Maybe. I was a kid so probably was given crap equipment anf cheap film and likely didn’t treat it well. But the principle is the same. Having deeper shadows that preserve detail, and brighter highlights that aren’t blown out is what, for me, evokes a more visceral response when watching content, whereas Increasing the number of pixels from 1080p to 4K doesn’t.

First, good job on not having a smart TV. They’re truly awful.

I would de-emphasize the actual resolution benefits of 4K. Most of us don’t sit close enough to notice the difference.

For me, it’s about high dynamic range (HDR).

For example, when I was a kid, I was always annoyed by how the photos I took of what I thought was a gorgeous landscape, and then developed the film (yes, I’m an old) it always looked horribly bland and drab.

Watching 4K content on a TV for the first time was like looking at the beautiful landscape again. (It actually was - Netflix’s Marco Polo had the most stunning vistas!)

Most answers here are missing the benefits of a home Mac running 24/7 if you’re already part of the Apple ecosystem. For example, you can have it sync all your iCloud data (documents, photos, iTunes content) and back them up locally, then elsewhere outside of Apple’s ecosystem. You can also have it act as a local CDN for OS updates, whereby it will cache OS downloads locally so any subsequent updates will be super quick.

On the downside, I found native Docker on macOS kinda sucked, and just installed Ubuntu on my 2012 Mac Mini (now running Proxmox for funsies), but I have an old iMac to do the caching. You could probably virtualize and get both benefits, and I am considering moving to a new M4 mini for the power savings and sheer speed. That M4 Pro chip has absolutely incredible Geekbench numbers while sipping power.

generate some minor descriptions for generic stuff in my TTRPG campaigns.

Need a quick 200 word description of the interior of an apothecary? Or a band of marauding orcs? It’s been a huge time saver for me.

Interesting. I will take a look and see if that fixes it. Thanks for the tip!

The layout of Plex definitely fits my brain waaaaay better with respect to navigation. But I hardly use it because I keep running into playback stuttering which doesn’t happen on Infuse, which I point at Jellyfin in my Synology. Will give this version another try.

You can absolutely set up an AppleTV with no other Apple device in your possession. It is a very good player for many things but much of this is dependent on your choice of application. For compatibility and no transcoding, Infuse is the best I’ve found, provided it’s pointed at a Jellyfin instance. Not a great choice just pointed at a local or cloud SMB share (though possible) as its cache gets cleared frequently.

AFAIK, Shield Pro remains the only option that can play back Atmos from ripped media, but would be happy to be corrected on this.

Darn. I have no idea where I got my code and don’t have one to share (I just looked on my profile). It looks like others have helped out. FYI the latest 4K version (1.0) is from February…

There are multiple versions. I suggest you get these from the official site (free, but donations support the cost of equipment, purchasing film reels, and HDD space) and make sure you have the most recent 4K version. I don’t think you will know with certainty which version you have if you try to get this through other means.

I get the sense it was a tricky restoration due to the film stock (and film scanning equipment) they had available, which was spread across 16mm, Kodak 35mm, and Fuji 35mm (which had better colour preservation but was incomplete). They explain it much better on their website, but it is an iterative process, and earlier versions might have a different quality.

This response was 💯

Agreed. The syncing can be managed other ways. The only thing I’m left with is using on a work computer for some reason, where one’s own devices aren’t available/permitted? But that’s probably not a common usage case.

To sync across different devices maybe?

Yeah that’s what I expected. I think the Kodi suggestion for the Shield is the most promising lead. Hope it works out.

Infuse for Apple TV will do this. You can point it to any folder on your NAS as an SMB share. It’s how I play back my own Blu-ray Discs, 4K or otherwise. It doesn’t do menus that I remember, but you can select the title easily enough.

Highly recommend also pointing it to your Jellyfin instance and using that as your front end for other files as it seems to me to have the best ability to do direct playback without transcoding, and the fewest hiccups for audio playback sync issues which can be annoying.

While you can just point Infuse directly at your other folders, its metadata cache gets dumped frequently by the OS, and it has to get rebuilt which is slow and annoying when you just want to watch something. Pointing at Jellyfin also lets you use whatever custom Jellyfin posters you’ve selected which helps for keeping special versions/collections identifiable visually.

I was very satisfied with their pricing for offsite backups, and the ease of setup. Definitely worth a look.

This all makes sense to me if there is a server side component to the app. But with Infuse, there isn’t, and I can’t figure out where the QR code is taking me to “authenticate” on my own, locally hosted SMB server? Not a biggie - typically only need to do this once per server, and the Remote app works fine for me.

For arbitrary text input id ask you to point at any other remote / UI that handles this limitation better.

I think you think you’re talking to someone else? I agree with you.

I don’t see how an app developer could really work around this, if I’m inputting a server address and password for an SMB share. For everything else, sure. I agree that the Remote app’s copy/paste functionality for these elements is literally the best possible solution.

99% of apps on Apple TV have the same kind of login option. If they don’t, it’s on the app developer to implement.

The exception to this that I run into regularly is connecting to a local media server, say through Infuse (seems to handle some codecs better than Plex, and has few if any audio sync issues, though I recommend pointing Infuse at a Jellyfin instance so your library’s metadata doesn’t get cleared and need to be re-indexed on the Apple TV somewhat regularly).

Maybe you ought to take the stance of not talking about something you’re unfamiliar with. Every thing you’ve pointed at has been wrong.

On the internet?? 🙃

I’ve never used the atv

We can tell, because…

Why doesn’t the remote have T9-like keys, or voice input?

It absolutely has voice input.

For passwords, copying and pasting my long, unique, complex passwords from my phone is way easier than any T9 input would ever be.

I have used numerous smart TVs native systems, Google TV boxes, and the NVIDIA Shield. I could not tolerate the UI paradigms or THE FUCKING ADVERTISEMENTS on literally every other system. It is repulsive.

Bonus points to the NVIDIA Shield for being alone it it’s ability to do Atmos from my own media files, though…

I’d categorize it as a gerund in this context.