Apple TV is a premium streaming box without ads. The privacy aspect is less clear, but probably better than Samsung, Google and Roku that are all harvesting data.
Apple chargers more and isn't openly selling data (Samsung) or openly selling ads (Google). The commercial activity provides some insight here, that suggests Apple is better for privacy.
You can turn that off. If you don’t want the TV app to show new TV+ shows when it’s highlighted in the dock, you can set it to display recently watched content. And recently watched content will be app agnostic.
The feature is a little buried, but it’s a nice experience upgrade that is worth switching over to.
Hmmm, maybe I need to dig in settings. When Apple Arcade became a thing I found new apps on the Home Screen. I still think it's the only streaming box outside of a shield that is appropriately powered amass doesn't serve ads. And unlike the shield, Apple tv has a clear future.
Ahh. Yeah, when Apple adds a new app to an OS, they love to throw that thing right in the dock so you can see it. I usually end up moving a lot of those things out and I put my preferred apps in that dock.
I thought you meant it was changing your preferences for “settings > apps > tv > homescreen” after you installed OS updates. Sorry, I was confused.
How do you set up the IR receiver? I would like to use Linux if possible. It's often such a pain to set up things like this. Took me forever to get my Xbox controller to pair.
For paid options I see no sense in decentralization.
But a standard protocol for rental tied with some protocol for payments (like GNU Taler) to rent movies from any source with one tap and no install would be cool.