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Got a new TV, now disappointed with ATV
- Thread starter Gregintosh
- Start date
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I like how my ATV looks on my 27" 720p/1080i Olevia LCD TV. I hooked my ATV up to a new 42" Sony 1080p TV, and the quality did seem worse. Yeah its nice for streaming stuff from Apple, but the quality just wasn't lovely. Perhaps I will try playing some of my own 720p rips and see how the quality changes.
As I explained, cost is another factor
Video streaming still hasn't reached a standardized system, so anyone that isn't tech savvy can't deal with it. It won't be long now before there becomes a standard to make it easier for these people.
I'd be willing to bet most people on dial-up don't have a big HD TV and Blu-ray player either!
Ireland's usually well behind the tech curve (in terms of infrastructure), yet I had a 7Mbps (now, 24Mbps) connection and have downloaded several HD movies off Xbox Live; only took a few minutes buffering before it started playing, certainly not hours.
By the time Bluray has anything like the same market penetration as DVDs, who knows how fast the average home internet connection will be?
I'd be willing to bet most people on dial-up don't have a big HD TV and Blu-ray player either!
Ireland's usually well behind the tech curve (in terms of infrastructure), yet I had a 7Mbps (now, 24Mbps) connection and have downloaded several HD movies off Xbox Live; only took a few minutes buffering before it started playing, certainly not hours.
By the time Bluray has anything like the same market penetration as DVDs, who knows how fast the average home internet connection will be?
I live in rural Ohio and broadband is barely available. Hughesnet is the main option since we are forgotten by all the major ISPs. My family was on dialup until a year ago when we bought a USB dongle from Alltel. That is our only viable option at the moment, and it's ridiculously expensive. I guess what I'm saying is downloadable material isn't really an issue here, because very few people have the bandwidth to make it practical.
oh and we've had a big screen for years. They aren't as rare as you make them sound.
haha
wel, there is your first problem.
you are watching the apple movies! they are, what.. encoded around 3,000kbps?? how anyone could class that as HD i dont know (even DVDs are higher then that!). having such low bit rates will give you much blocking etc, especially on that racing documentary you mentioned because of the faster moving pieces (as im sure you know).
i bet that if you were to convert a DVD with handbrake, using the appropriate settings, it would look better then the apple HD rips.
the only way you will be happy with the quality, is for you to download/acquire a *proper* Blu-Ray rip and convert that to the maximum quality (i think somewhere around 6,000kbps). apparently that looks very very amazing
Well DVD's may be at 4-6000kbps but in Mpeg 2, Apple uses 3000kbps H264 encodes and properly done look fine.
well, it would depend on the apple hd rip, but generally I very much doubt it. Even with the best settings hb is lossy encoding from a 480p source. It will never be as good as, much less better than that. Even hb can not make something out of nothing.
Apple is encoding from studio sources that are much cleaner and higher bitrate than even blu ray. Very hard to compete with unless apple totally screws up the encode.
I live in rural Ohio and broadband is barely available. Hughesnet is the main option since we are forgotten by all the major ISPs. My family was on dialup until a year ago when we bought a USB dongle from Alltel. That is our only viable option at the moment, and it's ridiculously expensive. I guess what I'm saying is downloadable material isn't really an issue here, because very few people have the bandwidth to make it practical.
oh and we've had a big screen for years. They aren't as rare as you make them sound.
Fair point!
Different strokes for different folks I guess. Here, the choice of Blurays is quite limited (unless you buy online, which isn't much good if you just want to watch a movie that night). Even Xbox Live's meagre selection has more choice than the local video rentals here.
2 or 3 years ago, I'd have loved to have a Bluray player and movies available to buy; but now buying/renting online just seems so much more attractive an option. It just seems to me that Bluray and "the technology to succeed Bluray" are taking off at around the same time, which I find a bit odd.
I've rented HD movies, bought HD TV shows from Itunes, I also rip DVD and Bluray using Handbrake to feed my ATV which feeds a 50" 720p plasma. I encode at the highest quality ATV will handle. While there is some variation in quality from the Itunes store, there is no way in hell I would confuse for a microsecond any of my DVD encodes (or disks) for Itunes HD (although anamorphic PAL rips look pretty darn good). For the most part I consider them on par or better than my OTA HD encodes and even on par with bluray rips depending. Yes the bitrates are about 4500-5000 average for the Itunes ( i have not seen one at 3000 kbps), but then again bluray rips on HB are often about the same average and DO look amazing.
I ripped The Simpsons bluray the other day at 63% quality and it averaged 1.6 mbps out of HB which made me double take cause it looks awesome. You really can get a lot out of 5mbps--more than you would think.
Keep in mind too~5-6 mbps is the allowed average on the ATV not the max..peak rates are more like 12. Have you actually looked at a bluray rip or HD rental on the ATV?
