ATV 4K is a Scam! Not Truly Delivering 4k/HDR

[Agent2015]

It's a disaster for Apple as I too was in all and replacing old DVDs with iTunes but no way now.

I am sort of on the fence on whether to convert my old dvd collection to iTunes. But for now unless I come across an excellent price for a movie on iTunes, I'll keep the .mkv version running on my Plex server that I access via the Plex app on the ATV. For new movies my tendency of late is purchase directly in iTunes or via codes if available. Movies Anywhere has sweetened that conduit nicely.

By the way BODYBUILDERPAUL, 12,000 annual miles is fantastic! My current mix is about 80%/20% road to mtb. As you know it's not a matter of whether you will crash but when you will crash! lol

 

[BODYBUILDERPAUL]

I am sort of on the fence on whether to convert my old dvd collection to iTunes. But for now unless I come across an excellent price for a movie on iTunes, I'll keep the .mkv version running on my Plex server that I access via the Plex app on the ATV. For new movies my tendency of late is purchase directly in iTunes or via codes if available. Movies Anywhere has sweetened that conduit nicely.

By the way BODYBUILDERPAUL, 12,000 annual miles is fantastic! My current mix is about 80%/20% road to mtb. As you know it's not a matter of whether you will crash but when you will crash! lol

Hey Agent2015 I bought an iTunes film over the weekend and the first thing I did was download it and backed it up to my LaCie harddrive TimeMachine thing! Then I wrote down the date that it was backed up - just in case!!! (I got the 40th Anniversary of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER with iTunes extras and it's been remastered! - I read the review on blueray.com which said even the sound was decent on this remaster. I gotta say that it looks great and sounds good too!)

Haha to the crash - last year I had a bad one in the dark - not on my road bike as that would of ruined it but on my trusty mountain bike which gets 95% of the use - my carbon road bike tends to stand and look pretty in my lounge

BTW I'm interested in the 60fps SDR or HDR 4K setting on the ATV 4K as most are saying that this is buttery smooth eliminating the panning judder from 24p film.

 

[Agent2015]

That is definitely the advantage of HD movies bought on iTunes in that you can back them up. Not the case with the 4K versions. Is file size one of the limitations I wonder. Of course an .mkv version of a blu ray can be well over 40 GB. Avatar comes to mind as exceeding that size.

I'll have to check out SNF 40th to check out the sound. I am currently working in Colombia and fortunately have a ATV4 with me. I have a new ATV 4K waiting for me when I return to the US. Can't wait! Although I may have to get a new TV to go with. My 6 month old 4K Vizio probably won't cut it. It will be an interesting experiment.

I know what you mean about carbon fiber and crashes. A couple a years ago I had a relatively bad crash on my carbon road bike. Not much left of the bike after I was hit from behind by an idiot probably texting while driving (he got away after hitting me). Most of my mountain bike crashes involve my elbows especially the left one. When in doubt crash on the left side to save the all important drivetrain! haha

 

[Peace]

I read somewhere. I forget where. But they said Apple got rights to stream 4K on IOS devices only.

You can not download a 4K video to your computer nor can you play a 4K video on a Mac from iTunes.

 

[BODYBUILDERPAUL]

That is definitely the advantage of HD movies bought on iTunes in that you can back them up. Not the case with the 4K versions. Is file size one of the limitations I wonder. Of course an .mkv version of a blu ray can be well over 40 GB. Avatar comes to mind as exceeding that size.

I'll have to check out SNF 40th to check out the sound. I am currently working in Colombia and fortunately have a ATV4 with me. I have a new ATV 4K waiting for me when I return to the US. Can't wait! Although I may have to get a new TV to go with. My 6 month old 4K Vizio probably won't cut it. It will be an interesting experiment.

I know what you mean about carbon fiber and crashes. A couple a years ago I had a relatively bad crash on my carbon road bike. Not much left of the bike after I was hit from behind by an idiot probably texting while driving (he got away after hitting me). Most of my mountain bike crashes involve my elbows especially the left one. When in doubt crash on the left side to save the all important drivetrain! haha

Haha love the crash advice - I must remember that!!! I hit a low level steel bar on my mountain bike in the dark at 25mph and I flew through the air - somehow the frame of my bike got lodged in my leg!!! And I didn't have my iPhone with me as I leave it at home to escape - it taught me a lesson to take it with me as if i'd broken my leg, I would have been in trouble!

I don't think that the 4K HDR iTunes files will be that large as they are HEVC files and peeking at 25-30mbps with an average of 15, so i'm thinking 15GBfor a 90minute film.

We don't have Vizio in Europe but everyone in the US seems to be impressed with the brand - we don't have TCL either or from the olden days Zenith never made it to Europe. LG, Samsung, SONY, Panasonic seem to rule here Now if only Apple made a TV OLED with ProMotion WOW!!! - Well maybe next year with we see a range of Apple Monitors for the Mac Pro, there may be OLED ProMotion ones that may be large enough to use as a viewing device with the ATV 4K connected and a blurry player connected. Maybe?

Enjoy the ATV 4K - can't wait to hear your opinions on it!

 

[mmm1345]

Hey Agent2015 I bought an iTunes film over the weekend and the first thing I did was download it and backed it up to my LaCie harddrive TimeMachine thing! Then I wrote down the date that it was backed up - just in case!!! (I got the 40th Anniversary of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER with iTunes extras and it's been remastered! - I read the review on blueray.com which said even the sound was decent on this remaster. I gotta say that it looks great and sounds good too!)

Haha to the crash - last year I had a bad one in the dark - not on my road bike as that would of ruined it but on my trusty mountain bike which gets 95% of the use - my carbon road bike tends to stand and look pretty in my lounge

BTW I'm interested in the 60fps SDR or HDR 4K setting on the ATV 4K as most are saying that this is buttery smooth eliminating the panning judder from 24p film.

