A few months ago I blew out our 4-5 year old Yamaha media amp that I was using to drive a set of 20+ year old Bose surround speakers. I took the amp to Best Buy where I had bought it back 4-5 years to see if they could fix it. Cost to fix was as much as replacing it. I had heard that the Apple Home pods now had software that allowed them to be used for stereo sound with music or TV so I decided to get two Home Pods instead of a new amp. The old Bose speakers went to the church rummage sale.
I was aware of the possible limitations of the Home Pods and the connectivity issues. I got them home and they set up pretty quick. I had to check on line to figure out how to connect them to the Apple TV but that is pretty easy. You just go to audio devices in the settings menu and click the box for the home pod speakers. I named mine “home theater”. I also talked to the speakers and got Siri to play music for me. Getting the speakers to work as a pair was easy, just follow the Apple directions on the TV screen. So for under $500 I got a set of very good speakers with amps. That is about what the Yamaha amp cost me alone back 4-5 years ago.
One thing I want to make really clear – these things sound really good for their size. And, these things sound very good regardless of how small they are. Do they sound as good as my 100lb JBL speakers, no. Are they as good as the replaced 22 year old Bose surround speakers, yes. But of course there are no speakers behind you so the sound is stereo not surround. I find that just fine for our purposes. The second thing you need to be aware of is that there are no, zero, physical connectors. All sound goes wireless.
Since the update to Apple TV OS three days ago these Home Pods are very easy to live with and work well as TV speakers. Before that, the software was not good enough. For that matter up until the update to Apple TV three days ago the Apple TV did not work all that well. Now it does. I preferred Roku to the Apple box until this software update. Now the software and the whole system seems snappy and fast and the little remote control with the tiny touch screen works really well. Before it did not.
Here is a limitation though. It is not easy to get these speakers to work with other inputs besides Apple TV unless your TV will connect with the Home Pods. My LG OLED is about five years old and I cannot get it to connect directly to the Home Pods. Maybe a newer model TV will but mine will not. So if you buy this setup and you want to connect to something other than the Apple TV box then you better save the receipt so you can return them if you want to.
Bob Nuttmann 