My G4 Mac Mini wasn't able to play 1080p video very well because it takes a lot of horsepower to do that. I have no idea what the point of your experiments are because the only thing you're gaining is saying "look, I can play HD videos!" You're not getting any better picture on the phone, and your battery life is going to be cut way down.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPhone 3GS plays HD(720p) video VERY WELL
- Thread starter puercaeli
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
My G4 Mac Mini wasn't able to play 1080p video very well because it takes a lot of horsepower to do that. I have no idea what the point of your experiments are because the only thing you're gaining is saying "look, I can play HD videos!" You're not getting any better picture on the phone, and your battery life is going to be cut way down.
I personally don't like spending time converting movies for my iPhone and if I could have one single file playable on my iPhone and ported to a tv via cable or played on my mac I wouldn't mind
Good source video in = good video display, regardless of format.
And also, 720p is just one part of the equation as the codec and bitrate significantly matter.
So, while the iPhone obviously isn't utilizing 720p, it's certainly reasonable a good quality source video will look better at the final display format than not.
And also, 720p is just one part of the equation as the codec and bitrate significantly matter.
So, while the iPhone obviously isn't utilizing 720p, it's certainly reasonable a good quality source video will look better at the final display format than not.
So....basically your thread title is completely off. I've heard the device is capable of recording at 720p, never read it was capable of playing 720p.
It doesn't matter what the chip can do, you CAN NOT display the video IN HD! The chip is merely down-scaling the video. You will never be able to watch videos in hd on the iPhone. That's like trying to play a PS3 or 360 in HD on a 20 year old TV. The video will play, but at a down-scaled resolution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLZSn_6LPgo
Watch that, that WILL PROVE what you're watching standard def on the iPhone. In order to watch HI DEF you have to zoom in and lose most of the picture.
streaming the HD movies from my mac still doesn't work but I made it using diskaid, which is free.
I played with no lag a .Mov AAC, Stereo (L R), 48,000 kHz
H.264, 1280 x 534, 6597.88 kbits/s, 24 fps
.MP4 H.264, 1280 x 544, 24 fps audio only, stuck on the first frame
.MP4 H.264, 1920 x 800, 24 fps no problems
.MP4 H.264, 1920 x 816, 24 fps 7492.09 kbits/s no problems
Of course the played resolution is not this one due to the iPhones screen and the framerate is not certain, but the sense of all this is that you don't have to make multiple encodings if you needed to play a movie on your iPhone, Mac and TV.
I haven't tried with 30 or 60 fps because I still haven't found movies of this kind.
I played with no lag a .Mov AAC, Stereo (L R), 48,000 kHz
H.264, 1280 x 534, 6597.88 kbits/s, 24 fps
.MP4 H.264, 1280 x 544, 24 fps audio only, stuck on the first frame
.MP4 H.264, 1920 x 800, 24 fps no problems
.MP4 H.264, 1920 x 816, 24 fps 7492.09 kbits/s no problems
Of course the played resolution is not this one due to the iPhones screen and the framerate is not certain, but the sense of all this is that you don't have to make multiple encodings if you needed to play a movie on your iPhone, Mac and TV.
I haven't tried with 30 or 60 fps because I still haven't found movies of this kind.
Technically, anything that runs higher than 480p/i NTSC is HD. But when people talk HD, they usually are talking 1280/720p or 1920x1080p/i. So, in these respects, I don't think you can say the iPhone plays HDs.
Now, certainly you can play HD quality video at a smaller size provided encoding is sufficent.
Now, certainly you can play HD quality video at a smaller size provided encoding is sufficent.
It certainly is getting downscaled due to the screen limitation so it is not true HD but phrase 'HD video playback' commonly does NOT mean the player itself has HD capable display. So I don't think my thread is off entirely.
And whilst I have not proven it the TRUE HD video playback in your definition, this thread is still worthwhile in that it shows the 'possibility'(which I guess can only proven if Apple releases HDMI cable for iPhone or sth similar..) at least in your strict definition.
ipod touch 2g
sadly, the ipod touch does not play even DVD resolution - i checked this over and over - it simply is limited to 640*480. i would love not to have to recode over and over again.
the point of this thread should really be that the iphone can now store files as they are on your computer rather than a dumbed down iphone version. they can be played without need of recoding.
i will have to wait for the next ipod touch for some good hd and dvd resolution viewing.
sadly, the ipod touch does not play even DVD resolution - i checked this over and over - it simply is limited to 640*480. i would love not to have to recode over and over again.
the point of this thread should really be that the iphone can now store files as they are on your computer rather than a dumbed down iphone version. they can be played without need of recoding.
i will have to wait for the next ipod touch for some good hd and dvd resolution viewing.
