Apple TV review - now cheaper than ever

We first reviewed the current Apple TV back in 2012. While Apple hasn’t seen the need to update the hardware, the software and available services have changed massively since then, effectively making it a completely new product. Throw in the recent price drop to £59 (down from £99 at launch) and we thought it was past time that we revisited this product.

Of course, it is the price drop that’s going to get most people’s attention, as it turns the Apple TV from being a fairly expensive media streamer into one that’s excellent value. The Google Chromecast may be £19 cheaper, but it requires a smartphone, tablet or computer to get any content to play on it; the Apple TV is a standalone streamer. We’ve gone into more detail on the two streamers in our Apple TV vs Chromecast article.

Build quality, hardware and size

Despite being a few years old, the Apple TV is just as gorgeous today as it was when it launched. Measuring 100mm square and sitting 23mm high, it’s a tiny little box that you’ll have no problems placing discretely next to a TV.

Round the back there are all of the ports that you could possibly need with a 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet port, HDMI and optical S/PDIF outputs. There’s also a micro-USB port in the rear, although this is just listed as being for diagnostics.

Most people won’t need to use the Ethernet port, as the Apple TV also has dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, so it can connect to both 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks.

Apple hasn’t needed to change the hardware inside the Apple TV since launch, as it’s perfectly capable of dealing with the simple interface and playing Full HD (1,920x1,080) video. In fact, the only reason to change the hardware would be to support 4K, but given the general lack of content and the slow uptake of TVs, there was little need.

Setup and control

The Apple TV is controlled via the incredibly simple remote. Made from aluminium with responsive controls, it’s one of the best remotes you can get. It has a four-way cursor pad for navigating through menus; a central Select button; a Menu button and Play/Pause. The Menu button also navigates back through menus, while the cursor pad is used to rewind and fast-forward through content. There’s not even a power button here, as the Apple TV powers down automatically when it’s not in use (you can send it to sleep manually using the Settings menu); any key will wake it.

Apple also has the Remote app for iPhone and iPad, which lets you control your Apple TV from your phone or tablet. The advantages of the app are that it works over Wi-Fi, so you don’t need line of sight, which you do with the IR remote, and when you search for content you can use the iOS on-screen keyboard to type faster.

Setting the Apple TV up couldn’t be easier. You just plug in the soft-touch power cable (it powers on automatically) and hook it up to your TV via HDMI. Apple doesn’t provide an HDMI cable in the box, although it sells a soft-touch model that matches the power cable, if you really care about that kind of thing; any cheap cable will do, as expensive HDMI cables do not make a difference. The first screen you see prompts you to set up your network and enter your Apple ID and password, after which you’re taken to the home screen.

Interface

Apple TV has one of the simplest interfaces of any media streamer and the appearance hasn’t really changed since launch. On the home screen you get large icons for all of the available services, so navigating to the one you want is incredibly easy. The top row contains Apple services (more on these later) and is locked, but you can hold down the Select button on the remote to re-order the other services, placing the ones you use most higher up the list.

Apple TV runs a version of iOS, which has been perfectly optimised. It’s smooth, never slows down and shows other people how it really should be done. Even a few years on, there’s nothing that quite comes as close to the simplicity and slickness of this interface.

Content and AirPlay

The main reason for having an Apple TV is for consuming content and there are a lot of ways that you can do this. First, are the aforementioned apps, which give you access to the standalone applications; secondly, there’s AirPlay, which lets you beam content from your smartphone, tablet or Mac to the Apple TV.

AirPlay, as with Chromecast Casting, is a way for developers to support Apple TV without having to get a dedicated app. For example, you can use BBC iPlayer from your iPhone or iPad to watch catch-up TV on the Apple TV.

AirPlay is a smart technology, as the content isn’t actually sent from your phone, tablet or laptop; instead, the Apple TV is told where the content is, and then connects to it directly. This means that you can then use your phone, tablet or laptop for anything else (or turn the screen off to save power), without interrupting playback on your TV; jump back to the app and you can control playback from your smartphone or tablet, too, although you can use the Apple Remote for this as well.

In essence, then, AirPlay is a way of turning your other devices into smart, touchscreen remote controls for choosing and playing content. It also means that the Apple TV is capable of supporting pretty much any online service.

Using AirPlay is also very simple. From a supported app, you just tap the AirPlay button and select your Apple TV. The one downside is that AirPlay is only well supported on Apple devices; Chromecast support is built into both Android and iOS apps.

AirPlay also has a second mode: mirroring. This lets you send exactly what you see on your phone, tablet or laptop, to your TV. For example, you could play a game on your TV from your iPhone. It can also be used to send video from apps that don’t support AirPlay natively. The downside with mirroring is that you can’t use your device for anything else and you have to leave the screen turned on.

Finally, as well as enabling support for AirPlay, developers can physically disable support for all forms of it, too. This means that even mirroring won’t work with some content.

Apple movies and TV

One of the main benefits of Apple TV is that you can buy and rent HD movies and TV shows from Apple’s huge collection. Second to Sky Now, which gets the top movies first, Apple has an impressive range of content to choose from, and one of the best-stocked online stores.

You can watch anything that you’ve bought from another device, too, so you can line-up what you want to watch from anywhere and then just dive in to watch it when you want. Where available, Apple supports Dolby Digital surround tracks, so plug the Apple TV into an AV receiver and you’ll get atmospheric surround-sound.

