Apple TV (2015 Model)

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According to MacRumors, Siri won't be available on the Apple TV in Ireland.

MacRumors.com wrote:

The new Apple TV will begin shipping in nearly 80 countries at the end of October. The new Siri Remote is only available in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Canada and Australia. Other countries will receive a remote that replaces the Siri with a Search app. The new Apple TV is priced at $149 for the 32 GB version and $199 for the 64 GB version.

So I guess the best way of getting one with Siri is via Parcel Motel through Apple UK.

DubDJ

That seems very strange, especially switching out the remote. Disabling the feature would make a bit more sense, I'd be surprised if they didn't bundle the same remote in the box.

Creamy Goodness

Looks like buying one from Belfast will be the way to go.

horgan_p

I won't buy at launch , but the minute theres a way I can use this to play files from my NAS , I'll be replacing both my ATV2 with these. Looks really nice.

Branoic

I love Irish independence as much as the next bloke, but I'm really starting to wish that tech companies would lump Ireand in with the UK for their product launches. It's not like there's any real localisation work that needs to be done, particularly for voice features - our accents are no more difficult to understand than any regional accent in the UK or the U.S.

degsie

Wonder how Siri gets on in Scotland...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNuFcIRlwdc

Sad Professor

They aren’t switching out the remote. It’s the same remote. Siri just won’t be enabled. Ordering from the UK won’t get you Siri either unless (I assume) you also have a UK iTunes account.

adox

Whats the reasoning behind dropping Siri?

i might have bought it to see what its like but will give it a miss now.

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adox wrote: »

Whats the reasoning behind dropping Siri?

i might have bought it to see what its like but will give it a miss now.

Siri isn't fully supported in Ireland. There isn't much of a demand for them to support it further.

mad muffin

I was going to get it but they got rid of the optical link. It's the only way I could get 5.1 on it

Dudda

If they are not switching the remote then I presume their is no advantage in buying in in Belfast then as opposed to when it goes on sale here?

Do we know if a UK itunes account will be enough or will a VPS or similar to hide our location also be required? A lot of unknowns for Irish consumers.

Creamy Goodness

adox wrote: »

Whats the reasoning behind dropping Siri?

i might have bought it to see what its like but will give it a miss now.

The reasoning is that Siri is only officially supported in those 8 countries. Yes you can turn it on through settings but it's not officially supported in ireland.

Dudda wrote: »

If they are not switching the remote then I presume their is no advantage in buying in in Belfast then as opposed to when it goes on sale here?

Do we know if a UK itunes account will be enough or will a VPS or similar to hide our location also be required? A lot of unknowns for Irish consumers.

I doubt you'll need any VPN/VPS trickery. but if the remotes are different you'll have to buy from the UK.

jack presley

Hopefully they won't get smart and restrict you from changing the DNS code to an American one.

DubDJ

Seems like there will be two different versions of the remote that's bundled with the Apple TV.

From 9to5Mac:

The Apple TV Remote comes in two flavors—one with Siri built in and the other with onscreen search capabilities. The Siri Remote is available in the following countries:

Australia
Canada
France
Germany
Japan
Spain
United Kingdom
United States

Really surprised that they are going down this route, would make more sense to just let people use it with the limited support. I might just opt for the UK version, although I'd prefer just to get one from the Irish store like usual.

notahappycamper

Can't believe they dropped the optical port at back of the device.

Sad Professor

DubDJ wrote: »

Seems like there will be two different versions of the remote that's bundled with the Apple TV.

From 9to5Mac:



Really surprised that they are going down this route, would make more sense to just let people use it with the limited support. I might just opt for the UK version, although I'd prefer just to get one from the Irish store like usual.

It’s the same remote. Siri just won’t be enabled outside of those countries. I don’t know, but I reckon there might be rights issues with the universal search.

eeloe

No it's going to be two different remotes, one is the siri remote, the other is the on screen search remote.

Zymurgist

Does anyone actually use Siri?

I used it the first day i got my phone and haven't ever used it since

Creamy Goodness

Zymurgist wrote: »

Does anyone actually use Siri?

I used it the first day i got my phone and haven't ever used it since

All the time. Especially on the watch.

eeloe

Siri

eeloe

OSI wrote: »

Why? Optical has long been surpassed by HDMI for sound.

A lot of people have a lot of money invested in amp that's take optical signal for audio, and they might not want to upgrade their very expensive amp, sure they can get sound through the TV, but they will not be able to get 5.1 sound through their old amp on their new ATV

Blazer

Zymurgist wrote: »

Does anyone actually use Siri?