I have to agree with you on that point. Ok, so the iPhone 3GS can play a 720p video. Who cares? The resolution on the screen cannot even come close to outputting in HD, the component out doesn't output at 720p, so what's the point? Lower battery life? Saving time converting video? The fact remains that the device cannot output at 720p so this thread just entirely baffles me.
have your tried outputting the video?
The iPhone itself is not supposed to support higher than 640x480p.
And in the mean time I believe not having to recode a movie is not a fail.
Okay...
To summarise the pt of this thread:
*iPhone 3GS can play the HD without conversion on its screen at least unlike iPhone 3G which can only play up to may be DVD resolution.(this has been confirmed)
*This thread was not created to imply that everyone should play HD video on their iPhone 3GS. It is already well known fact that well encoded video of 640x480 can have same quality.
New bits:
*Penalty on battery life has been found to be not great. It does seem to cut video playback time by about half(to about 5hrs). But considering original iPhone has 5hr playback and this figure is more than that of iPod Nano, I think this result is not too bad at all.
To summarise the pt of this thread:
*iPhone 3GS can play the HD without conversion on its screen at least unlike iPhone 3G which can only play up to may be DVD resolution.(this has been confirmed)
*This thread was not created to imply that everyone should play HD video on their iPhone 3GS. It is already well known fact that well encoded video of 640x480 can have same quality.
New bits:
*Penalty on battery life has been found to be not great. It does seem to cut video playback time by about half(to about 5hrs). But considering original iPhone has 5hr playback and this figure is more than that of iPod Nano, I think this result is not too bad at all.
I'm right there with you, although I have decided that I'm not going to have some HD-playing machine here. I have a Blu-ray Disc player for playing HD videos. I have a few HD TV episodes that I got for free, but other than that I'm not wasting the extra video space. I've got a single encoding setting that works on everything, and it doesn't look bad at all.
Since the videos are side loaded via Air Sharing they playback in the quicktime player on the iPhone and not the iPod application. Therefore, I cannot playback iTS purchased DRM video.
I did download several 720HD trailers from www.apple.com/trailers. Some videos, like Public Enemies, are in a wider format and play back at 1280x532. Up is exactly 1280x720. And, despite the limited resolution of the iPhone 3GS screen, the playback looks simply stunning compared to any video I've ever played back on the device. After all, most video is downscaled to fit the iPhone screen. Perhaps this hardware decoder does a superior job.
Until Apple allows HD can be play out through HDMI or component cables, it won't serve most people. However, it does prevent me from having to encode multiple video formats for different devices. One file to rule them all (battery life excluded).
I did download several 720HD trailers from www.apple.com/trailers. Some videos, like Public Enemies, are in a wider format and play back at 1280x532. Up is exactly 1280x720. And, despite the limited resolution of the iPhone 3GS screen, the playback looks simply stunning compared to any video I've ever played back on the device. After all, most video is downscaled to fit the iPhone screen. Perhaps this hardware decoder does a superior job.
Until Apple allows HD can be play out through HDMI or component cables, it won't serve most people. However, it does prevent me from having to encode multiple video formats for different devices. One file to rule them all (battery life excluded).
I played 480, 720, 1080 HD trailers from Apple and they all look the same, this is to say that the HD 480p trailers from Apple are encoded very well. Most 480x640 are not as good. I also noticed some uncool artifacts, lines not looking straight, so in the end I guess if you have time encoding the movies for the iPhone if you intend watching a certain movie on the iPhone's screen only, you better do that..
The way moving lines work is the same on 480, 720 and 1080. It's probably just due to them being anyway larger than the iPhones resolution.
Read: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1454
If it could output at 720p, I think Apple would advertise as such because that would be a great feature, no?
still, the iPhone is supposed to play videos up to 480p
Macs happened to officially support 2 or 4gb of ram but they really supported 3, 6, 8 gb of ram.
What possibility? The iPhone can not play videos in HD! It's as simple as that.
THANK YOU! At least someone gets it.
I feel like this thread is full of people who bought and blu-ray player, plugged it into a SD TV and thought they were watching a movie in HD. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
Some people on here are so hard headed. This is not ignorance, in fact it's the oppposite. People know it won't display in HD on it's screen, doesn't need to be repeated again. It's now well known the chipset can handle HD. Heck, I believe even the 3g chipset had 720p capability. It's just that apple doesn't allow this. So the iPhone CAN play HD That's what some of you aren't understanding. If someone really wanted to code, i'm sure it could be jailbroken and allowed to output in HD. It's just the way Apple labels things and locks everything down. They never tell you the whole details reserving features for future devices. I wouldn't be surprised if the next Ipod supported HD and it had the exact same chipset as the 3GS!!!
Component cables does not mean high definition. They are just a higher quality cable, where RGB is split into dedicated cables, rather than being bundled like composite or S-video. Component cables are capable of carrying high-def signals, but they also carry standard definition (480i/480p) as well. There are standard definition televisions that have component inputs for DVD players that have component outputs.