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720P ro 1080P or 1080i Need Solid Answer

Wicked1

Wicked1

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 13, 2009
3,283
14
New Jersey
Ok, so I have been playing around with all the different version and I am trying to understand the difference with all these versions and ATV1 and ATV2.

I have a 42 Plasma 720P TV, with an ATV1 connected, going to move to a ATV2 or wait for ATV3, not sure.

What is the major difference if any between all the version of 720, 1080i or p and HD on the ATV1 and ATV2

I am running a 2009 Mini with iTunes porting all my movies to all tv's in my house with ATV2.

Is there any one particular way or best in case setup I should be using, I am fairly new to the ATV but not new to technology, just trying to keep up with everything out there.
 
I'm a fan of future proofing, and by that I mean something that will go 4-5 years before the next investment in either time or money.

So I put everything in at least 1080i or buy it in 1080. This way I spend some time now handbraking and no time later on. Also I don't buy SD movies on iTunes but do buy HD ones.

They may be large files now but when The Next Big Thing comes along I simply hit 'play'.

Hopefully there will be enough outrage to prevent the manufs from ramming 3D down our throats any longer.
 
Here is the difference between the three major HD formats:
(I'm going to break everything down so I apologize if you already know some of this info)
1st: The number in each one of these formats refers to the number of vertical pixels.
2nd: The letter refers to wether it is Progressive or Interlaced. Interlaced video means that there are two lines, an even and an odd, and refreshes them 30 frames per second. Progressive video does not have fields rather it refreshes the entire picture about every 1/6 of a second.

What all this really means is that that a interlaced picture is going to look a little choppier than a progressive picture.

With 1080i you do get a better picture if there is not a lot of movement, however, if there is a lot of movement i.e. a football flying down the field or a high speed car chase in a movie the interlacing will drive you nuts. 1080p is the ultimate goal. Great picture with great motion.

So here is my opinion, if you have a tv that only goes up to 720p and you are not planning on upgrading anytime then stick with the 720p or 1080p do not use 1080i. Interlacing is technology that was created for CRT's and it is out of dated.
720p>1080i
1080p>720p
 
unless you get a new TV, there is no difference - the TV is going to 'down-convert' everything to 720P - the highest density it can display.

1080p = Bu Ray
OTA or Satellite or Cable = 720p or 1080i, depending on the broadcaster.
DVD = 480P

Any of the 3 HD Flavors are far better than DVD.

Personally, I can't tell the difference between 720P and 1080P - in fact, even "SD" is OK with me as long as it is widescreen. Clearly, I'm not a videophile:)

I don't quite see your question - are you trying to ask about handbrake settings to convert DVD & blu Ray? Are you trying to ask about a new TV? About ATV2 playback capability?
 
I've ripped all of my DVD's to SD. I've ripped all of my Blu-Ray's to 720p because at the moment that is all that ATV's can handle. I'm hoping for a 1080p ATV3 next month (one could wish). I know I'll have to re-rip all of my 720's into 1080's then but that is a fixed amount of time and I'm willing to wait to do it. I share everything via iTunes and there is no 1080p tag yet for iTunes, just HD which is 720p in their world. Thus until iTunes and ATV are fully supporting 1080p, neither am I.
 
CylonGlitch said:
I've ripped all of my DVD's to SD.
Click to expand...

I should hope so.

There's no point in upconverting them to a higher pixel resolution with Handbrake or the like, anyway - there's no picture benefit whatsoever and the resultant file would just take up more space anyway.

DVD is 480p (i.e., Standard Definition or SD). You can't gain any picture improvement regardless of what you do to it.
 
comes down to space

I've been contemplating doing 1080p as well as 720p but the HD space is quite significant. For example Transformers is almost 19GB at 1080p and 5.3GB at 720p.

I do not like the idea of having to encode them again from blu-ray since that also means ripping them to MKV again, but the space does seem like an issue.
 
ryanide said:
I've been contemplating doing 1080p as well as 720p but the HD space is quite significant. For example Transformers is almost 19GB at 1080p and 5.3GB at 720p.
Click to expand...

6TBs of external storage costs around $515 now and is dropping: http://www.google.com/products/cata...=X&ei=a3ZWTp2OKMrbgQeDoLSzDA&ved=0CI0BEIIIMAA
3TB of external storage costs around $130 now and is dropping: http://www.google.com/products/cata...TuP0FsTY0QGyrLTKDA&ved=0CH0Q5Q0wAA#ps-sellers

If all 1080p rips averaged 20GB each like the one you quote, the 6TB external would hold 300 movies and the 3TB would hold 150 movies. In reality many 1080p rips will average considerably smaller than 20GB and some might go a little more than that. So a future-proofing approach targeting all 1080p might be able to invest around $130 or $515 to store approx. 200-400+ movies at 1080p. If someone owns 200-400+ BD discs, $130 or $515 should be quite doable... even if they intelligently go a little further and buy a duplicate to backup all that ripping work.

If they could put out about $1150, I'd probably encourage a 12TB Raid 5 like the one shown at: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/ That would get them 9TB of space for roughly 600+ 1080p movies with (RAID5) backup built in. Of course, this can be done cheaper than that for those with some added tech skills, but that is a very simple solution for those needing big storage at a relatively low price.

Obviously, I'm with danpass on this topic, believing it better to futureproof at 1080p rather than rip now and rip again later. If one went with the big storage now, they could rip twice- one at 1080p for a master file and another at 720p for current use- phasing out the latter when they upgrade the rest of their equipment.

To the original poster, if money is tight: if you plan to stick with that TV for a long time, 1080p or 1080i gets you nothing. Your output display is capped at 720p. The current gen AppleTV is a little better at 720p than the first gen that you have. All a third gen could bring for you is maybe the horsepower for 720p maxed out at 60fps (but then you'll want to see if your TV can handle that). So the key for you is deciding if you are going to stick with that TV for a good long while. If so, rip it all at 720p and maybe buy a second generation AppleTV. If that TV is on the list to replace "soon", see the above.
 
Last edited:
xraydoc said:
DVD is 480p (i.e., Standard Definition or SD). You can't gain any picture improvement regardless of what you do to it.
Click to expand...

There are some pretty good up-scaling DVD players that do make the picture better.
 
Another consideration is network bandwidth. I have noticed that my 720p encodes are a lot more sluggish when fast forwarding or advancing chapters. A 20gb movie file would put some stress on a wireless connection.
 
to the OP: If you want to stay as you are with the aaptv2 then rip to a max of 720p as thats all the aptv2 can achieve at the moment.

If you want to keep up with the times as you suggest and the option in the future is you may upgrade your aptv2 to aptv3 if and when it comes out, I'd say go full out 1080p. 1080p content can still be played via the aptv2 even tho its downscaled to 720p, so no need to rip 2 versions of the same content.
 
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