Fair criticism but to clarify: The default is that if you press home on the controller, it loads up the AppleTV app, where it will show ads for AppleTV content. Pressing home again goes to the actual home, where you select the app you want to watch (YouTube, Netflix, etc.). There are no ads there.

The AppleTV app will show Apple TV+ content by default, but once you've logged into other streaming services it will show a variety of content based on things you've watched across all your streaming apps. I suppose showing Apple TV+ content at all is technically "showing ads," but it's about as innocuous as one could imagine.

Right. I use the TV app to manage everything I’m watching. There are ads for Apple content (and extras like the football pass) but it’s rather innocuous.

I’m not getting ads from the lowest rung trash TV someone is pushing, random consumer electronics, things I’ve googled, etc.

As far as I can tell it’s basically the best experience on a modern smart TV without going full HTPC custom.

(LG was pretty good they’re getting worse with promoting things to you, it seems)

They do? I have not seen that on any of mine. We don’t spend much time on the Home Screen though.

One of my favorite parts of AppleTV is that it has those beautiful screensavers.

I would pay for more aerials. I don’t understand why they are limited to so few, and if I could eliminate N.Y.C./London/Hong Kong/SF/other major cities, and get some lesser seen areas, that would be awesome.

It’s quite difficult to get permission to fly a drone over an active LAX (to say nothing of Times Square or London).

The fact that they got to do this (and show it off via screensaver) is one of my favorite “we have unlimited money and power” Apple flexes.

The amount of time, money, and planning to produce these is staggering. They’re slow motion, probably shot in 8K, and are drone shots with expensive cinema lenses. There is probably a team of 1-3 people dedicated simply to the paperwork and approvals and flight planning, not counting cinematography/DP and postproduction.

I would love a reddit-style Q&A with Apple’s internal filmmaking team.

They’re not aerial, but they’re beautiful paid apps: search “magic window” on the ATV app store. They have a few timelapse video apps that I love to leave playing on my ATVs.

Thanks for the suggestion!

They add a few every big release. I agree I’d love more.

When we switched to the 4 from the 3, the 3 used to have a "photos of the day" screensaver, filled with an ever changing, curated selection of photos.

For whatever reason, they dropped that in the 4. All of the screensavers (as far as I can tell) are static now, which is kind of a shame.

I have this screensaver on my Fire TV! It’s kind of a super bitch to set up because there’s no UI for it, but if you can use adb, it’s a one-liner to switch screensavers. I think it guides you on how to enable it, or look up their github

Aerial Views https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B4PPSNT6

Not to mention, they just launder their selling of your data through Google.

If only defaults could be changed :p

owned an apple tv for many years (many models) and i've never seen this

There is a setting to choose what the home button does. My Home Screen looks just like a grid of icons. No ads or anything. The Apple TV app is not the same as the Home Screen.

No, the home screen displays ads in the hero unit for the currently selected app. By default the first app on the home screen is an Apple one, so going to the home screen displays ads on the home screen from the selected Apple app.

You can change the apps in the first row to prevent this, but by default the behavior is the same: home screen ads.

Ads, or suggestions for content you could watch on the device you just bought, one of the main features of which is allowing you to subscribe to content providers, rent content, and ‘buy’ content.

Calling this ‘ads’ is disingenuous.

Those “ads” are provided by the app. Hulu showed me Hulu stuff, HBO shows HBO, etc. just like when you open that app.

I think there may be an option to turn that off too, I don’t remember.

Honestly I’m never on that screen for more than a few seconds. I don’t find that problematic at all.