I used it the first day i got my phone and haven't ever used it since

there's a huge difference in Siri from ios8 to ios9. I can use Siri to call anyone or open any program without issues. Try to do the same in iOS8 and it fails miserably.

crc

eeloe wrote: »

A lot of people have a lot of money invested in amp that's take optical signal for audio, and they might not want to upgrade their very expensive amp, sure they can get sound through the TV, but they will not be able to get 5.1 sound through their old amp on their new ATV

A slightly different setup, but I have a sound bar connected to my current Apple TV with an optical cable. It means I can play music without having the TV on.

BigMoose

I would imagine that most people who have bothered to get a good 5.1 setup will have an amp fed by optical. Don't think my TV has an optical out to get sound from the telly to the amp. I also would play music using airplay from Spotify on the phone and don't want the TV on. Forcing HDMI only for sound would certainly stop me buying the ATV.

naasrd

Zymurgist wrote: »

Does anyone actually use Siri?

I used it the first day i got my phone and haven't ever used it since

I use it almost every day to schedule appointments, read and reply texts when I'm out walking, set alarms, make calls.

adox

BigMoose wrote: »

I would imagine that most people who have bothered to get a good 5.1 setup will have an amp fed by optical. Don't think my TV has an optical out to get sound from the telly to the amp. I also would play music using airplay from Spotify on the phone and don't want the TV on. Forcing HDMI only for sound would certainly stop me buying the ATV.

Most newer amps have HDMI that can be used to output muti channel sound.

Eire Go Brach

I'm an Apple fan. But is anyone else just getting sick and tired of the lack of support for Ireland or other countries in general. We are just becoming sheep. It's starting to wreck my head. I won't be buying an Apple TV.

keith_d99

BigMoose wrote: »

I would imagine that most people who have bothered to get a good 5.1 setup will have an amp fed by optical. Don't think my TV has an optical out to get sound from the telly to the amp. I also would play music using airplay from Spotify on the phone and don't want the TV on. Forcing HDMI only for sound would certainly stop me buying the ATV.

Poor from Apple to drop the optical

The Airport Express does have optical out. I use that for my audio AirPlay

StonyIron

Eire Go Brach wrote: »

I'm an Apple fan. But is anyone else just getting sick and tired of the lack of support for Ireland or other countries in general. We are just becoming sheep. It's starting to wreck my head. I won't be buying an Apple TV.

Even more infuriating given that they're pretty much based in Cork as European HQ.

Seems we're only good enough to avoid tax in. Still no stores or any of that and absolutely no sign of them coming either.

Lack of official Siri support is ridiculous too.

naasrd

StonyIron wrote: »

Even more infuriating given that they're pretty much based in Cork as European HQ.

Yeah. It's hard to get the head round that one at times!

OSI

OSI wrote: »

I've had it setup before to have HDMI going to the TV, and optical from the TV to the amp providing 5.1.

A lot of tv's wont output 5 channel, only two channel.

degsie

StonyIron wrote: »

Even more infuriating given that they're pretty much based in Cork as European HQ.

Seems we're only good enough to avoid tax in. Still no stores or any of that and absolutely no sign of them coming either.

Lack of official Siri support is ridiculous too.

Another example of the perceived technology backwardness afforded to Ireland while basking in the benefits of tax breaks etc. Amazon - no prime video/music, Microsoft - no Cartana, Apple - no Siri, the list goes on...:mad:

DubDJ

degsie wrote: »

Another example of the perceived technology backwardness afforded to Ireland while basking in the benefits of tax breaks etc. Amazon - no prime video/music, Microsoft - no Cartana, Apple - no Siri, the list goes on...:mad:

We are a pretty small country with a small population in the grand scheme of things though. Although it is annoying not having a lot of these things in Ireland, from a business point of view it makes sense to focus on the bigger markets first. What does bother me is when the delay is annoyingly long or if they product/service doesn't actually make it to Ireland at all.

eeloe

8 years later and we still don't have visual voicemail sure....

FourFourRED

naasrd wrote: »

Yeah. It's hard to get the head round that one at times!

Having the European HQ in Cork has nothing to do with product launch strategy.

Don't see why everyone thinks we're entitled to the same treatment as major markets like the UK.

"Oh but we have the European HQ in Ireland so we should get this this & this." Silly argument.

mad muffin

If they can ship iDevices to Northern Ireland and have an Apple Store in Belfast, I can't see how hard it would be to include Ireland too.

FourFourRED

mad muffin wrote: »

If they can ship iDevices to Northern Ireland and have an Apple Store in Belfast, I can't see how hard it would be to include Ireland too.

It's not about being hard. NI is part of the U.K. as we all know, and there are clearly reasons why there isn't a store here and get things later than the UK do.

