topic Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions in TV

EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

baabaa90 — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 14:58:48 GMT

Just set up EE TV on Apple TV box. First impressions are positive and I like the integration with other Apple Products, such as being able to see what TV channel is on from my Apple Watch. A pleasant surprise.

BBC Radio Channels are in the EPG and stream via the EE TV app (without having to launch BBC Sounds which isn't an Apple TV app anyway).

Easy to toggle on Subtitles, Audio Description and switch Surround/ Stereo as required.

Channel hopping up/ down is quite fast and a much slicker integrated experience than using the TV Launcher app (which I was using before - great app, but has ecosystem limitations),

I did notice that Channel 4 was downgrading picture quality every 10-30 seconds and then upgrading quality shortly after. I am connected via Ethernet into a Smart Hub 2. Will continue to monitor.

Re: Freeview channel selection. It's got most of the "major" channels, U& (aka UKTV) channels missing, but I knew that and not a deal breaker for me. However if I had a wish list for future I would like to see Bloomberg & CNN (although available elsewhere on Apple TV). Discovery is a bit of an oddity in that it is available in Discovery +, but not in EE TV as a channel as part of Big Sport package.

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

th2024 — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 15:04:16 GMT

Great review. I also changed from the Pro box to the Apple box and I’m very impressed. The EE app is very stable and I like the suggestions it makes for programmes you may have missed and integrates very well.

Live TV has been excellent, I especially like you can restart most programmes by rewinding to the start. Let’s hope for more channels and features.

I genuinely think the EE app is under rated and one for EE to push.

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

Matadaw651 — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 18:36:25 GMT

Agreed.

Channel 4 suffers at times. Especially if there is a confetti cannon on the F1, or splashy water on Paralympics.

I still use Tv Launcher linked to EE for freeview and Discovery+ for Eurosport and TNT. I can hide channels I don’t subscribe to.

Going for the Apple TV was a no brainer. I’ve had Apple TV 4Ks since 2017.

My Apple TV is mounted behind my TV to the vesa screws so it’s super tidy. I don’t have anything else hooked up to my TV. One can also use a VPN to stream F1TV and football from Peacock.

My only grumble is the voice recognition doesn’t work as the magic remote does with using Siri to search within Apps.

I encourage anyone without one to get one, it will change your life!

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

baabaa90 — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 22:04:22 GMT

Just reconfigured TV Launcher to get an EPG for the Discovery Channels and a few missing from EE TV. Also gets top shelf so that I can scan what is on at the current time.

There has been an intermittant Bit Rate issue on the Channel 4 channels. It recovers, but is a niggle which requires resolving - I noticed a prior thread from June which references this.

Still impressed with the clean implementation for the live channels through the EE TV app.

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

DStructUK — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 08:26:58 GMT

when you play live channels through the ee tv app, does it play them instantly from the ee tv app, or does it need to open each channels app before playing the live stream?

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

DarrenDev — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 10:50:46 GMT

It plays then instantly within the EE TV app @DStructUK

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

karluk — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 06:01:23 GMT

Thank you for the comprehensive review. There are not many reviews out there on the latest EE TV, especially how the Apple TV implementation works. I was aware other countries have been using Apple Devices for TV for a while like Swisscom. I currently have Sky Stream and have a standard Apple TV 4K witn TV launcher. While I like Sky Stream the hard ware and apps still seem to be more Beta than how I’ve seen IPTV work elsewhere. The standard Apple TV with TV launcher is a much better proposition tha U thought, so I was thinking the EETV version of Apple TV may be ideal better hardware and all I need on one device. With Sky Strem I find the apps so laggy I just use the Apple TV instead.

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

baabaa90 — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 18:06:55 GMT

You're welcome, @karluk . Let me know if you have any questions and I'll answer to the best of my ability.

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

Todd1234 — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 19:47:22 GMT

Is the picutre quality better on Apple tv than the pro box im thinking of switching to find a better picture quality

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

Midnight_Voice — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 22:54:32 GMT

@Todd1234

I think it is, and I’ve been told that Apple use more bandwidth wherever they can, which would explain it.

