Nonsense. A raspberry pi costs far less and is, arguably, just as capable.
The problem isn't hardware capability, it's the ecosystem on top of it. Pi doesn't have a robust tv platform and app market system that is built around a remote control. Sure, you can run plex on it but even plex has long abandoned its streaming app platform and decided to roll its own TV service instead... Part of me wishes that Plex would have stuck with it but i guess they realized the Streaming TV problem isn't a software or hardware problem to begin with...
The parent comment stated that the $100 doesn't cover the cost of the hardware. I disagree.
I do think it is perhaps a more reasonable statement to say $100 doesn't cover the cost of the hardware and the software platform on top of it.
I don't think it's right to shove ads down customer's throat on a product that they've paid money for. Whether that's money to buy the hardware and the software platform or whether that's money paid to the subscriptions; in both cases advertisements are the wrong solution to revenue. If software costs money then make that cost up front. Sell the software. Sell updates to the software. Sell a subscription for the software. But don't put ads on it!
Last I checked, there wasn't any player capable of doing HDR10 HEVC either, but maybe that has changed.
I like the rpi but I don't think its as capable as people are making it out to be.
Software services (i.e. updating iOS/Roku's OS) require on-going maintenance. Apple makes this by charging developers who in turn typically charge the consumers. Roku doesn't do this and hence why it can be hostile to the consumer. It's model is generally to use an ad model instead.
Now people know why there is a (arguably high) tax on subscriptions derived from iOS.
It’s like Visa, restaurants will charge all customers including cash paying ones more too. So the Visa card holder, isn’t incentivized not to use it.
I still use an Nvidia Shield for Plex though. The ATV is great for streaming platforms, but lacks HDMI audio passthrough which is essential for watching hi quality BluRay rips on a home theater.
ARC/eARC is about the TV sending audio from HDMI devices to another HDMI port where your receiver/soundbar is connected.
HDMI audio passthrough is a feature that allows apps to send any raw encoded audio signal "as is" via the HDMI port (eg: Dolby, DTS, etc) to your receiver that will do the decoding.
The ATV does not support DTS or TrueHD, hence to output audio with those codecs, it needs to be decoded and converted on the fly to a supported format like PCM. Unfortunately this produces all sort of issues (sync, volume, etc).