struggles from this, the simple solution is to stop billing top tier workers and lower quality. This is how you get a Frasier reboot in jeans.

Also extra funny for Apple as their projected attitude is that they are always top tier with unlimited funds.

Ballmer was quoted in the Acquired podcast about his failed acquisitions “all we lost is money”.

Apple can sustain the revenue loss as long as it has to stomach to do so and as long as it can justify it for other business reasons - like maybe making the bundle more attractive.

They can. But I think news articles are claiming Apple is looking to control cost and reduce losses.

I have three major gripes with Apple TV (plus and otherwise)

1. The website is ass. i’ve attempted nervous times to sign into my gaming PC before giving up and using my Apple device. Great for my Apple device but ass if I ever want to watch it on my gaming PC , meaning i’m consuming less media on it. This makes it uniquely terrible for its other goal of folks purchasing their media on there since it’s linked with Apple TV. Idiotic for a streaming service.

2. There’s no consistent release of shows to watch all year round. Netflix imo is the only services that releases stuff every month. for other services this is no issue since they have a backlog of content for consumers to consume but Apple TV+ does not have this pleasure imo. for a service that relies on subscriptions for its revenue, it’s the worst to plead for its case.

3. No watch history. Whenever I hear a new show recommendation I immediately open the tv app and add it to my up next. The Tv’s app’s ability to connect to various streaming serves makes it the nexus for most media. Why the hell does it not support the opposing feature of saving the history of what just watched? It should be so easy for it to add on a Letterboxd like feature from there.

For me apple tv is something that comes with my apple one family plan. No way i would pay for it separately.

Most of the worlds population have their attention on YouTube and TikTok. Streaming services are a minuscule portion of the viewing pie. It makes no sense for talented young people to want jobs in Hollywood when it's a dying business or at best stagnating one.

While that may be an exaggeration, there's some truth to it. My kid is not even remotely interested in traditional "movies" or "tv shows." Same with all her friends. To a kid, sitting down in front of a TV to watch cable or stream a Netflix movie is something old people do. I don't think Hollywood's death is imminent, but the early signs are appearing.

I dunno how old your kid is, but short attention span seems like an inherent part of childhood that you grow out of.

That also helps to explain why for the past two years, a large chunk of movies ive gone to see with my AMC theater subscription have been empty theaters. Probably not sustainable to run a theater serving 1-2 people. I've seen them run movies to an empty audience...

Something that seems strange to me is the deal they made with MLS which I don’t think was great for MLS.

Today MLS has the problem that people think “American soccer sucks” and won’t give it a chance. I caught a game in person because I was interested in the state of American soccer and between the game and the fan experience I had a great time.

A sport that has room to grow has to be easy for people to catch a game who aren’t committed to subscribing to it. They can win people over if they can catch an occasional game for free but if it is behind a paywall 100% of the time it’s going to stay obscure. NBC runs a free Premier League game every Saturday and if you want more you can get it as part of a reasonably priced Peacock subscriptions. The deal Apple has with MLS might be a good deal for Apple but I don’t think it’s good for the sport.

> The deal Apple has with MLS might be a good deal for Apple but I don’t think it’s good for the sport.

Did you try to stream it before Apple got the rights to MLS games? About 10 years ago MLS had an all-in-one streaming platform called MLS LIVE. Minor local blackouts, but other than that its the one stop shop.

Then they shut that down and you have to follow a flow chart on how to watch anything. Is the game "local"? Are you "local"? Is it a "big" game that is streamed nationally? What does the magic 8 ball say for which local station has the rights to the broadcast? ESPN+ had some of the games but no where near all. Pirating the game was about 10x easier, as you just time in "free MLS stream".

Apple TV is a single place to watch the games. No blackouts. No ouija board to figure out how to watch it. So much easier than pirating, the quality is good, and I can watch it where ever I want.

Whether or not the deal was good for the MLS organization monetarily, I have no idea. But for consumers it has been really great in my opinion.

They just don’t advertise their shows, at least where I live.

Am I singularly cursed or is Apple TV the worst quality platform? On a Roku, I routinely run into numerous glitches. Controls do not show, show will not start, show will die after a few minutes, will get stuck in a loop where it repeats a 10 second clip, etc.

Coincidentally, my free trial ends tomorrow, and I will not be renewing.

I've read that Apple TV+'s higher than average bitrate can cause a lot of streaming boxes to struggle, not sure if that's what's happening here though.

It's been solid for me, to the point that I subscribe to other services through the built-in channels feature in order to be able to avoid generally worse streaming apps (like Paramount+) but I always watch using Apple stuff.

