Apple TV Report

Post by **mattias** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 5:32 pm

reflex wrote:Don't forget that us North Americans all live in 4,000 square foot McMansions.

the only time i had an apartment smaller than now was in new york, but i see your point. :-) /matt

Post by **Chinese Belle** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 4:16 pm

My biggest qualm of the Apple TV is the file format limitation. It will only play M4V format. And within that, there are frame size and data rate limitations.

Basically, this version of Apple TV cannot support Blu-Ray and HD-DVD - where the data rates are much much higher.

I guess this is the downside for the exquisite GUI. But that too needs more tweaking (such more info about downloads, dates, etc).

If you are not an iTunes Store kind of person, then Windows Media Center IMO does a better job and gives you more flexibility. If you are an iTunes Store, then yes ATV is a nice extension of the iPod lifestyle.

.02

Post by **Will2** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 4:27 pm

Chinese Belle wrote:My biggest qualm of the Apple TV is the file format limitation. It will only play M4V format. And within that, there are frame size and data rate limitations.

I would be ok with the format limitations if the format would look good; compressing from DV masters I notice lots of artifacts on the Apple TV and basically my hopes of having my films on Apple TV are gone and I'm going back to DVD which gives a better picture. (unless someone comes out with better settings for compression).

Post by **mattias** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 6:48 pm

1mbit h.264 should look as good as dvd. if not you're doing something wrong. make sure you use h.264 and not mpeg-4, and enable multipass encoding.

i thought this thing was meant to stream video? like airtunes? aren't there any live encoders you can run on your host computer in order to get playback from any quicktime source? you'd need a very fast computer, but if you do...

/matt

Post by **Chinese Belle** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 7:15 pm

You can stream AFAIK with APTV. But it works better if you 'sync' it - meaning store the media locally.

I myself prefer syncing instead of streaming.

And yes, you really need another computer along with ATV to take advantages of a media center. Encoding, syncing, buying, ripping, etc - all of these are better handled on a powerful machine like a G5 or HP xw8400. Encoding with QT is faster but not quite as fast as a full time encoder like Sorenson Squeeze.

QT is threaded for 2 (not 4 it should be in order to take advantage of the G5's power).

To be honest, Apple is selling a 'lifestyle'. Meaning, their profit is not really with ATV but with other Apple products like G5, iPod, Airport and monitors.
ATV uses very low level components like Intel mobile CPU and NVidia 7300 video card. So ATV is not meant to be a standalone product. It is there to 'extend' existing products- which it does wonderfully.

Post by **mattias** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 8:11 pm

Chinese Belle wrote:You can stream AFAIK with APTV. But it works better if you 'sync' it - meaning store the media locally.

yeah i guess, but it seems like not having to reencode everything would be a huge benefit. what's the cost of a wireless hdmi system now? a wireless sd video system costs nothing, including transmission of remote signals.

/matt

Post by **wado1942** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 12:50 am

Yeah, I'm loving my $5 more and more.

Kinda' useless if it only does 1 file format. Anything you download would have to be decoded and recoded making the already bad quality even lower, thereby making it a moot point to own one because it's making you work harder to do what you used to be able to do instantly.

Post by **mattias** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 1:13 am

wado1942 wrote:Kinda' useless if it only does 1 file format. Anything you download would have to be decoded and recoded

almost anything you download is mpeg-4 already though so that shouldn't be a major problem. quicktime has a passthrough option for creating mp4 files from mov or avi without recompression. still an unnecessary hassle in my book. streaming would be a different thing.

/matt

Post by **paulcotto** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:21 am

I use my old G4 mac mini for this. I plug it into my HDTV projector with an HDMI to DVI cable and it looks great. I have a cable box that has 1394 out so I use my Mini to record HDTV shows and play them back later.

Regards,
Paul Cotto

Post by **Will2** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 7:19 am

mattias wrote:1mbit h.264 should look as good as dvd. if not you're doing something wrong. make sure you use h.264 and not mpeg-4, and enable multipass encoding.

Using Quicktime's NEW Apple TV export. No options are available just "Apple TV Export." I believe its mpeg-4 but I will investigate.

Post by **mattias** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 4:16 pm

Will2 wrote:No options are available just "Apple TV Export." I believe its mpeg-4 but I will investigate.

it's probably h.264, or mpeg-4 v2 if you will. the apple tv plays both. i wonder if it's clever enough to copy the stream from already compliant sources without recompression. most likely not though.

/matt

Post by **christoph** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 6:30 pm

mattias wrote: i wonder if it's clever enough to copy the stream from already compliant sources without recompression. most likely not though.

you can hack it to play anything natively that perian can handle (divx, etc, see http://trac.perian.org/wiki/SupportedFormats) although you'll have to crack open the case to install it until somebody found a way to do this over the usb port.

full story here (and 20 other websites):
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... id=2391956

also how to get the best of your DVD rips (and probably QT encodes):
http://appletvhacker.blogspot.com/2007/ ... p-how.html

lot of other hacks around, like how to put in a 160GB drive.

not for mom and dad, but those probably wont complain about feature/quality etc stuff.
++ christoph

Post by **onsuper8** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 10:18 pm

Mine arrived - just watched all the content from Flicker, Lost in Light and onsuper8.org podcasts, all on Super 8 - brilliant mini film show!

Post by **johnnhud** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:59 am

Check out applehacks. They got the AppleTV running full blown OSX . Now you can buy a 1ghz, 256mb ram mac for jsut $300. Plus think of all the crap people are going to start developing for it.

http://www.appletvhacks.net/2007/04/01/ ... -apple-tv/

can your $5 cable do that?

Post by **mattias** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 12:55 pm

so the fact that it was posted the date it was posted has nothing to do with it? interesting, but i'm still sceptical...

/matt