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ATV 2 Limitations

I dont believe that the atv 2 has enough resources to stream or play 1080 files... As Che Castro said it has a hard enough time playing 720p files from IceFilms.... Which is a awesome app... When it doesnt freeze up every so many seconds... I am currently waiting for my Atv 1 to come in the mail so i can try to play 1080 movies with the crystal chip installed:) I will post results when it arrives:)
 
The current hardware is more then able. The 3Gs can playback 1080p m4v files without any problems. I've played back blu-ray rips on my ATV2 and it plays back just fine as well.
 
The current hardware is more then able. The 3Gs can playback 1080p m4v files without any problems. I've played back blu-ray rips on my ATV2 and it plays back just fine as well.

How big are your 1080p videos ?
 
They went through Handbreak real quick to make them stream-able. I didn't like the buffering with the full quality. But a test run of local playback using the original full quality rip went fine. Sadly, it was only the first part of the movie. The rest wouldn't fit.
 
Mb/s denotes bit rate, not file size. 50 Mb/s is 22.5 GB per hour.

Oh ok , but i asked him for file size, im not good at math



Why would Apple limit the ATV2 to 720p if the hardware was capable of more? What do they stand to lose?

Well apple likes to prolong things for some reason, they just dont release everything all at once like google does

Look how long it took for notifications


They want me to upgrade to ATV3 for 1080p and there going to get my money , cause i wanna stream icefilms in 720p HD

Thats worth it for me, as long as the atv3 is cheap like $99
 
I dont believe that the atv 2 has enough resources to stream or play 1080 files... As Che Castro said it has a hard enough time playing 720p files from IceFilms.... Which is a awesome app... When it doesnt freeze up every so many seconds... I am currently waiting for my Atv 1 to come in the mail so i can try to play 1080 movies with the crystal chip installed:) I will post results when it arrives:)

The inability to play 720p movies is a limitation of XBMC, not the ATV2. XBMC on the ATV2 is able to use hardware acceleration for video in x.264, but currently doesn't support DivX, which is the format Icefilms uses, that will hopefully be supported soon.
 
The current Apple TV hardware is capable of outputting 1080p.

Just to be clear -- the ATV2 hardware is capable of decoding 1080p to 720p but it's not clear whether it's capable of outputting 1080p as 1080p. Decoding is the more "difficult" part as it involves a lot more processing power, but there may be other limits to output resolution (eg in the video chip itself, or in the available RAM) that can't be got around. It may turn out that A4 devices can't output 1080p and we'll have to wait for an A5 ATV.
 
FWIW, MacWorld magazine says it does NOT support 1080p.
To paraphrase the article, the ATV is not for video purists who demand full HD quality, i.e. 1080p.
 
I dont believe that the atv 2 has enough resources to stream or play 1080 files... As Che Castro said it has a hard enough time playing 720p files from IceFilms.... Which is a awesome app... When it doesnt freeze up every so many seconds... I am currently waiting for my Atv 1 to come in the mail so i can try to play 1080 movies with the crystal chip installed:) I will post results when it arrives:)

My jailbroken ATV 2 streams my 1080P files through Plex.

It is not always perfect, but it works rather well.
 
My jailbroken ATV 2 streams my 1080P files through Plex.

It is not always perfect, but it works rather well.

not sure what plex actually plays at, but the server is transcoding the file as you play it on an iOS device (or android). so it's not playing a raw 1080 file.

the only time the file plays directly is on the OS X client.
 
My jailbroken ATV 2 streams my 1080P files through Plex.

It is not always perfect, but it works rather well.

Is what's getting to the HDTV 1080p or is it playing a 1080p file but only sending a 720p version of it to the TV? If your TV can show what format is being played check it. I bet you're seeing 720p (in spite of the original file format).

It is weird that there MAY be enough horsepower to dynamically downconvert a 1080p file to 720p but then someone made the decision to put a "gate" in place that would only send 720p to the TV. I guess that's a good way to sell the :apple:TV3 to the same people when 3 finally arrives.
 
It is weird that there MAY be enough horsepower to dynamically downconvert a 1080p file to 720p

the appleTV doesn't play the file directly, a computer running the plex media server (on OS X, windows, or linux) converts the file on the fly and then sends it to the :apple:TV
 
not sure what plex actually plays at, but the server is transcoding the file as you play it on an iOS device (or android). so it's not playing a raw 1080 file.

the only time the file plays directly is on the OS X client.

Actually depending on settings the Plex Media Server will send raw 1080p video to the Plex ATV2 client, remuxing it but not transcoding it. Of course, the ATV2 then scales it down to 720p for output.
 
The inability to play 720p movies is a limitation of XBMC, not the ATV2. XBMC on the ATV2 is able to use hardware acceleration for video in x.264, but currently doesn't support DivX, which is the format Icefilms uses, that will hopefully be supported soon.

Is there another option to stream icefilms other than xbmc
 
Why would Apple limit the ATV2 to 720p if the hardware was capable of more? What do they stand to lose?

This is the Apple way. They know that it can do 720p, but the 1080p performance might be spotty or dependent on a lot of different factors. So, they only limit it to 720p, because they know that it works. What do they stand to lose? Credibility, in that, if they tell you it can do 1080p, but it doesn't, how would you feel about the product? This is actually one of the things I like about Apple. If they tell you their product will do "X", you can bet it will. As for pushing the limits beyond what Apple says a particular product can do, that's what jailbreaks are for.
 
As far as I know, this is the current state with the Apple TV 2.

1.) Output to your TV is limited to 720p. This is true even for jailbroken units, thus even if you stream 1080p content to the ATV2 the OUTPUT to the TV will still be scaled down to 720p. It's possible that this limit is hard set and that it can't be overridden.

2.) The ATV2 can decode 1080p content, but many users have reported that the playback is uneven with slight pauses and/or frame drops (i.e. it's not a flawless, quality experience). It's unknown whether this happens because of a limitation in the ATV2 hardware (i.e. it may never be able to decode 1080p flawlessly) or whether these problems are causes by the format of the video itself (i.e. perhaps different encoding settings would allow 1080p to play without issues).
 
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