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.

[DStructUK]

You can’t get Dolby vision

Sent from Outlook for iOS<>

[Dstruct]

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

[Midnight_Voice]

@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.

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@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.

[tristanshout]

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

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@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.

[tristanshout]

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 😂

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@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.