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I LOVE THIS DAMN THING!!! (Apple TV) (UPDATED with pic comparisons)

MovieCutter

MovieCutter

macrumors 68040
Original poster
May 3, 2005
3,342
2
Washington, DC
This thing is amazing. I have a 50" Samsung HDTV and this thing just ROCKS!!! It has a great sound system, picture quality, and it plays everything streaming beautifully off my 2TB iTunes HDD containing all of my 300 DVDs, 12,000 songs, an 10,000+ pictures...It simplifies life beyond all belief. I LOVE IT!!! (just thought I'd throw that out there)

EDIT: ADDED COMPARISON PICS!!!

Ok, so I set up my Nikon D50 directly in front of my Samsung 50" DLP HDTV. DVD source is a Samsung upconvert DVD player connected via HDMI. ?TV is also connected via HDMI. HDMI brightness setting is HIGH on ?TV. Movie is Serenity, taken a few shots to compare and contrast. ?TV is streaming a 2500 kbps encoded H264 file using HandBrake and the DVD player is playing the standard DVD...

DVD still 1
DVD.jpg

?TV Still 1
Apple.jpg

DVD Still 2
DVD_2.jpg

?TV Still 2
Apple_2.jpg

DVD Still 3
DVD_3.jpg

?TV Still 3
Apple_3.jpg

DVD Still 4
DVD_4.jpg

?TV Still 4
Apple_4.jpg


So it's not the greatest way to compare quality, but it's all I got at the moment. The only thing I'm noticing looking at the pics side by side is that the DVD has deeper blacks which also seems to be hiding more details. But either way, I do notice artifcating and blocking when looking close up (3 feet) on the ?TV version, but I may just up the bitrate on my rips to compensate, but honestly...if I were to show this to anyone else, they wouldn't notice the difference. SO take it for what it's worth, I'm ecstatically happy!!!
 
Are those DVD's personal Rips or did you buy them off of iTunes movie store? And if you ripped them yourself what format?
 
I've never seen you so happy Lol! I assume you ripped those DVDs (I hope) that would be an awful lot of money to pump into DVDs that are just in digital format imo
 
Let's just say Handbrake is my best friend and has been for the past 4-5 months since iTv/AppleTV was announced. All my personal DVDs though...yeah, I'm kind of sick in the head when it comes to my movie collection. But my girlfriend totally digs the fact that I can have ALL of my DVDs at the command of my Apple Remote!!!
 
On top of that...watching Pirates of the Caribbean purchased from iTunes actually looks pretty good on my 50". I've had 2 bottles of wine...but I'll post comparison pics between Apple TV and my upconverting Samsung DVD player tomorrow.
 
MovieCutter Would You Check Out An AppleTV Compatible Clip I Just Made With HC7?

I just shot, edited and exported a brief 1 min piece for AppleTV. But I don't have one. It's 13MB. Would you mind downloading and trying to play it on your AppleTV please? It's not posted yet. But will be soon and I'll let you know when. Thanks.
 
please do post some comparisons, i'd be really interested to see this. Im on the fence as to wether or not I should get one.
 
MovieCutter said:
On top of that...watching Pirates of the Caribbean purchased from iTunes actually looks pretty good on my 50". I've had 2 bottles of wine...but I'll post comparison pics between Apple TV and my upconverting Samsung DVD player tomorrow.
Click to expand...


After 2 bottles of wine can you tell the difference between Pirates on a 50" and dragnet on an old tube box?

:D

j/k
 
MovieCutter said:
Let's just say Handbrake is my best friend and has been for the past 4-5 months since iTv/AppleTV was announced. All my personal DVDs though...yeah, I'm kind of sick in the head when it comes to my movie collection. But my girlfriend totally digs the fact that I can have ALL of my DVDs at the command of my Apple Remote!!!
Click to expand...

A few ?s when you get the chance.

1. Did you rip as Mpeg-4 or H.264. Please give tell us your personal HB settings. The more details the better. I know there is a lot of opinion out there, bitrate, 720 or 640 size, frame rate etc.

2. With 300 DVDs, how does it appear in :apple:tv. I have maybe 20 movies ripped but not added to iTunes on my Mini. I have them on an external in Genre folders: Action, Comedy, Drama, Suspense, etc, with aliases to those folders in my Movies folder home user. When I use Front Row I can browse by Genre. Does :apple:tv subdivide like this or is it one big list.

3. Related to #2, the DVDs that you ripped, do they appear with poster and data like iTS movies or just the opening studio credits, i.e. Universal, Miramax, etc. like in Front Row. I'm assuming you had to add all of the movies to your iTunes library, even to access them via streaming.

2 & 3 really seem like the hurdles in :apple:tv being useful with large collections, and integrating HB ripped movies.
 
if you are serious, then I'd like your advice please....

I wouldl love to know how you have your movies setup so that it works seemlessly with itunes.... what format is it in on your drive.. what conversion did you use to get it to itunes, etc... can you be thorough to help some of us out?

Thanks

Innhitman
 
I'd also like to know about the sound? Why would you rip 200 dvds and wath them in 2.1 sound? You're getting half the value of your DVD. Did you just throw out your center channel and rear speakers?
 
davede70 said:
I'd also like to know about the sound? Why would you rip 200 dvds and wath them in 2.1 sound? You're getting half the value of your DVD. Did you just throw out your center channel and rear speakers?
Click to expand...

thats the one thing holding me back. i couldn't watch a dvd without 5.1 sound
 
davede70 said:
I'd also like to know about the sound? Why would you rip 200 dvds and wath them in 2.1 sound? You're getting half the value of your DVD. Did you just throw out your center channel and rear speakers?
Click to expand...