If you want the absolute best, got 60+" of screen, proper high end audio equipment, proper room acoustics/setup etc OK bluray (IMO) but I love being diskless.
oh yes well a 720p file can hold so much more data/bits/blocks then a 480p file, but whether thats actually the case with Apple rips.. it should be more then clear that the two are different.
oh yes, the 25gb per month i get is pathetic and pretty much an insult to me.
that is great and all if your in a country that can handle the bandwidth requirements. over here in australia we are far far behind technology, the bandwidth required for downloading the movie, and the allowed bandwidth 'per month'. i get 25gb for paying a rediculous amount, and the services are just pathetic.
at the moment i could stream an Apple HD rip quite easily on my ADSL2+ connection, give another 50 people on the same exchange the same task and it would slow to a crawl. at peak hours you definitely experience slow downs and long seek times..
so anyway, for australia - streaming HD content?? out of the question..
i can encode a DVD in h.264, there would be no excuses then.. can anyone provide a screen shot between two similarly encoded movies (same bitrate HD vs same bitrate DVD??)..
where does apple get their rips from?? would they just be from a HD-DVD/BR disc? or are they sent some variant by their contacts??
and no it will never be as good, because 720p has more 'leg-room' for quality, the higher resolution allows for more bits to be storedallowing more depth etc, but i was more referring to the point that the Apple rips are bad quality, especially when in intense scenes and whatnot.
thanks for the comparison, that makes them sound a little bit better
however the fact that you say they look 'on par' with your DVD OTA rips i feel is pretty bad, because its HD! it should be much much clearer then the plain old DVD.jealous about your TV btw
work time now
Definitely dump your component cables on the AppleTV. I tried those out to see if I could get my Apple TV to display a picture quicker faster than over HDMI, but the picture quality was terrible.
I've been buying/renting HD on my AppleTV the last year and can't stand going back to DVD, the quality just doesn't compare. AppleTV HD is pretty comparable to OTA/Cable broadcasts.
I've been buying/renting HD on my AppleTV the last year and can't stand going back to DVD, the quality just doesn't compare. AppleTV HD is pretty comparable to OTA/Cable broadcasts.
er, but you said it could be done. No, apple does not get their "rips" from blu ray lol. The studio's have much higher quality sources than that
.Suffice it to say (and I can not say) that the sources that are used for iTunes encodes would bring a mac pro octo to its knees running hb.
Remember, its not just the output res and bitrate, but the source the encoder is fed. Garbage in / Garbage out.
My six year old and my wife can both use it, so it can't be that difficult to operateThe ATV is just not very easy to use. I tried it for a while, the network was always going in and out.
So I returned it and got a WD Media player. It's not wireless, but it does 1080. Load up an external hard drive and your good to go!
Saying it is not very easy to use because you have a network problem is not being fair really. Most people don't have it dropping out all the time.
er, but you said it could be done. No, apple does not get their "rips" from blu ray lol. The studio's have much higher quality sources than that
Suffice it to say (and I can not say) that the sources that are used for iTunes encodes would bring a mac pro octo to its knees running hb.
Remember, its not just the output res and bitrate, but the source the encoder is fed. Garbage in / Garbage out.
thats why they appear so 'crisp' then, because the source is much higher quality. but even still, the output isnt up to par with "HD". i wouldnt pay for them.
Yep. Its easy to test for yourself. If you have the same movie source available on both sd dvd and say ... a blu ray rip. Encode each with HB down to 480p ( the lowest common denominator is the sd dvd) so the two resulting output files are identical res and use the exact same settings (use abr for this test to assure they are identical). The one encoded from the blu ray rip will look better than the one from the sd dvd even though the output movies have the exact same settings. Cleaner higher res source for the encoder to apply it's compression algorithms against.
Originally Posted by DoFoT9
Sorry, let me clarify by OTA HD I meant my 720p encodes of 1080i broadcasts. These aren't SD res. Eg I'll record "The Office" through EyeTV at 1080 and pass it thru HB to 720p24. The file is somewhere around 4.5mbps and looks pretty good. A few episodes I've missed and downloaded from Itunes and I think they look a bit better...they also tend to be about 4.5mbps. The point being I was pleasantly surprised when I started ripping my blurays or getting a few HD files from Itunes here and there that you can get a really nice picture on the ATV that is very much better than DVD and not so far off from the BD as you would expect.
Having said that, I definitely wish the ATV could handle more--I would like the freedom to not have to detelecine broadcasts down to 24fps, or be stuck at 540p30 for broadcasts I can't detelecine, or jump thru hoops to get 720p off my camcorder etc etc. and its taken a lot of time experimenting with Handbrake to where I can mostly set and forget with HD stuff. I would like some more breathing room.
Sorry, let me clarify by OTA HD I meant my 720p encodes of 1080i broadcasts. These aren't SD res. Eg I'll record "The Office" through EyeTV at 1080 and pass it thru HB to 720p24. The file is somewhere around 4.5mbps and looks pretty good. A few episodes I've missed and downloaded from Itunes and I think they look a bit better...they also tend to be about 4.5mbps. The point being I was pleasantly surprised when I started ripping my blurays or getting a few HD files from Itunes here and there that you can get a really nice picture on the ATV that is very much better than DVD and not so far off from the BD as you would expect.
