LOL. This statement couldn't be further from the truth. The truth is a small minority of message boards posters, technology geeks, and videophiles want 1080p (blu ray). The FACT is that the sales figures are making it painfully clear, that even at $200 (and less), the average public doesn't care about 1080p content (blu ray) at all.
I don't think you've looked much outside these Apple forums then. Blu-Ray is currently being adopted at a much faster pace than the DVD was when it was first introduced. So how you can possibly suggest the public doesn't want it, I don't know other than the typical ignorance of all things outside Apple I find on these forums on a near daily basis.
Apple is not going to push any technology that either doesn't already have a mainstream market demand .. or that doesn't in some way create a competitive advantage for them. Blu ray has no mainstream demand whatsoever.
The no mainstream bit is total bologna (see above). The truth is Apple doesn't want to support Blu-ray because it conflicts with their own HD movie rentals and tv show sales (and they probably have more plans over time with iTunes). That's money straight into their pockets. And Apple has proven time and time again, that it acts only out of the interests of their wallets. They don't care about consumer desires, be it mid-range towers or OS X Blu-ray movie support. They only care about maximizing profit and often emphasizing form (Steve seems obsessed with 'thin') over function.
And the technology provides Apple with no unique competitive advantage (think technology lock in). Hence we see blu ray on 0 Apple products.
Read: Blu-ray offers Apple no barrels of money so why bother with it even if ticks off a few non-fanboys that look outside of iTunes once in awhile. Never mind that you cannot buy HD movies even at 720P on iTunes yet, only rent. Even then, I could not rent the so-so Indiana Jones Crystal Skull movie on my AppleTV for reasons unknown, only in SD and only after over 30 days from when the DVD was released.
And while some of you might not be able to tell a DVD from a Blu-ray disc on your 24" monitors at 12 feet away, it's near earth shattering noticeable on a 93" screen at 8 feet, even with a 720P projector (and even with an ATV 720P HD rental for that matter; both look leaps and bounds better than DVD). That same projector/screen combo I bought for over $2000 a year and a half ago can now be had for around $1200 total, maybe less, which is about the same as a so-so brand 48" flat-screen. It simply requires lower room lighting and slightly more initial set-up time.
If I understand this correctly, the TV Setting of 1080P means the AppleTV will UP-CONVERT to 1080P, Right? If so, why can't it support full HD as the input source?
Thanks,
AppleTV has two major problems. One is its hardware isn't really up to the task of decoding 1080P video. It only has a 1GHz processor off the Pentium M line, if I remember correctly and so compression would have to be light to even hope for it to work. The other problem is bandwidth in delivering movies. Apple is mostly interested in selling you stuff. They don't care about you encoding your own stuff and don't support it. They don't support 3rd party services unless they have a deal with them (e.g. You Tube) or we'd have official support for Boxee or any of its derivative sources by now (like Hulu). The amount of bandwidth needed to transfer a 1080P movie (even highly compressed, which is probably a non-option for today's ATV hardware) is pretty high. With a 5Mbit connection, I can just barely watch a 720P compressed movie in near real time (1-2 minute delay on average before it says I can start watching). With 1080P, I'd probably have to wait for 1/3 or more of the movie to download before I could even hope to start watching it and that's assuming it isn't constantly breaking up due to a lack of processing power to handle it.
Really, 720P HD movies look pretty darn good on my 93" screen at a mere 8 feet (better than anything on cable including HDNet, which is by far cable's best HD station in terms of quality). I really don't see a strong need for 1080P unless you have much larger screen sizes. I really do think most people simply have this "bigger is better" notion of numbers in their head. And sure if you have a 200" screen at 12 feet even, I fully understand why you'd want 1080P and I certainly would want it for actually BUYING movies (archiving). But for rentals, the vast majority of people out there should be happy with Apple's quality for HD movies. But the bigger is better notion means even people with 20" monitors won't be happy because they have it in their mind that 1080P is where it's at. I'm sure Sony loves that notion, though.
Even if future ATV hardware makes 1080P a breeze and you don't mind longer downloads or assume the average Internet connection will improve in the next few years, it'll create yet ANOTHER problem in that 1080P movies would be completely incompatible with current ATV hardware, resulting in the need to carry every HD movie rental TWICE *or* abandon the entire current ATV user base. Maybe Apple should have planned ahead a little better and included beefier hardware from the start. I'm sure they were thinking cost advantage at the time, but technology things and prices change quickly whereas video standards like 1080P will probably be around for a LONG time.
