My media player of choice for years has been the Apple TV. I have a Gen 2, Gen 3, and a Gen 4 throughout the house. The combination of the Gen 2 & 3 along with iTunes has been a pretty solid combination for my household. I was pretty psyched for the Gen 4, because all it was missing was apps. I bought the 32GB Apple TV 4 right when it was released and I’ve just never been happy with it. The interface is crap, the remote is crap, and I constantly have to restart it to get it working properly again. I was really hoping that the tvOS update that came last month would have brought tremendous improvements, but it brought nothing that improved my user experience with it.
At this point, I’m ready to try a different media player. One thing that has kept me tied to the Apple stuff was that all my media has been kept in iTunes. I’ve since setup a Plex server and moved all my media over to it and it’s been a pretty impressive experience. Being on a new media server allows me to look at other media players. So I’ve pre-ordered one of the new Roku Ultra‘s.
The new Roku’s officially release October 7th, so I won’t have it until early next week. I will report back once it’s setup with my first impressions.