Crazy as a Left Handed Computer

The Apple 4th generation TV streaming player is only worthwhile as an upgrade when subscribing to Apple Music, of which the interface is pretty poor with the remote control whilst selecting characters; but will be great once songs, albums, artist, etc.. are selectable by Siri that is coming in the next few months. The iPad, iPhone Apple remote doesn't work at all with the 4th generation Apple TV.

Unfortunately, the box is plagued with bugs currently that need ironing out, the most annoying being that I'm unable to play any music videos that are in our collection of purchases on the earlier Apple 3rd generation TV, because of some DRM bug issue. All these are playable via iCloud previously, but alas the ability to play them now is completely broken. Apple's tvOS 9.01 is a product still in development and is showing its young age readily when one really gets into its depths, selections that should operate drop off a cliff and end up nowhere. Another bug is when tvOS presents a tv box next to an audio track that you can then press the remote pad and hold it down for further options, and an option presents itself for playing the video, pressing that just does nothing!

Currently typing criteria by whatever means is especially annoying as one cannot delete the whole field to enter a new entry. tvOS 9.01 needs work, and quickly for the Apple Music side of the interface is appalling and let's face it, this is one area that Apple should excel in really, and it should be a completely polished before releasing the product.

The 4th generation Apple TV is extremely fast responding to movie queries using Siri, and very good indeed for finding content for TV programmes and films, it works slickly and easily.

The VEVO app is a downgrade where it now supports a single VEVO TV channel when previously it was three IPTV music channels.

My truthful suggestion is to hold off purchasing the Apple 4th generation TV until the bugs are fixed and wait for the release of tvOS 9.1 and Siri integration with Apple Music, so the whole area is far easier to navigate the 30 million music tracks available in Apple's collection.

I must point out in this article that I've only been using this Apple TV product for a day, and for this time span, I shouldn't really to be able to identify such issue and bugs so readily!

It does have a good future with Siri integration for everything, and I look forward to those enhancements as they occur in the near future and further looking forward, probably in the middle of 2016 next year when the software engineers have finished the job of its complete development.

The 4th generation Apple TV with tvOS 9.1 that has just been released has Siri voice search facilities for music now, and it works excellently, the remote app also works with the Apple TV. With the latest Apple TV, its integration with the Apple Music streaming service is the way to go with its searching capability with Siri voice commands for music, it is a great way of gaining access to the approximately 30 million music tracks available by subscribing to the service for £9.99 a month.

The service also gives you access to music videos with the standard price of the Apple Music service, but unfortunately it does not offer a service for music videos with automagical continual streaming of videos in the same manner as VEVO, which is a pity and I hope something they'll add in the future with a later tvOS release. With Siri integration for searching it is miles ahead of its rivals such as those from Spotify or similar that don't have voice searching facilities.

The 4th generation Apple TV even though it doesn't have UHD for streaming movies and TV programmes it is still the box to get for ease of use for pure music, the Siri interface is easy to use and way ahead of its competitors. For those that wish to gain access to movies and programmes I recommend the latest Amazon Fire TV UHD edition, but its music service on this platform with Amazon Prime is absolutely appalling. As for the Roku streaming players, they basically are not worth purchasing, for they will not accept the Kodi app and the apps for gaining access to video services are rather pathetic with silly services not worth watching here in the UK.

One thing that most are missing with the HDMI output on the Apple TV 4th generation is its now 1080p 60fps, or full HFR HD, whereas the previous 3rd generation Apple TV only had an output of 1080p 30fps video, with this high frame rate moving action is far more dynamic and suffers no picture judder or jerkiness.