For me Apple TV (one with ethernet) works very well

Apple TV+ is something completely different. Think "Netflix supplied by Apple".

Apple TV is your physical device (or software loaded on your TV).

Right, and the app on that device with very similar names work great. The app may not work well on other devices is the point. The issue with buttons as described sounds very much like an app on another device issue. That issue does not exist on the device by the same name as the app.

I had a pretty similar experience with Apple TV+ on my Roku; so you're not alone. Maybe their player app is better on their platform or other non Roku platforms, but I'm not likely to look.

It's the experience on Roku. We have a cheap Roku, and it is awful.

On my WebOS TV's, AppleTV works exceptionally well, only Hulu and Netflix beat it in terms of reliability.

Paramount+ on the other hand. Total POS.

I struggled through having a cheap Roku for a while last year, until I finally got frustrated and looked up what they cost to replace. Without me, and perhaps others who read this, noticing, they dropped to basically "disposable" levels of price. A new modern one is $27 for the normal HD and $40 for the HD. Well below the price of the frustration I experienced trying to keep one from a few generations back going, and I'm generally relatively conservative by local standards.

Don't struggle through a slow old Roku.

And, of course, I'm not really pitching Roku, if you've got another solution or want to switch companies, that's fine too. I'm just saying, anyone reading this who has a Roku a few generations back and having simply never thought about what to do about it, have a look at replacing it. Or any other streaming box that is generally choking. I remember getting into TiVos when they cost the modern equivalent of about $350-$400 and I still haven't fully internalized that streaming boxes can cost, well, more than "a coffee at starbucks" but at this point "less than a full meal for my family at a fast food joint".

As a counter point, you can buy a Apple TV and mine lasted maybe a decade. The cheapest one I see is $130ish. Why don't we try and keep electronic waste to a minimum by buying long lasting stuff. I know not everyone can afford a device that's a few times more expensive but it really isn't if you take the long view and it will be better for the planet.

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. The A10X Fusion SoC in it is still a great deal more powerful than what's built into most streaming boxes in 2024. The current-gen Apple TV has an A15 Bionic which is much another huge step up in power.

They're not the cheapest thing out there, but you get a lot of muscle (and longevity) for your money.

My $30 second gen chromecast is still going strong, and I prefer it's "just a dumb box that runs special apps your phone apps tell it to" system, such that I never have to interact with it.

I may be misunderstanding, but don’t this involve an intermediary re-encoding when casting video from phone → dongle? If so that’s unavoidable quality loss which isn’t great and runs down phone battery unnecessarily. If it works for you though, that’s what’s important!

Aside from that, having a little extra power available can be nice for being able to smoothly play back video formats that the hardware doesn’t have acceleration for, obviating need for transcoding (via Plex or similar).

Phone is only a remote that tells the chromecast/fire/roku etc where to get the stream.

Meanwhile the 3rd Gen AppleTV was released in 2013 and was obsolete by 2015 when they released tvOS.

I owned the 1st gen (used) and 3rd gen. Terrible investments (imo).

I routinely had issues with Apple TV and Roku, where content would freeze or the audio would stutter. It was stochastic but ultimately unwacheable.

I think it's more of a Roku-issue. I have issues with Peacock, Paramount+, and Hulu on Roku. Getting a more expensive Roku stick instead of the TV default helped.

My experience has been very good.

Works well for me on a Fire TV 4k Max. Not so great on the Apple TV app built into my Android Smart TV.

Only Netflix appears to work consistently well on all my devices. Kudos to that team.

I use Apple TV through the website (laptop driving the TV). They are the worst with bugs and UI design choices, at least on Chrome. Will the space bar pause the movie when I press it? Maybe!

My personal anecdote. My Roku just started running like trash on everything. It is older, maybe 4+ years old. If I bought a newer one, maybe it would be better. Instead I just bought the Apple TV box and it runs well. Of course the Apple TV has, I am pretty sure, a lot more processing power since it runs the A-series of processors.

Old Roku here (the new one, bought when the old one kept telling me I needed an SD card when switching providers is still sitting in its box several years later) and no issues with Apple TV.

I never tried Apple TV on my Roku. It was mostly Netflix and Hulu that were choking hard on mine. But also like I said, it could be because it was older hardware and definitely an older chipset on it. I imagine the newer ones have better chips which run better.

All of Apple software is awful glitchy broken mess on non Apple platforms.

I have a 4K Chromecast w/ Google TV (Android TV?), and Apple TV is my favorite app to use on it. It doesn't have any ads or technical issues that the other streaming services have, it just works. HBO Max is the only other app that comes close. Everything else is only in the "usable" category.

