Gone are the days where you gathered around a television set with your family to watch your favourite soapie at 18h00.
With the smart television or digital set top box advancements, entertainment is now suited around the schedule of the viewer and no longer the determiner of their schedule. Apple TV is just one of the digital media player and micro-consoles that can be used in your home.
Going for N$2 599 for 32GB storage at the recently opened iStore Namibia, the fourth generation Apple TV – formerly known as iTV – is the less popular of the Apple products. It operates on new software called TVOS that allows third party applications to model apps suited for this platform.
Besides buying the Apple TV box, you’ll have to buy a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) cable as it is sold separately. It requires that you have an HDTV and an App store account as this is where you’ll be purchasing your shows, movies and games. Lastly, you’ll need a steady high-speed internet connection which is necessary for streaming.
For those living in the United States, AppleTV supplies their customers with an array of applications that act as channels which viewers can download to stream their favourite shows. Applications include Netflix, Hulu, Showtime, YouTube and Vevo. Other options availed to viewers are full-season sports subscriptions from the National Basketball Association (NBA), National Hockey League (NHL) and Major League Basketball (MLB).
An American senior education officer in the Oshana region, Brendon Hamacher says “it’s pretty cool but you need a Netflix account, HBO password, Hulu needs a subscription to really unlock the best out of the apps including ESPN, NBC Sports.” It’s however unfortunate that besides Netflix, there are many apps which are not offered to Namibians yet.
You can also rent and purchase cinema classics and recent blockbuster hits from the app store, so here’s where your storage space comes in handy. The interactivity feature allows you to link your Apple devices to your TV.
“If you have an Apple device and you are watching a video on YouTube, you can send it to your TV and it starts playing. It wasn’t perfect but it worked sometimes and was cool, Brendon added.
This fourth generation comes with a Bluetooth Siri enabled remote. Taking remotes to a whole new level where you can ask Siri to show you latest shows and launch applications.
The only thing that would encourage 24-year-old Andrew Maruta to upgrade is the Siri function that comes with the fourth generation Apple TV. Otherwise he says it is “pretty average and unnecessary if you have say an Android phone and a smart TV”.
“The only thing is that it was ‘nicer’ to have or at least more useful before Netflix, cable providers and other streaming services developed their own apps and so forth, especially now with smart TVs which have basically made the Chromecast alternative obsolete,” he says.
– kawela@namibian.com.na; @liquoricekiki on Twitter and Instagram
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