EE TV on Apple TV First Impressions

[baabaa90]

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.

[th2024]

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. 

[Matadaw651]

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!

[baabaa90]

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.   

[DStructUK]

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?

[DarrenDev]

It plays then instantly within the EE TV app @DStructUK 

[karluk]

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. 

[baabaa90]

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

[Todd1234]

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

[Midnight_Voice]

@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.