Seriously, somewhere down the line it will be possible. It's just a matter of a software/firmware update. The intel chipset being used is capable of it. So if you throw 5.1 at it, it'll just playback stereo for now, from what I've gathered on the forums.

Nevertheless, I can't understand why apple didn't enable it, shame on them.
My guess is as long as they don't offer content in their store they won't enable it, or as long as no program like handbrake does it there's no pressure for them? Handbrake will have it in the next version so...

anyway, don't want to hijack the thread so looking forward to the poster's promise to post some sort of review today
 
Update coming soon...took a day off of work to keep drinking, chill out, and assemble/organize my media library (it's gonna probably take the whole weekend)
 
MovieCutter said:
This thing is amazing. I have a 50" Samsung HDTV and this thing just ROCKS!!! It has a great sound system, picture quality, and it plays everything streaming beautifully off my 2TB iTunes HDD containing all of my 300 DVDs, 12,000 songs, an 10,000+ pictures...It simplifies life beyond all belief. I LOVE IT!!! (just thought I'd throw that out there)
Click to expand...

It's nice isn't it? I've been doing this for the past year with an xbox 360 as a media extender to my 51 Hitachi. Media extenders are great! :cool: They are well worth the money.
 
MovieCutter said:
This thing is amazing. I have a 50" Samsung HDTV and this thing just ROCKS!!! It has a great sound system, picture quality, and it plays everything streaming beautifully off my 2TB iTunes HDD containing all of my 300 DVDs, 12,000 songs, an 10,000+ pictures...It simplifies life beyond all belief. I LOVE IT!!! (just thought I'd throw that out there)
Click to expand...

Good to hear that you're happy with it. :)

Your comment just goes to show that expectations are VERY different.
great sound system, picture quality
Click to expand...

Picture quality sucks hard. Not even close to DVDs and no 5.1 surround sound.
Each to their own I guess.
 
MovieCutter said:
Update coming soon...took a day off of work to keep drinking, chill out, and assemble/organize my media library (it's gonna probably take the whole weekend)
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing, I got about 30GB worth of music, thousands of photos and more than enough video. When I get one, this will probably take very long.
 
MovieCutter said:
Update coming soon...took a day off of work to keep drinking, chill out, and assemble/organize my media library (it's gonna probably take the whole weekend)
Click to expand...

As per my previous post, how are you organizing, what does the :apple:tv allow you to do/see to deal with a larger library, esp. for streaming rather than syncing.
 
Diatribe said:
Good to hear that you're happy with it. :)

Your comment just goes to show that expectations are VERY different.


Picture quality sucks hard. Not even close to DVDs and no 5.1 surround sound.
Each to their own I guess.
Click to expand...

I hear what you're saying and normally I'd agree. I mean I edit HD footage every day and am very picky about how my footage looks. But I gotta say...I was EXPECTING worse from this little box and it actually impressed me. For me, I have to weigh conveniance against quality. In my eyes right now, convenience wins hands down. Sure, I see the sub-par picture quality when I'm comparing it to HD OTA or other sources and standing 8 inches from the set, but seeing as when I'm watching a movie, I'm sitting 12-15 feet away from my television and just enjoy WATCHING it instead of nitpicking, which is what I do all day long anyway.

The convenience factor for me is priceless. This thing streamlines my workflow SO nicely. It's just much cooler than I expected it to be.

roland.g said:
As per my previous post, how are you organizing, what does the :apple:tv allow you to do/see to deal with a larger library, esp. for streaming rather than syncing.
Click to expand...

For now...2 TB drive FW800'd into my MBP. iTunes "looks" at the library stored on the 2TB which contains all my movies, music, and ties to my iPhoto library. I'll write a detailed description and maybe even make you a diagram later. I'D LOVE if ?TV would see a big ass hard drive attached to my Airport Extreme N station instead of tethering to my MBP. But I'll let my 8-Core Mac Pro I'm buying next month do all the serving of content later...
 
MovieCutter said:
On top of that...watching Pirates of the Caribbean purchased from iTunes actually looks pretty good on my 50". I've had 2 bottles of wine...but I'll post comparison pics between Apple TV and my upconverting Samsung DVD player tomorrow.
Click to expand...

that's when anything looks pretty good ;)
 
MovieCutter said:
I hear what you're saying and normally I'd agree. I mean I edit HD footage every day and am very picky about how my footage looks. But I gotta say...I was EXPECTING worse from this little box and it actually impressed me. For me, I have to weigh conveniance against quality. In my eyes right now, convenience wins hands down. Sure, I see the sub-par picture quality when I'm comparing it to HD OTA or other sources and standing 8 inches from the set, but seeing as when I'm watching a movie, I'm sitting 12-15 feet away from my television and just enjoy WATCHING it instead of nitpicking, which is what I do all day long anyway.

The convenience factor for me is priceless. This thing streamlines my workflow SO nicely. It's just much cooler than I expected it to be.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. :) The music part alone is pretty nice for a lot of people, including me. But for me it'll come down to three things:

- HD content availability
- 5.1 multi channel audio
- output switchable (right now the HDMI overrides the component)

If those three are there, I am all over it. At least they are pretty much all software, so I might as well pick one up for the music and hope that Apple takes care of the rest soon.
 
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