Ahhh, not bad.. I guess AirPlay in this situation must be nice to feed audio to a second zone.
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Apply TV 2 or New Mac Mini?
- Thread starter Jasontech
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Ahhh, not bad.. I guess AirPlay in this situation must be nice to feed audio to a second zone.
Its been about a week since I read about it, but at the time it sounded like 1080p content can cause some stuttering and sound was limited to stereo - both are ok for me as I'd use the ATV in a bedroom where 1080 & 5.1 aren't important.. But if it was my primary use in a home theatre then its a different story. Been meaning to pick up an ATV to try out it actually.. possibility of using xbmc on a $100 device seems like a no-brainer.
Also you can use direct mode and send the signal from the better DAC and take advantage of it in more than one system. I should mention that I got the 4311 about a month ago and have not had time to compare it's DACs to the PS Audio.
I have habit of using electronics in more than one system since my home office shares a wall with my main system.
Having photos, movies, and music from iTunes play on your system is one of the main points. Airplay directly from iOS is also an important feature. For $99, I would have bought it if this is all that it could do.
I haven't confirmed it because I don't stream a lot of Netflix, but the PS3 has been reported to get 1080p and 5.1 sound from Netflix. Maybe other players can do this now(?), but ATV2 is limited to 720p, so it will never have the same video quality.
Personally, I don't own the mini only for home theater. However, if you wanted to surf the web from the couch, pull up video from just about every source on the web and watch it, run slingbox, Eyetv, etc.. it has a lot more benefits than the ATV2.
So why get an ATV2? There are three reasons I got it despite having a PS3 and mini in my system:
1. Airplay from iOS.
2. The simultaneos digital outputs. I can explain why this is important for my setup if anyone cares.
3. Price
I can confirm that the ps3 can play HD movies from netflix, but mine is wired to my network. my problem exists when my wife is trying to watch something on netflix/itunes on one tv, my son watching cartoons on netflix, and me trying to watch something else in the man cave. I had lots of problems doing it wirelessly, so all but 1 of my ATV2's are wired now.
at any rate, the ATV2 is great if you have a computer running itunes when you need it, the mini is great to serve as that role as well as watch netflix directly from silverscreen (or whatever it is you have to run on the mac to watch movies). it can also serve as a PVR to capture tv programs....etc.
so in the end, its all about your budget and what you want to be able to do at that moment in time.
PS3 issues vs ATV2
I used to use my PS3 to stream Netflix as well. Especially after it stopped playing disks. If the movie was available in HD the PS3 played it with no issues what so ever. This was on a wireless Apple 'N' network and the PS3 was still only 'G'. The only real issue streaming was using any DLNA server, I found that Media Link worked best but still had issues streaming movies from my own network. If the movies were HD the PS3, choked, stopped, started, stopped started etc. If the movie was normal def, the movie played fine except for one small annoying thing, the voice and video where ever so slightly out of sync. just enough that if you watched the mouths move the voice started a fraction of a second behind it. Made it difficult to watch movies with lots of face shots and talking. Also keep in mind the PS3 will not play any movies purchased from the Apple store. Only movies you ripped. I heard that even the Amazon digital movies have to be played on a special Amazon player.
The other issue I had with my PS3, was streaming or purchasing movies from the Sony store. It could not even stream the trailers without stopping and starting, and if I tried to purchase a movie to rent, which I did about 10 times, it took over 24 hours to download a SD movie and 3 days for a HD movie. I can get a Blueray disk mailed to me from Netflix faster then that.
Once I upgraded to the ATV2 streaming from home network no issues, HD, SD all stream perfect and in sync. Streaming from Netflix works very well, although there is a second tread I have been reading about sound dropping part way in a movie, and I do have a similar issue. I had thought is was Comcast and bandwidth, I may check this farther.
If you are running an Apple Network and want to stream your home stuff, the ATV2 may be better, if you are on windows and have a Media server, then perhaps the PS3 may be better, Sony plays nicely with MS and does not play very well with Apple. There are third party Media servers, but in my experience they work but not as well. I tried 3 or 4 to get voice in sync none worked.
The other thing I discovered about streaming to a PS3 or any DNLA device is the software you load for the DLNA media server will mess with your Itunes home sharing, if you place an ATV2 on your network. I had extreme issues with the Itunes Library being intermittent until I delete all DLNA servers on my MBP.
Hope this helps
I used to use my PS3 to stream Netflix as well. Especially after it stopped playing disks. If the movie was available in HD the PS3 played it with no issues what so ever. This was on a wireless Apple 'N' network and the PS3 was still only 'G'. The only real issue streaming was using any DLNA server, I found that Media Link worked best but still had issues streaming movies from my own network. If the movies were HD the PS3, choked, stopped, started, stopped started etc. If the movie was normal def, the movie played fine except for one small annoying thing, the voice and video where ever so slightly out of sync. just enough that if you watched the mouths move the voice started a fraction of a second behind it. Made it difficult to watch movies with lots of face shots and talking. Also keep in mind the PS3 will not play any movies purchased from the Apple store. Only movies you ripped. I heard that even the Amazon digital movies have to be played on a special Amazon player.
The other issue I had with my PS3, was streaming or purchasing movies from the Sony store. It could not even stream the trailers without stopping and starting, and if I tried to purchase a movie to rent, which I did about 10 times, it took over 24 hours to download a SD movie and 3 days for a HD movie. I can get a Blueray disk mailed to me from Netflix faster then that.
Once I upgraded to the ATV2 streaming from home network no issues, HD, SD all stream perfect and in sync. Streaming from Netflix works very well, although there is a second tread I have been reading about sound dropping part way in a movie, and I do have a similar issue. I had thought is was Comcast and bandwidth, I may check this farther.
If you are running an Apple Network and want to stream your home stuff, the ATV2 may be better, if you are on windows and have a Media server, then perhaps the PS3 may be better, Sony plays nicely with MS and does not play very well with Apple. There are third party Media servers, but in my experience they work but not as well. I tried 3 or 4 to get voice in sync none worked.
The other thing I discovered about streaming to a PS3 or any DNLA device is the software you load for the DLNA media server will mess with your Itunes home sharing, if you place an ATV2 on your network. I had extreme issues with the Itunes Library being intermittent until I delete all DLNA servers on my MBP.
Hope this helps
weird, I leave TvMobili and EyeTVConnect dlna servers running all the time as well as itunes and dont have any issues doing dlna or itunes streaming...but again, anything dlna is wired....so that might be it.