Having said that, I definitely wish the ATV could handle more--I would like the freedom to not have to detelecine broadcasts down to 24fps, or be stuck at 540p30 for broadcasts I can't detelecine, or jump thru hoops to get 720p off my camcorder etc etc. and its taken a lot of time experimenting with Handbrake to where I can mostly set and forget with HD stuff. I would like some more breathing room.
i never thought of it that way, i always realised that the higher copies looks much better when made the 'same quality' as a lower quality source - but never thought of it like that
makes sense.that is why the iTunes HD movies are apparently so good looking then, because they have come from really really REALLY good quality original sources, makes sense.
ok i see now. not having seen the highest possible picture on an ATV i guess i cant argue with you on these points. its good to know that the ATV is performing well though, even though there is much hate for the pathetic quality of the files (where i got my opinion from).
yes good point, with everything being "1080p is the best" it would be very hard to 'down-scale' everything back to 720p, the bitrate thing would be very annoying too because its easy to push 5/6mbps..
i own a 42" plasma hd-ready (1366x760) TV. i just rip dvds or BDs to h.264 mkvs and it plays everything (unless you use more then 4 ref frames for 1920x1080, more then 5 for 1920x800) and for 720p (9 for 1280x720, 12 for 1280x544).
it costs about 90$ and if you wanna stream movies to it, you need to hack it (easy to do) and but a wifi adapter.
it can play blu-ray files fine, though it will only work if you select the files manually. oh, and your only option for 5.1 audio is optical output. and it doesn't play movies from apple's store.
it costs about 90$ and if you wanna stream movies to it, you need to hack it (easy to do) and but a wifi adapter.
it can play blu-ray files fine, though it will only work if you select the files manually. oh, and your only option for 5.1 audio is optical output. and it doesn't play movies from apple's store.
My six year old and my wife can both use it, so it can't be that difficult to operate
Saying it is not very easy to use because you have a network problem is not being fair really. Most people don't have it dropping out all the time.
I disagree. I am very tech savy. I love macs, I love apple, and I love iPods and iPhone, always have and always will, but the ATV is no good.
My network is very strong, I upgraded to N when the ATV was giving me problems, it just did not help. (I was able to use my macbook in more areas, and with a stronger signal.) I really wanted it to work, I did, but it just does not stream 80% of the time. The only thing that really worked was resetting the ATV, resetting my iMac, and waiting around for it to restart, then it would work, but that was just too much work.
I'm glad you had no problems, I wish it had been as nice to me.
Sorry about your experiences monaklan, I have had no issues with networking on my ATV using the Airport Extreme.
I did have an issue with the AppleTV where I bought a TV show, and it would pop up saying its ready for watching -- then it would freeze. And when I restarted it, as soon as the menu loaded before I could do anything the same screen popped up ("TV show is ready for watching, press play now or menu.. etc.") and would not respond to any commands.
I had to do a factory restore and its been working fine since.
Quality
Onto quality. I just picked up the $98 bluray player at Walmart and rented Rambo. The quality is quite amazing. I am using components for this so only outputting in 1080i not p, but that will change when I get a few HDMI cables I ordered from NewEgg sometime next week.
But even with this, I can see Bluray as much higher quality than iTunes HD. It is a visual difference, but I guess it varies from title to title as well. For a true comparison I should rent an iTunes HD movie and a Bluray copy at the same time and compare back to back.
South Park in HD on iTunes however was as perfect as can be, though. Even the SD version looked fine (I bought 1 SD episode and 1 HD), but the HD was crystal clear and just mind blowing.
I definitely know its not my TVs quality (even though its an Insignia) because the picture on South Park, as well as Blu-Ray version of Rambo was as awe inspiring as can be.
I did have an issue with the AppleTV where I bought a TV show, and it would pop up saying its ready for watching -- then it would freeze. And when I restarted it, as soon as the menu loaded before I could do anything the same screen popped up ("TV show is ready for watching, press play now or menu.. etc.") and would not respond to any commands.
I had to do a factory restore and its been working fine since.
Quality
Onto quality. I just picked up the $98 bluray player at Walmart and rented Rambo. The quality is quite amazing. I am using components for this so only outputting in 1080i not p, but that will change when I get a few HDMI cables I ordered from NewEgg sometime next week.
But even with this, I can see Bluray as much higher quality than iTunes HD. It is a visual difference, but I guess it varies from title to title as well. For a true comparison I should rent an iTunes HD movie and a Bluray copy at the same time and compare back to back.
South Park in HD on iTunes however was as perfect as can be, though. Even the SD version looked fine (I bought 1 SD episode and 1 HD), but the HD was crystal clear and just mind blowing.
I definitely know its not my TVs quality (even though its an Insignia) because the picture on South Park, as well as Blu-Ray version of Rambo was as awe inspiring as can be.
I see what you mean, in that situation it would be a pain to have to explain to the family how to go about re-setting it.
I wish you could have it working like we do, as it is intended to work, as it really is easyto operate and a pleasure to use.
Yes we can, I download a couple full BD's every now and again, not hard nor that large, HDD space is cheap now
OP in my opinion Apple HD isn't the best which is why I have a Blu-ray and HD DVD player's as I want top notch on my Sammy