wave rider wrote:
ATV4K came yesterday from Newt's reminder of DIRECTV NOW's live a little offer.
First impression is that it comes in a petite box but has serious heft, must be some dense packed goodness inside. I have not made the big reveal yet.
I am in need of schooling with this device. Also wondering if I really need it since I have a TCL ROKU TV.
Help!
Thanks in advance...
No, you probably don’t need it. I just got a new 4K smart TV (another Samsung) and it looks like it’s going to become the go-to device for Netflix for us. I love the screensaver and other visual elements on my ATV (not 4k), but I’m not sure what else it adds. Ditto for the Roku stick my FIL gave me. They probably have more apps than the Samsung app store (or whatever it’s called), but the new TV has the main ones we use.
New TV’s are getting
ever-so-slowly easier to manage, and that’s what I like best so far about our one (since we’re mostly OTA consumers, and so the video hasn’t changed much). This one has the “smart” (-er) remote, and now I can just say “Netflix” or “live tv” to switch between- no fiddling with “sources” or looping my AV receiver into the mix for further complication.
And since this one (as opposed to the
previous Samsung) puts full 5.1 out of the digital optical audio out port on the TV, to switch to full surround sound, you just say “digital audio out” vs “tv speaker”. I still have to
manually hit the power button on the AV receiver which unfortunately, doesn’t autowake or auto-shutoff, (and burns 60-70 watts if I were to leave it on all the time, which I ain’t gonna do). There’s a rumor that Denons do better at this but I think I’ll wait.
A bit of a rant from your original question. Apple could have done all this so much better with a real Apple TV, I think, but apparently decided not to. With newer TV’s now incorporating this functionality, I don’t see much of a future for the ATV.