We don't get it that bad. Last year iPhone was just a week later. The only big thing was the watch but that still isn't available in a number of countries yet.

Regardless of what the business reasoning for it is, saying that we have the European HQ in Ireland is not a valid argument against not having the watch released here yet, the issue with Apple TV and Siri not being fully functional etc.

degsie

FourFourFM wrote: »

Regardless of what the business reasoning for it is, saying that we have the European HQ in Ireland is not a valid argument against not having the watch released here yet, the issue with Apple TV and Siri not being fully functional etc.

It's a complete slap in the face tbh.

banquo

I read somewhere – can't argue to the validity of the article though – that the reason we don't have an Apple Store is their tax status here. If they opened a store, they'd suddenly have to pay a whole lot more tax.

Graham

banquo wrote: »

I read somewhere – can't argue to the validity of the article though – that the reason we don't have an Apple Store is their tax status here. If they opened a store, they'd suddenly have to pay a whole lot more tax.

I've read that myth posted here a few times over the years. Never once seen anyone able to back it up though.

Blazer

Its simply because Ireland is a Tier 2 country and it makes no sense to open an Apple Store when there's one already in Belfast.
If Ireland was a Tier 1 we'd definitely have one either in Dublin or Cork and there wouldn't be a need for the one in Belfast. Hell they probably get more people from the Republic going there anyway.

Branoic

I'm not mad about Siri being tied to the remote. I had been hoping they'd be working on something ala Amazon Echo - an "always on" Siri, with the ability to just walk into the room and start speaking a command right away. But I can see how the audio from the TV would make that quite difficult.

Creamy Goodness

Confirmation on the hardware being the same regardless of country.

Naturally the link requires a dev account.

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/643089809142120448

squonk

That's good anyway that it's a configuration issue per country rather than a hardware limitation i.e. shipping two different remotes.

I've been using Siri on my watch quite a bit now and it's excellent. I can set reminders, make calls, look up information and even respond to texts all from y wrist with very few issues. You do hit some problems due to the structure of Irish-english. We do have slang and verious ways of structuring sentences here that confuse Siri but that's because it's not localised for us I guess.

Siri localisation really should be on the 'coming soon...' list at this stage. It's been around for 4 years as an Apple product in the wild. Although localisation is continuing apace, it's very slow. Only 30 countries are supported so far. We're probably way down the list of upcoming countries. I suppose we should be happy enough it works for us at all, and it is getting better all the time.

My big question of the Apple TV is whether it will support passthrough for formats like DTS. If it does that then it'll be a must have device. If it can't, like the current Apple TVs, then it'll be fiarly pointless. It would totally hamstring applications like Plex or Kodi.

Tazium

VLC are discussing bringing their app to the new Apple TV. With this in mind and like previous posters have also mentioned, we may get additional format support. I expect it will depend on what can be achieved in software should the hardware limit native support.

I'm interested in Synology's DS Video app and hope they release one for Apple TV also.

Primarily MKV for video & DTS for audio is what would make it a launch purchase for me. I'm between a WD TV live (native support for just about everything) and a MINIX device (Kodi interface for locally stored files on the Synology) to have all the services I use.

DubDJ

Was watching this early unboxing and overview earlier. Some interesting stuff in it, especially the Bluetooth support for headphones and speakers. That's a pretty handy feature that I'm surprised Apple didn't focus on more.

The live video screen savers will also change regularly with new ones which is also nice to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTDvSqoWKhc

Narcissus

New Apple TV available next week, although no mention of regions.

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/19/tim-cook-new-apple-tv-next-week/

There is now an Apple TV section on the Irish Apple website, hadn't seen this until today.

Anyone still interested in getting one?

jack presley

Narcissus wrote: »

New Apple TV available next week, although no mention of regions.

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/19/tim-cook-new-apple-tv-next-week/

There is now an Apple TV section on the Irish Apple website, hadn't seen this until today.

Anyone still interested in getting one?

Provided you can still fiddle with the DNS codes, I'm interested in getting it.

DubDJ

Yes, I'll be getting one. Unless there's some downside to it, like not including the new remote, which has been reported by a few websites.

I think they've priced it low enough that I'll pick one up to replace ATV 3, which is mainly just used as an AirPlay reciever right now.

Sad Professor

The remote is included and is the exact same. It's just called the Apple TV Remote instead of the Siri Remote because no Siri support. See the Irish Apple site.

naasrd

Sad Professor wrote: »

The remote is included and is the exact same. It's just called the Apple TV Remote instead of the Siri Remote because no Siri support. See the Irish Apple site.

Wonder how the Siri remote would work around the border areas?