I do my best to stick to 4K Blu-rays where I can, but streaming now takes up the majority of my casual viewing.
There are plenty of reasons for this; quite a lot of the shows I'm watching right now, such as the so-far excellent third season of Shrinking on Apple TV and the hilarious HBO show I Love LA which is exclusive to Sky currently, aren't available anywhere else, and I could risk serious spoilers waiting for a physical release that may never come to fruition.
Furthermore, my schedule often revolves around sporadic trips around the globe to see the latest TV, home cinema and AV releases, meaning I'm far away from my Sony A80L OLED TV and UBP-X700 4K Blu-ray player. Here is where I revert to downloading shows to my iPhone 16 Pro or iPad Air 5th Generation.
Editor's note: Please forgive our senior staff writer's humblebrag...
As mentioned in a prior Adventure in AV that I wrote back in December of last year, I've dropped Netflix Premium in favour of Apple TV, and I haven't looked back since. Since then, I've continued to dig into Apple's excellent content library, and truthfully, I've barely touched Netflix.
Apple TV has become a close ally of mine on my travels, and I've been using it a lot at home as well, which has led me to a realisation that I hadn't considered before. Simply put, Apple TV just looks fantastic regardless of what screen I'm watching on.
I've watched the likes of F1, The Studio, Shrinking, The Morning Show, Slow Horses and Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars on various screens, from my iPhone's 6.3-inch display to my TV's 65-inch screen, and many other displays (OLED and LCD) in between, and the content has looked consistently great regardless.
This likely has something to do with Apple TV's higher bitrate capabilities. Whereas Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video average between about 10 and 25 Mbps, Apple TV averages around 25 to 40 Mbps; and with more available data, we get better quality video and sound.
Better still, downloading Apple TV content to watch offline with the high-quality download setting applied is a treat. Based on experience, content doesn't appear to be as compressed compared to the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, which once again results in a much better picture experience.
Now, I should address the elephant in the room (or in my instance, the plane cabin). I predominantly use the Apple TV app on an Apple iPhone; therefore, I'd expect the optimisation between the software and hardware capabilities of my iPhone 16 Pro to be top-notch.
Streaming on an Android device may yield slightly different results, though I have streamed Apple TV content to the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra (review coming soon) and didn't notice any sort of noticeable image downgrade during my viewing.
If you're jumping between screens at the same frequency as I am, then I'd once again recommend Apple TV for the best picture quality. Apple's content library has also caught up in recent years, so you'll find plenty of good shows and movies to watch as well.
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