TV’s a big part of the service, too, with the ability to buy some shows as they’re shown live on regular TV. Apple’s version is generally a day behind the live broadcast, but it’s neat that you can buy a season pass upfront, giving you every episode of a series as it’s released.

Photos and iCloud

With photos from your iPhone, iPad and Mac going into iCloud, the Apple TV becomes the perfect place to access them and stream them to your TV. Everything you’ve uploaded, including your photo stream and shared streams, are available from the interface. It’s quick, depending on your internet connection, to pull down the thumbnail images.

If you’ve got photos that aren’t available in the cloud, the photos app in iOS supports AirPlay, so you can also a stream your photos directly from your handset.

Apple music

Through the music app you can browse the music store and play any music that you’ve purchased. If you’re an iTunes Match subscriber (£22 a year), any music you rip from CD is also made available. If you’ve bought everything through Apple, then this feature’s nice to have, but we prefer the flexibility of Spotify.

Movies and TV on demand – Netflix, Now TV, Amazon Prime Instant Video and HBO Go

It’s not just about Apple when it comes to entertainment, as the Apple TV supports plenty of other services. Top of the list for most people has to be Netflix. Apple has one of the best apps, with a clean and fast interface letting you get at the content quickly. It’s also neatly organised by genre, making browsing more of a pleasure than a chore. Apple TV supports Netflix streams up to 1080p and the quality is as good as it gets from this service.

Importantly, for some people, the Apple TV is easy to tweak in order to get US Netflix in the UK. There’s a much bigger catalogue of shows in the American Netflix, so it’s worth doing. By comparison, the Chromecast is a complete pain to tweak, involving changing router settings. We think that the Apple TV’s Netflix app is the quickest and easiest way to watch this content, but the iOS Netflix app has been upgraded to support AirPlay, too. This lets you browse from your phone or tablet and then ping the content straight to your TV, which some people may prefer.

Apple also has the Sky Now TV app built in, giving you access to all of Sky’s top content online. There are different packages for Sports, Movies and the latest entertainment, including Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic, and our review of the service goes into more detail.

With Now TV, you get a mix of live content, letting you watch what’s on Sky, and on-demand box-sets. Typically, Sky’s content is newer and a lot is exclusive to it, giving it a point of differentiation to Netflix. For us in the UK, Sky Now is also the only place to get the latest HBO shows, as the newly-announced HBO Go app is available in the US only. Sadly, Now TV streams at a maximum resolution of 720p.

Via AirPlay, Apple TV is the only media streamer that also lets you access Amazon Prime Instant Video, aside from the Amazon Fire TV. If you’re a subscriber to that service, it means that you get finally view the content on your TV. To us, it’s a complete mystery as to why Amazon doesn’t make the app Chromecast compatible. Where supported, with any of these services, Apple TV supports Dolby Digital for surround sound.

Catch-up TV – BBC iPlayer , 4oD, ITV Player and BT Sport

Catch-up TV is well supported by the Apple TV, via AirPlay. The BBC iPlayer and 4oD apps support AirPlay natively, so you can easily catch-up on shows that you’ve missed. The stream quality is decided automatically by the connection speed, with BBC offering an HD service; 4oD is lower-resolution. ITV Player only supports Apple TV via AirPlay mirroring, which is an inconvenient and cut-down method, which requires your iPad or iPhone’s screen to be turned on. Finally, there’s also BT Sport support, so you can catch-up with what you’ve missed or stream the live channels.

In terms of catch-up TV support in the UK, it has to be said that YouView devices, such as the similar-sized BT Mini YouView  box, are much better, with access to all of the terrestrial catch-up services.

Media server streaming

Via Apple Home Sharing, you can stream anything from a computer running iTunes that’s connected to the same account. It means leaving your computer turned on, so it’s not that convenient. There’s no direct support for media streaming built in, but the beauty of AirPlay means that you can get round this: an iPhone app that supports AirPlay and DLNA servers, bypasses this restriction neatly. See how to connect your Apple TV to a DLNA server for more information. The one problem with this route is that the Apple TV’s file support is a bit lame, with H.264-encoded video the only one supported. This can mean that you have to re-encode a lot of files to get it working.

A second and better way is to turn to Plex. With the Plex client and server, video is automatically transcoded into a format that the Apple TV understands: in other words, you can play any type of video file without worry. Read our guide on how to use Plex with Apple TV for more information.

Conclusion

It’s taken a while, but Apple TV has moved from being a very average media streamer, into a powerful one. With support for all of the major streaming services (Apple, Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video), Apple TV gives you access to the majority of the content that you’re going to watch. AirPlay helps extend the player’s capabilities further and we’ve seen the number of apps that support it grow. AirPlay even helps you bypass some of the Apple TV’s restrictions and connect to DLNA media servers. It’s the combination of real apps and AirPlay that we like: we find the installed Apps make accessing the big services easier and quicker without messing around with phones; AirPlay makes the Apple TV more flexible with new features and services regularly coming online.

Of course, there’s now the price drop. While the device used to be very expensive, £60 is great value, making it cheaper than the Roku 3. There are some caveats, though. First, AirPlay is an Apple-centric technology: if you’ve got a house stuffed full of Apple kit, it’s brilliant; if you don’t, you’ll lose access to a ton of features. In that case, the Chromecast, with its multi-platform support is better (see Apple TV vs Chromecast for the full information).

Overall, there’s no single media streamer that quite does everything and suits every need. At this price, the Apple TV comes close for Apple users and we highly recommend it.