With the latest update, Apple started promoting what it calls “Live Tune-in”, the ability to ask Siri to watch the live broadcast of a specified channel, like CBS, Disney XD, or ESPN. A terrific goal, one that would allow Apple to keep a viewer in the Apple TV ecosystem without having to switch inputs to their cable box to watch live TV.
The current setup is a far cry from being able to watch your local stations on your Apple TV. But it is a step, albeit tiny, in the right direction.
When I fired up my Apple TV and told Siri:
Watch CBS.
I got a prompt to install the CBS app. CBS All Access is not quite the same as my local channel, it’s more of an on-demand solution, and costs $5.99 a month. If you are interested in the details, here’s a solid article.
I don’t subscribe to CBS access, so I moved on, told Siri:
Watch ESPN.
This time, I got a prompt to visit es.pn/tvos with an access code to enable ESPN. I do pay for ESPN via my cable bundle. I followed the link, selected my cable provider and entered the access code. I was then taken to another screen where I had to login to my cable provider account. Success, they recognized my account!
I headed back to my Apple TV, again told Siri:
Watch ESPN.
This time, the Watch ESPN app fired up and, lo and behold, Sports Center appeared. Live. So that’s good. But.
The video quality was like a bad hotel feed. Lots of blotchiness, as if the signal was being constantly reencoded and decoded, leaving some bits on the floor in the process. It also seemed to be just a bit zoomed in, clipping the edges. This is the sort of experience you used to get when HD first emerged from the caves and you had to do a lot of fiddling with your TV to find the signal that looked the best. Nowhere near the quality of the signal I get on my direct cable feed.
Is this fixable? Certainly. We’re in the early adopter days, all this is still being worked out.
To be clear, I absolutely love my Apple TV. I own three of them and take one with me when I travel. A terrific solution. It’s just that live TV is not there yet. Lots of problems to solve, including pricing/validation issues. For example, if I pay my cable company for CBS, do I have to pay CBS again to watch it on Apple TV?
We’re in an awkward adolescent stage. I look forward to the future when TV is all grown up.
Update: Reader Jack Brewster pointed out this Glenn Fleishman Macworld article on a way to grab over-the-air local channel signals and feed them to your Apple TV. Worth a read.
It’s not cord cutting if you’re still signed up for cable. Best bet is to wait and see what Apple comes out with as a service offering one day, or wait for some of the upstart streaming services to come out with Apple TV apps.
We get live CBS, FOX and NBC, plus about 100 other cable channels for $55/month through Playstation Vue, including ESPN and local regional sports channels. ABC is provided, but On-Demand only. I have two of the newest Apple TVs sitting almost completely idle, and we are using Gen 2 Amazon Fire TVs in those rooms instead, just because of the availability of the Vue app.
A Vue app on Apple TV, with universal search of live programming + cloud DVR recordings would be the absolute killer app.
Please stop with the “early adopter” excuse. This is the 4th generation Apple TV. Live TV apps are new to the device but not to iOS. Apple has had years to get this right, same as Microsoft had years to get tablets right before launching their own. At the very least, it’s been months since live TV apps were available on Apple TV, and it’s still like this.
That’s not to say there is no excuse for this. The real problem is dealing with all the cable/satellite companies and their lock on the TV industry. The FCC may break that lock, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Regardless, Apple should at least have a better, unified way of validating live TV apps instead of doing each one individually every month from a separate device with a web browser. That’s right, you will have to do this every month. I’ve been doing this with live TV apps (Food Network, HGTV, etc.) since December. It could at least send the link to my iPad or give a QR code. But no, I have to type the URL manually and bookmark it for later, which I figured out after having to revalidate them all the next month. Such a hassle. I don’t even bother anymore,
‘Apps’ by TV broadcasters in general suck big time. Apart from the user interface sucking, the content being extremely poor i.e. not complete many also deliberately disable support for AirPlay. (I am obviously referring to iPhone and iPad use in this case of AirPlay.)
However a surprising omission of this article was the failure to discuss the Channels app for AppleTV4. This app works in-conjunction with a SiliconDust HDHomeRun network tuner to let you view live TV. Since that is the title of this article it is as I say a surprising omission.
See https://getchannels.com
Even better rather than being US only Channels works worldwide. (Sadly another failing of TV broadcasters is not only limiting their service to the US but leaving things to their even worse international partners.) When are these idiots going to realise that the Internet is a global network, and so are hint hint Torrents. iTunes would never have been such a success in the first place if Apple had not had the smarts to make it available to much of the world.
That’s up to the cable company or channel, isn’t it? On my iPad I had to authenticate once to my cable company. Not once per month, just once.
Don’t get me wrong, the app pisses me off. Poor typography choices, the guide shifting while scrolling as channel logos are loaded lazily and not cached, terrible search. However, the basic watching technology is as good as my cable box.
Apple’s barely involved in this process. Maybe they should be more involved, but since they’re not…
Wow, you tried two services, only viewed one, and passed summary judgment?! Thanks for wasting both our time!
Yes, it is up to the cable company, which is why I blame them for being the real problem. I’m on Verizon FiOS with monthly billing, which so far requires revalidating channels every month. I’m sure it varies with other providers and billing cycles, which is another reason Apple should get involved and unify the process. If Apple wants apps to be “the future of TV,” then they need to make it a future that works better than the present.
Moreover, Dave is just flat out wrong on ESPN. It has supports HD and 60fps. It’s super-sharp, the same as cable. I don’t know why he’s getting a subpar experience (slow network connection?), but that doesn’t match mine.
I’m pretty happy with live TV on Apple TV where it’s offered. MLB.TV also has 60fps, which is great.
Agreed. ESPN is crystal clear on my AppleTV 4
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