“Who’s the big daddy in online television streaming? Netflix. This week Netflix did something really worthwhile for customers and points viewers to the direction Apple’s next Apple TV needs to go. Netflix lets you download select movies and TV shows to be viewed offline later,” Kate MacKenzie writes for PixoBebo. “That means there’s no need for an internet connection. Load up on the select content, view while you’re on an airplane or traveling by car.”
“That’s a great idea, of course, and it’s likely to spread, but it should be obvious to Netflix, Apple, Google, Amazon, cable TV companies, and content producers what all of us want in the near future. It’s simple,” MacKenzie writes. “All content, on any device, all the time.”
“I know what I want. I know what I’m willing to pay for. And I know it’s not going to happen that way,” MacKenzie writes. “When Apple moves the bar closer to that goal I’ll recommend an Apple TV again.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We also like to be able to watch The Grand Tour on our Apple TVs. In 4K, too.
Until then, Tim Cook’s hubristic statement this fall — “And now, with the TV app, there’s really no reason to watch TV anywhere else” — remains as laughable as ever.
SEE ALSO:
Netflix now lets you download episodes to watch offline – November 30, 2016
I have a 55″ UHD 4K television that I use with my 2015 Apple TV. Frankly, I don’t understand the whining about Apple TV not supporting 4K. The television itself up-samples the Apple TV UI and the content to 4K and the result is terrific. Even SD content up-sampled to 4K looks good (a little blurry but very pleasing from more than 6 feet away).
This is good information, thanks for posting. Personally right now I don’t care whether or not the Apple TV has 4K support (I don’t own a 4K, and there’s still not a ton of content), however, when making an investment in a device, I would like it to be future-proofed to a degree. I do own a 4G Apple TV, but I am hesitant to buy a second until this happens.
That said, Apple has always marched to the beat of their own drummer. They lead in some areas, follow in others, but while other manufacturers in the space are fiercely competing with each other, Apple doesn’t play that game. Traditionally they have a loyal customer base, me included, who but the product because of the ecosystem, despite being slightly behind in some areas (4K, Amazon Prime Video). However, I’m afraid Apple has gotten arrogant about that, and under Tim Cook has not had as aggressive a release schedule as they probably need to to maintain their advantage.
Same here, I got my 55 inches TCL Roku TV (I wanted the 55 inches phillips that showed in walmart but ir run out of stock very fast) this last black friday and I did noted that Apple TV looks wonderful thanks to the upscale engine in the TV. But since the TV has ROKU integrated, now I have a point of comparison since it is very easy to find 4K content in roku. The other day even netflix ask me if I wanted to upgrade my account to receive 4k content. So even that is not a big deal that apple Tv does not support 4K, it is also true that other companies are eating apple tv’s market because of their lack of will to make real hardware improvements and not just minor software upgrades.
You cannot make a proper 4K picture from a 1080i HDTV signal any more than you can pay for a $5 meal with a single $1 bill. There may be some nice signal processing going on to make it pleasing to your eyes, but the detail is limited by resolution and pixel depth.
You’re mistaken. The upscaling engines in modern UHD 4K TV’s make HD content look flawless in 4K, both in terms of pixels and colors. As with modern photoshop algorithms, this software is able to add detail that looks very realistic. The result looks great from even a just few feet away. Yes, upscaled content may not be perfectly true to the original source material, but nobody other than a videophile nerd would notice or care about the difference.
Even that you are absolutely right about the resolution and detail, there are other factors to a good quality image. It is exactly like the cameras, iPhones cameras have been always the lower resolution compared with other popular phones, but the iPhone has always come out as the best picture quality every time and not because of the pixels but because of the color interpretation and lenses and many other factors that make a good picture.
I really hate samsung products, I don’t use any samsung product at home (I don’t want a exploding washing machine), but I was looking at the TVs at best buy, and the Samsung TV 1080 (HD) looked amazingly better than the 4K visio TV. Again, Pixels aren’t everything.
Unless you know that the display TVs have been accurately calibrated in the store, side to side comparison is relatively meaningless. Even the best TV can have a bad picture if it is not set up right. This is actually how the salespeople steer people toward the sets that they are paid the highest commisssion to sell and why professional product reviews for TVs are actually really important to pay attention to before buying.
How much 4k content is out there, local channels, movies, tv shows, what has a lot 4k content I can watch?
Let me Google that for you:
https://lmgtfy.com/?q=sites+with+4K+uhd+video+content
That’s funny.
That being said, what’s the point of having forums, when practically everything can be “Googled”.
Well you could argue with the bots on Facebook & Twitter.
Most good and great hd tvs have decent 4k scalers. But 4 and 8 k production has been standard for more than four years. Better commercials are even shot in 4 or 8 K. Red. Ameras are affordable and produce great results. Now my iphone can shoot 4 k. But i cannot stream from my mac to apple tv in 4k. I dont get it.
The exact point I raised when the current Apple TV was announced. The iPhone announced at the same that time (September 2015) could record UHDTV (not Digital Cinema 4K) but the latest and greatest Apple TV could not support what you could personally shoot on your phone! That was (and continues to be) one of the dumbest things Apple ever did (and I’m including the hockey puck mouse in the list to which I’m comparing the current Apple TV).
Absolutely agree and why Apple is an embarrassment. ATV is a mess on many fronts. I won’t buy another. Going to Roku who is competent. I finally agree…… Cook and Ive need to go
4K or Blue-ray so what, once people start getting the bill over the next 4 years streaming will die.
4k is not important to me. Meaningfull apps and TV channel apps is what I want. The ATV app store is a joke.
From the summary, it seems the author would recommend AppleTV only when Apple allows downloads for off line viewing. I wonder how big his suitcase is. Carrying a 50 inch TV to view content offline seems somewhat cumbersome to me and hardly a valid reason to forsake recommendations for the AppleTV product.
I have carried my AppleTV to use in hotel rooms in the past. I know the TV is not 4K, but they are HD and I use it to stream from Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc.
When the network connection is terrible (and I do drag along an ethernet cable to bypass wifi issues), I play “offline” media from my iPad to the TV via an HDMI and a dongle.
Being able to store media on the AppleTV would mean that I can store everything there. MUCH nicer. Only 64 GB onboard, but I could still put quite a few things on it…
Is offline content viewing already considered an innovation? Come on guys the bar should be higher.
No, what I really want to see is Steve’s words, “I finally cracked the TV,” come to fruition. I don’t know what he meant, but I intuitively believe it would have been very good and surely better than what is current w/ Apple.
Steve also thought the Hocky puck mouse was a good design. The man was not right 100% of the time. Also, maybe his idea was dependent on other companies in media cooperating with Apple, which they are not doing.
The trick to content on the Apple TV is to have someone else besides Apple deal with content providers. Nothing worse than trying to deal with an arrogant pr!ck in a business relationships. .
Apple is its own worst enemy when it comes to the Apple TV. First it was wasting all that energy and time on the Apple “Pet Rock” Watch. Leaving the Apple TV way behind and then releasing what appears to be an unfinished product, already out of date with a crap remote.
Apple is Simply terrible at dealing with entities that are not intimidated or fanboys of their company. That’s why they had to outsource Apple News advertising.
Time for Tim to GO! https://www.change.org/p/apple-board-of-directors-remove-tim-cook-as-ceo-of-apple
No time for YOU to go. So kindly get lost.
The TV is going to have to do more than just support 4K. HDR is becoming a big deal on TVs now (and it is amazing) so Apple needs to start supporting it. They have it on the iPhone camera already, so it shouldn’t be too hard to integrate it into the TV.