Apple TV 4K After Some Time: Worth It?

About six weeks ago, for the first time in my life I trudged into an Apple Store to get a product on release date – the new Apple TV 4K.  It’s no secret we loved the older generation of the Apple TV (without the App Store), despite its limitations.  Being a movie collector, I would try wherever possible to redeem my digital copies with iTunes and stay in that ecosystem so I could watch wherever I liked – bedroom, living room, outdoors on the deck, or even on a plane on my iPad.  When we packed up and moved to Charlotte from Pittsburgh, we didn’t take the 10 year old HDTV to the small apartment (though it will likely find a place in our next house), but we got a great deal on a TCL 4K Roku TV at Costco (I plan on elaborating my thoughts on Roku in a separate review).  Now that I had a 4K TV, I wanted some 4K content.  There was some available on Amazon Instant Video, but not a lot, and I wasn’t willing at the time to buy into Netflix’s 4K option while paying rent and a mortgage.

Enter the Apple TV 4K, combined with Apple’s announcement that it would upgrade any available HD film in a user’s digital library to 4K for free.  I was sold right then and there.  Still in Pittsburgh working on selling the house, I drove straight to the Apple store and walked out with my new Apple TV 4K.  Setup was easy, as it paired with my iPhone and connected directly to the wifi (though I have it hardwired because I don’t want to risk buffering 4K content on my wifi with too many devices going at once).  I was also able to use my existing PA cable subscription to log into a variety of TV apps after I downloaded them, and it was relatively quick to set up Netflix, Hulu, and Vudu.

A lot of confusing commentary circulated the internet when the device first came out.

Some websites said Apple was only upconverting direct purchases from the iTunes store, and that if one owned a movie as a Digital HD Copy connected to the purchase of a physical disc, it would not be upgraded.  Neither of these are accurate.  Most of my digital movies came as codes with physical media, and titles with available 4K images have been upgraded, such as Argo, Deadpool, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Star Trek Beyond, and others.  Moreover, HD Movies that came over from Ultraviolet with Movies Anywhere appear to be in 4k as well, such as Ghostbusters (1984), the Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man (Raimi) collections, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow.

The image quality appears to be excellent, whether outputting in 4K or 1080p (despite what some other reviews have said).  That being said, there have been a few issues that keep popping up.

First, the remote isn’t very good, and I can’t wait to replace it with my Logitech Harmony when my move is complete.  The touchpad is inconvenient; the Siri integration is about as good as one could expect Siri integration to be, which is crappy.  Fast forwarding is next to impossible, and I don’t like the idea of it having a rechargeable battery.  I’d much prefer the exchangeable cell battery of the old generation Apple TV.

Second, for reasons known only to the gremlins inside the box, the OS randomly will change the order of my “Purchased Movies” from alphabetical to purchase date.  As of today I have 148 movies purchased in the system.  Sorting by purchase date makes it impossible to find anything, and there is no option to change the sort order.  The only fix is to restart the system.  I can count on one hand the number of times I had to restart the Apple TV 3, including all three of my devices.  I’ve had to restart this one five times in the last week for various issues.

Third, before the most recent software update, I would switch the TV input to the device, and it would be scrambled, appearing almost like a photograph negative.  I would have to hard-reset the device in order to correct it, because I couldn’t see the images clearly enough to be able to navigate to the restart portion.  That seems to have been corrected with the most recent software update.  However, the new thing is it’s randomly dimmed, and won’t brighten to normal levels until I restart.  It seems to be following Apple’s disturbing trend of releasing buggy software.  Steve Jobs is rolling in his turtleneck.

Is the Apple TV 4K Worth It?

This is not a clear answer.  The Apple TV 4K was worth it to me, because I was already bought into the Apple ecosystem, and they offered so much free 4K content based on my prior purchases (Note – it would be a lot more if Disney would come on board with the 4K upgrades for the Marvel Movies).  If I wasn’t already heavily vested in the iTunes digital copies (such as, if I was more into the Amazon Instant Video platform) it probably wouldn’t have been worth it.  That being said, with the Movies Anywhere service, that could change for a lot of people too.

She Says:  I love the Aerial screen saver on the new Apple TV, sometimes I forget I’m not watching a movie because I am so entranced by the Aerial video and scenes.  They are truly beautiful.