I’ve seen a few posts here and there raving about the Apple TV box but it’s always occurred to me what’s so special about it?

A lot of my products are Apple and I’m starting to try and build a smart home (nothing crazy) but I have Sonos, Nest etc and I’m wondering what an Apple TV can offer me. I’ve read a few blogs but nothing seems to scream out at me.

Smart TV’s seem to have a lot of streaming apps and I gather I can AirPlay to it. One thing that I did find interesting though, I saw someone comment earlier that you can just chuck your AirPods on and it seemlessly connects (albeit very rare I’d need to actually do this, like it was suggested if the other half wanted to go to sleep I could carry on and watch tv with my AirPods).

What are the other worthwhile benefits?

  • wehodiscostickfan@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Apple TV just gets so many things right. You get buttery smooth animation due to Apple using Apple A Series chips. My model from 2021 uses the A12 Bionic chip and everything just feels snappy with no lag. Most TV manufacturers might have a great Google TV or Roku interface, but use crappy processors and teeny amounts of onboard memory/storage so you end up with laggy performance (e.g. Sony using Mediatek processors for their Bravia XR TV models).

    App selection has been great, especially since the apps are optimized for televisions despite using a similar framework to what apps use on an iOS/iPadOS device. Almost all major streaming apps are there.

    You might see ads for Apple TV+, but only when you have the app highlighted. By default it’s usually the first app on the first row of your Home Screen. You can always just move down lower so you don’t see the ads.

    One important thing that made me switch - and this has been an issue on Roku - is when Roku and a company like Google or Warner are bickering about fees, especially when YouTube TV was gaining traction was that apps would be unavailable (same thing happened with DirecTV on Roku) on the platform until a deal between these companies was made so that the apps become available again. That was the last straw that got me to switch permanently to Apple TV.