Privacy Tool Spotlight: Apple TV 4K
Philip J. Fry from Futurama once said, "Sheesh! Forty thousand channels and only a hundred and fifty of them have anything good on." And honestly, that's exactly how cable television was starting to feel. There were hundreds of channels, but very few actually had the shows we cared about. Trends come and go in mainstream media, but we kept coming back to our favorites shows like Futurama, Better Off Ted, tech and history shows, and yes, maybe a few things about cats.
So when it was time to rethink our "Triple-Play" cable bundle, we decided to drop everything except internet service. The home phone had already been forwarded to voicemail for years because it was nothing but junk calls. The people and companies who actually mattered knew how to reach us anyway. As for television? By that point we were only watching three shows: Two of them we could record with our over-the-air HDHomeRun, and the third was available for free on streaming.
That was true for most of the entertainment we enjoyed. Almost everything was streamed. We had been early adopters of the original Roku back in 2008, and it gave us the flexibility we wanted in content. We loved Netflix DVDs by mail (what an amazingly efficient service!), but we also got to try their new streaming service long before there were dozens of competitors.
Like every solution, though, there was a trade-off: privacy. We had done a decent job blocking trackers (more on that later), but we knew we needed a better option.
After reviewing what was available and going much deeper into the topic than we originally planned, we chose the Apple TV 4K, just like so many others have.
Apple TV 4K
We are not Apple fanboys by any measure, but we do enjoy some of their well-crafted products. We liked the lightweight MacBook Air as our travel laptop, and later replaced it with an iPad Pro that handled most of our needs on the road. For us, it's a practical approach: choosing the best tool for the job.
What we really appreciate is Apple's focus on privacy. It starts with a clean, easy-to-read privacy policy. Instead of a long, complicated document written in tiny eight-point type by lawyers to protect the company, Apple's policy clearly explains what data they collect, how it is collected, how it is protected, and how they use it. All of this is written in plain, understandable language. Honestly, that is refreshing, and we wish every company would follow their example.
We're not ashamed to admit we long avoided the Apple TV in favor of the Roku Streaming Stick due to price. The Roku devices are usually available for $25 to $50 USD, and are often on sale. What price-conscious consumer wouldn't love that? But we kept reading articles like the Ars Technica "Breaking down why Apple TVs are privacy advocates’ go-to streaming device" and as they point out, "Apple TV boxes limit tracking out of the box." For us, that is a pretty big deal.
So we headed down to our local big-box electronics retailer, picked one off the shelf, and paid for it with cash. Time to see what was really going on.
As expected, the setup was incredibly easy: take it out of the box, plug in the HDMI cable to the Apple TV and television, and plug in the power cable. Once powered on, the screen offered to set up the device using an existing Apple device with the account we wanted to use. Time to put the test iPhone to use! We unlocked the phone, held it near the Apple TV, and the setup kicked off. It could not have been easier. Once the setup was complete, it was ready to go with the Wi-Fi connection and test account in place.
Like most Apple devices, we first went through the privacy settings. We opted out of location services, analytics and improvements, personalization, app tracking, disabled Siri, and more. The best part is that we didn't have to go digging through menus to set our preferences. They were all in one area with easy toggles to set. Also, the Apple TV doesn't have Automatic Content Recognition (ACR). ACR fingerprints the audio and video frames playing on your screen and matches them against a database, providing a level of individual insights into viewing habits that the Nielsen ratings once exclusively enjoyed. It's not a setting to disable, it's just not included!
We then started removing the Apple apps we knew we would never use, since our overall goal was a "like for like" experience with our old Roku. Finally, we loaded up the streaming apps we actually use, including the beloved VLC media player.
Even logging into the streaming apps was very easy. Instead of typing a username and password one agonizing character at a time using the on-screen keyboard and remote, most of the apps offered a QR code option. This let us sign in quickly using a mobile device that was already logged in or could be easily authenticated with a password manager.
With everything set up, it was time to become couch potatoes (for the sake of testing) while running network analytics collections.
What We Did and Did Not Like
Immediately we noticed how amazing the picture quality was. In this day of 4K televisions, good picture quality is table stakes, but we were genuinely amazed. Next was the performance. The current Apple TV 4K is powered by the Apple A15 Bionic processor and paired with 4 GB of RAM. This delivers the buttery-smooth performance you expect from Apple. Both Wi-Fi 6 and the gigabit Ethernet options performed very well during our streaming tests, even when the entire network was on a VPN. In short, it performed exactly the way we expect all Apple products to perform.
Our main frustration was with the remote, and it seems the internet agrees. It is a small metal remote that can be recharged via USB-C, which we love. Most of our rechargeable devices now use USB-C, and we have a ten-port charging bank to support them. But when we say small, we mean it, especially for adult-sized hands. The remote is too small, slippery, easily lost, and symmetrical, so it is hard to tell which end is up. On top of that, the touchpad is overly sensitive and causes frequent accidental inputs. We quickly added the Apple TV to our existing Sofabaton universal remote, and that made the experience much more enjoyable.
Streaming App Tracking
Since we went "like for like" with the streaming apps, we already had infrastructure in place to block most tracking. That setup also helped block Apple tracking as well. One of our favorite resources for reducing ads and tracking is HaGeZi’s "DNS Blocklists" GitHub repository at https://github.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists#native. These lists are compatible with a wide range of DNS resolvers, ad blockers, and network hardware, including Pi-hole, AdGuard Home, uBlock Origin, and others. We have had these running on our firewall for some time, and they do an amazing job of blocking trackers at the network level. So whether you are streaming on a television, PC, or mobile device, ads and trackers are greatly reduced.
Final Thoughts
We liked the Apple TV 4K so much that we ended up replacing every Roku device with one. After eighteen years with Roku, it felt like a big switch, but the upgrade in both everyday experience and privacy was well worth it.
Yes, the Apple TV costs more than many competitors, but if you're serious about enjoying smooth streaming while taking back a bit more of your privacy, it's absolutely worth considering.
Remember: We may not have anything to hide, but everything to protect.
