Apple TV questions

by Greg8642

Hi all, I’ve been into iptv for about two years now. I’ve used it through kodi, mag box, dreamlink, perfect player, stb emu and maybe some others I don’t recall right now.

In November I got a 4k tv (Black Friday). Since then I’ve had a lot of problems finding 4k content that I want to watch. I live in Canada, so pretty well all the streaming options available in the U.S. are unavailable to me. Netflix has some, but not enough, and google play has rentals available, and although pretty well all the new releases are there most of them aren’t available to stream in 4k.

Yesterday I got sick of it and started doing some research as to what my options were for renting 4k new releases preferably with hdr, and I discovered that iTunes is probably the best option for me here in Canada. I have an iPhone so I checked the iTunes Store and saw that every movie that has a 4k release was available in 4k in ITunes except for those released by Disney, which unfortunately includes a lot of big hits including avengers movies and Star Wars, but still that’s a lot better than my current options, or lack there of. The problem with that is that I don’t like the idea of buying an AppleTV just for that and then running everything else through another box. I mean the 4k Apple TV is pretty expensive, so what I’m wondering is, 1. what are my options on an Apple TV for iptv. 2. From what I’ve read you can’t use a vpn on Apple TV, can anyone confirm this. 3. For anyone who knows what else will I be able to do with it? I mean right now with android I have a slew of apps including kodi, terrarium, etc.

I guess to make a long story short although it doesn’t seem like I have a choice about this if I want to be able to rent 4k in the best quality available right now, I just don’t like the idea of paying that much much for a one truck pony and am Hoping for some advice. Thanks for any replies

stokedcrf

You can run a VPN on anything if you have the proper router setup.

However, I do think that an AppleTV will feel like a downgrade for you since you're probably used to the open ecosystem that google brings us.

For IPTV, 4k is pretty much not a thing. Yes, Epic has a couple channels but you have to remember that 95% of the channels out there are not even broadcast in 4k. In Canada we have what, a few sport stations if that? So I wouldn't bother with 4k for IPTV. In fact, IPTV looks better on a 1080p tv then it does on the newer 4k ones. (I'm sure you're aware of this though). Not to mention if you're an audiophile like myself, stereo sound just wont cut it.

As for movies though, why not just download them and delete them after. Essentially that's the same as streaming.

I've started collecting 4k movies with Atmos surround sound and HDR, but these movies are upwards 60GB in size. But, they are free. And they probably look a lot better than the content on itunes. I cannot actually confirm that, but I suspect itunes uses some compression anyways.

For the $200 an appletv costs, you could pick up an old junker computer off kijiji, toss in a nice harddrive, and store massive libraries of the content you want and automate it all with free services such as sonarr/radarr/jacket or whatever else you want to run.

Then just run plex on that computer and send your library out to the slew of devices you already own.

My opinion though. It's not perfect, but there is no great 4k solution for you despite the marketing.

raptor75mlt

you have an android box, ever considered /r/terrariumtv and tvtap.net?

Blue-Thunder

Why rent when you can build a server in your basement and stream your own 4k movies to your TV with Plex or Emby or Kodi? The amount of money you are going to spend on renting would be better spent on buying hard drives for a server that you can build in your house to store your own content that you can watch whenever you want.

As stokedcrf says, you can get remuxes, and they are HUGE, 60-100 gigs a piece. There are also scene re-encodes of these files, and thankfully HDR does recompress pretty well, so you can get smaller versions of the same files with almost the same percievable quality, from groups like IAMABLE, White Rhino, Terminal, Tigole or go for the super squeezers like PSA. Most of the stuff is available on rarbg, 1337x, limetorrents.cc, etc. Save your money, build your own server.

daneblade

MrMC is basically Kodi for Apple TV. If you know Kodi you'll know it. You can add Emby and/or Plex, local content, and PVR. I use the Simple IPTV plugin to pull in M3U streams along with one of the providers at /r/EmbyShares for movies to stream. If you have a lot of content you might not need those, but I prefer outsourcing that...