But it’s very minor and certainly wouldn’t make me want to switch away from the Box Pro, even temporarily,

So I’d look for another reason for bad PQ on the Box Pro.

The usual one is that people set their broadcast picture up just so, and then don’t propagate the settings to their HDMI channels, so these suffer by comparison.

And an issue I have found on my LG GX is that even if you propagate the settings to HDMI, when you go into HDR or Dolby Vision, it brings up a new set of picture settings from somewhere, and you need to go in and tweak these,

We had watched Carry-On in Netflix Standard, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but the next day I upped my Netflix band to Premium, and when I put Carry-On again to try it, it came up with Dolby Vision, and a picture so awful, with a pronounced yellow cast, that I almost went back to Standard,

But instead, I looked at the picture settings on the LG TV, and found that in its wisdom, it had started using some ‘Dolby Vision’ set of picture settings. When I changed these to match the picture settings I had before Dolby Vision, all was well again.

Yiu might want to look and see if one or other of these considerations ir pulling down what your TV makes of the Box Pro picture.

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

DStructUK — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 08:06:20 GMT

You can’t get Dolby vision

Sent from Outlook for iOS<>

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

Dstruct — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 08:07:28 GMT

My ee tv box pro doesn’t support Dolby vision so how does yours ?

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

Midnight_Voice — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 08:47:34 GMT

@Dstruct @DStructUK

(I hope you are two separate people).

As it happens, that was direct on the TV, though my (non-EETV) AppleTV did this on my LG C2.

I guess with no Dolby Vision on the Box Pro, that’s one less potential source of bad PQ.

But I should probably emphasise that the boxes and apps weren’t the source of the problem, it was more the way the LG TVs were handling things. Though I had a similar issue with HDR on a Samsung TV, so it may be more general.

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

Profile closed — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 09:04:30 GMT

@Midnight_Voice wrote:
@Todd1234
I think it is, and I’ve been told that Apple use more bandwidth wherever they can, which would explain it.

This only applies to Apple TV+ content, which is what Apple controls and isn’t surprising as it is their hardware, software and service.

Bitrate/bandwidth/quality for any other app on the device is entirely down to the app/content provider.

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

tristanshout — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 10:42:09 GMT

Do you, or anyone else in this thread, know if you’re able to add this to any other AppleTV devices you might already have? I have two connected to different TVs already and would ideally like to use these as a multi room solution as we’ve just cancelled Sky Q

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

Profile closed — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 10:52:10 GMT

@tristanshout

You can only get the full EE TV app guide and live experience on 1 Apple TV 4K box supplied by them.

You can log into the EE TV app on your own Apple TV 4K and get access to some of the live channels that you subscribe to, but not the Freeview based ones.

If you only have one EE TV box, logging into the app on your own Apple TV 4K will also deactivate the channels on the other box in your household, although you can switch back again.

Basically, the maximum number of boxes you can have with EE TV is 3, only one of which can be an EE supplied Apple TV 4K, you could use your own Apple TV 4K boxes and the EE TV app instead of say, two EE TV mini boxes, but won’t have the full experience.

Only the Apple TV 4K supplied by EE will have all your subscribed channels and the Freeview channels available in the EE TV app.

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

tristanshout — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 12:12:55 GMT

Thanks, that’s really helpful.

Aside from TNT Sport/Discovery (I currently access all this from the Discovery app on my existing Apple TV boxes), the only other channels you can subscribe to as part of an EE TV package are all the Sky ones via Now TV anyway, right? And that’s all stuff I could subscribe to myself directly with Now TV anyway?

I’m struggling to understand, apart from a “free” Apple TV unit, what you actually get for your money. You get the TV Guide, but sounds like it only does what the existing TV Launcher app does, opening up the relevant streaming app for that channel.

I totally appreciate I may have missed something really obvious that’s a benefit of signing up to this 😂

Re: EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

Profile closed — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 12:35:21 GMT

@tristanshout

It’s a bit more than that, on the EE supplied Apple TV 4K you also get all of the “Freeview” based channels IP channels in the guide provided by the EE TV app alongside the NOW and TNT Sports channels.

These are live broadcasts, so no need to go into each app to view like you would with TV Launcher. There are a few other features like favourites and the EE TV store.