Back them up? Why bother, they are DRM'd and can't be played anywhere else. Unless they changed it in the last year and if so, then I would do the same....

 

[BODYBUILDERPAUL]

Back them up? Why bother, they are DRM'd and can't be played anywhere else. Unless they changed it in the last year and if so, then I would do the same....

Hi MMM. They are backed up in case they are removed from the iTunes store just like my film getting change of distributor last week. It just means that i'll still own my paid for copy, so i'd enter TimeMachine on my lil Retina MacBook, copy it to iTunes and Home Share it to my ATV Hopefully, i'll never have to do that, but it's a safety net!

 

[mmm1345]

Hi MMM. They are backed up in case they are removed from the iTunes store just like my film getting change of distributor last week. It just means that i'll stick own my paid for copy, so i'd enter TimeMachine on my lil Retina MacBook, copy it to iTunes and Home Share it to my ATV Hopefully, i'll never have to do that, but it's a safety net!

ah, makes sense.

 

[dazultra]

That is not how it works no. If you have quick-start enabled, and an adequate connection, you get full 4k and an average bitrate of ~25mbps which is more than Netflix offers it's titles, for one. The problems come in when you turn quick-start off as it then caps the connection to 1080p and hence that smaller figure (~6mbps for 2.35:1 films and 10mbps for 1.85:1) even if your connection is fast enough for full 4k. So quick-start as a feature is broken right now.

The second problem is you have films that claim to be 4k, that just aren't yet - Transformers (the latest one?) claims to be Dolby Vision and 4k but when you investigate the stream, using the HUD in developer mode, the stream server side is SDR *and* just 1080p. It hasn't been updated to 4k on Apple's end.

tldr Apple's 4k streams are at least as good as it's opposition, and in Netflix's case, they better them, in terms of bandwidth. No, they will never touch proper UHD 4k discs, but in terms of streaming the quality is good compared to the competition.

No point being 4k if HDR isn't supported on (Tv's without DolbyV)
[doublepost=1509441085][/doublepost]

Just for clarification is Settings > Apps > iTunes Movies and TV Shows.

I just rewatched a bit of Ghost in the Shell. I think I was getting their best resolution on the first play through. It looks good....for streaming.

It can't compare to a full fledge 4k HDR video though (for obvious bandwidth limitation reasons).

http://4kmedia.org/samsung-travel-with-my-pet-hdr-uhd-4k-demo/

Play that directly to an HDR TV (across a network, thumb drive, NAS, etc). 1gb for 2 minutes 30 seconds is around 6-7 megabytes per second average (48-56 megabits per second).

I dont have Fast Start option? on my Apple TV 4k

Home Kit has disappeared too

 

[Jayderek]

I dont have Fast Start option? on my Apple TV 4k

the Fast Start option/toggle isn't in the video location...I believe it's in the General settings somewhere (sorry, not in front of my TV now)

 

[BODYBUILDERPAUL]

Well MMM, although you are truly one hard guy to impress, are you super happy when on Monday your wishes of Auto Frame Rate switching and SDR / HDR detection were answered in TVos11.2!!!

It's the FIRST EVER ATV to have frame rate auto changing and it's very very very clear the Apple really want to make this the absolute best streamer out there. And of course it makes sense, they've taken on Amazon & SONY management and they'll be paying hundreds of millions a year for these guys. And of course, it's an Apple product. It SHOULD be the best in every way.

I did post this editorial last week and it may answer your sadness about 4K films disappearing.
But remember, this lil box is only one month old to the market and it's incredible how the most severe worries have been addressed. AND Apple has done it with TRUE ELEGANCE. WHY? Because they've stayed to their firm beliefs of their original concept of leaving the 60FPS etc UI etc in default AND THEN let the tinkers tinker with it until their heart is content.

It's very early days. Wait until Christmas time and see. Remember the first month 4K BluRay was launched, there weren't many films for it - in fact 2 years on, here in the UK & Europe, there still isn't. Maybe 30 on Amazon?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnar...ovies-but-offers-no-explanation/#521e68b72f5e

 

[dazultra]

I was super happy! Switch instantly to match original frame rate and High Dynamic range.

Looks so much better. But still sit and sonder weather I’m actually watch HDR or Standard colour.
As colours do not pop out of the screen.
As they only distribute the DV material in DV. (There is no HDR version on there servers?) Am I just being downgraded from there inferior fake HDR to none HDR. Dose there content have a base HDR layer like 4 k blue rays? Apple should be clear about what we are watching!
Don’t get me wrong I hated this before the update, now I’m thinking do I need my 4K blue ray player
[doublepost=1509930122][/doublepost]And watching Tv with my AirPods is Life Changing !!!!!!

 

[bryan85]

Slightly OT since I'm using ATV3 but, it appears the fast start option is effectively a variable bit rate option. when you turn it off, the streams default back to the hard encoded drmi codec. Interestingly, I'm still using a 1080p set and am now getting 2-3x the bitrate because of qavc codec. I noticed the increase in quality a while back but had nothing to back up my suspicions.

 

[dazultra]

Is the qavc the new codec?

Maybe that’s why the iTunes HD streams look as good as the 4K content.

My Apple TV 4K running beta 11.2 doesn’t have a fast start option. Are my wrong ?

 

[z06gal]

Is the qavc the new codec?

Maybe that’s why the iTunes HD streams look as good as the 4K content.

My Apple TV 4K running beta 11.2 doesn’t have a fast start option. Are my wrong ?

I think it is listed settings, apps, itunes if I recall correctly