> Apple TV is my favorite app to use on it. It doesn't have any ads

jFYI, lots of other services also have no-ads plans. E.g. Netflix.

The AppleTV+ video is easily the highest quality video of all the services.

Their bitrate is roughly double the other popular services.

For example a 1 hour 4K TV show is about 9-11GB on AppleTV+. On Disney and Netflix and Amazon, it's about 4-6GB. On HBO MAX it's about 7-9GB.

The audio is the same across them all more or less. Most using 768K DD+ with Atmos these days.

> Their bitrate is roughly double the other popular services.

Just curious: Is this comparing the same codec? x264 vs AV1 will have a massively different bitrate. So, if a service is using AV1, that could actually be better for the consumer.

Yes, this is comparing the 4K UHD HDR stream, HEVC vs HEVC.

And despite using Atmos, I still have so many issues with audio mixing for SFX and dialog tracks.

How is this so hard to get right?

I have a Apple TV 4K (and Roku doesn't do much better, to be clear), connected to a Marantz Cinema 70s (8K, Dolby Atmos, 7.2), and little to nothing that is done either on the receiver, ATV, or playback source does anything to alleviate the huge frustration that is "being able to hear dialog cleanly without rupturing a speaker, eardrum or both when there's an explosion".

As for Roku... I have the Roku Ultra hooked up to the same... but, since Plex released an ATV app, I don't really need it...

Well, Atmos adds significant complexity to the accurate reproduction of an audio mix because it has so many additional variables to control for.

However, you’re in luck. The center channel is reserved almost exclusively for the dialogue track in film and TV, so you should be able to turn it up and hear it more clearly without affecting anything else.

> and little to nothing that is done either on the receiver, ATV, or playback source

Well of course, it's nothing indeed -- they're simply passing through the audio as it was originally mastered, as they're meant to.

All your equipment is doing it right, assuming it's all configured correctly. And I assume it's not that the Roku "doesn't do much better", but does it exactly and precisely the same.

If you have an issue, it's presumably with the mastering standards, not with any of your equipment. Which is a whole other conversation around relative decibel levels in mixing, but it has nothing to do with technology.

> On Disney and Netflix and Amazon, it's about 4-6GB. On HBO MAX it's about 7-9GB.

Netflix 4K subscription will get you high bitrates, even for 1080p. I'm surprised MAX is that high; it used to be the worst.

To be fair, I am getting these numbers from the pirate downloads. So losslessly downloaded copies of the highest quality copies available from each service.

AppleTV device has a dev option that will display video bitrates.

What are you watching on? I have an Apple TV 4k and it's the best experience I've ever seen. I had Roku's for a long time and just got tired of them (bad performance, glitches).

It might be the Roku? Works fine for me on Chromecast with TV, and also previously on my Apple TV.

It was fine on my 1st generation Amazon Fire TV 4K. That's nearly 6 year old hardware.

Maybe it's my subjective preferences, but honestly Apple TV+ kinda sucks content-wise. Also, the experience is subpar. It regularly forces you to relogin, but instead of just saying so, shows that you're logged in but all of the actual content looks like you're not logged in until you login again, and then you have to do 2-factor and re-acknowledge that all your info is correct and then go back to the apple tv+ site and login again. Maybe the experience is better if you're using apple products?

How about letting Android users watch your shows?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details/Apple_TV?id=com.a...

Also there's a FireTV app (and has been for years)

"This app is not available for your device"

I have a Pixel 6.

https://tv.apple.com/

You can watch online then

> Apple only offers an “Apple TV” app in the Play Store for streaming devices and television sets powered by Android/Google TV. There is no mobile app for phones and tablets. Those with mobile Android devices and Chromebooks are officially told to use tv.apple.com.

https://9to5google.com/2024/03/03/apple-tv-android-app/

The purpose of Apple TV+ is to lock you down in iPhone/Apple ecosystem, even if they are losing the money on the service itself.

So, good luck with that.

It’s available on Android and Samsung TVs.

This is not true. There is an Android app.

Not available for my Pixel 8 which is hardly a niche device.

It is not available on my Pixel 8 Pro, arguably the newest current Android device.

I watch a few ATV shows, and I’ve never done so on an Apple device.

They can (they'd have to... Otherwise most smart TVs wouldn't work for it). I'm still going to avoid their shows in protest of their closed down ecosystem though.

Apple TV+ is the most cross-platform Apple has. Android, Roku, whatever rando TV OS, Playstation, Xbox, etc.

yeah except more than 720p in a browser. I'd actually pay for AppleTV+ if it would just work like any other streaming service with a regular browser.

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