Macbook Air for Full HD videos and as a primary computer...!

[aleksandra.]

And I just noticed. Except for the slightly better processor(2.53GHz) and 2 Gb more Ram, the Macbook Pro 13" isn't(performance wise) really better than the air...
So why is the MBP supposed to be such a better Desktop PC replacement?
Even if the Air heats easier up, does that matter?

You're right. But it's called "MacBook Pro", so it just has to be much better .

Seriously though, if you compare XBench results for latest MBP 2.26 and MBA 2.13, you'll see the former performs a little (less than 10%) better in processing tasks. That's it. Not really something you'll notice with the use you describe.

Don't use QuickTime, and you should be fine.

 

[h1d]

Guess it's almost answered tho,

The macbook air as a main system is unrealistic due to the ram! That 2 Gb with 256mb shared graphics memory will get eaten up in minuets just by safari and annoy the hell out of you when you get bogged down. The ssd may help.

Really, just because you run another OS, couple Adobe apps, while watching youtube HD and running a fullscreen game on another display doesn't mean everyone needs more than 2GB of mems... Crap, I was using 512MB of ram back in Windows a few years ago and things worked. On MBA, I run an instance of Windows or Linux under VMWare Fusion and no, it doesn't fill up the entire 2GB to start swapping. Safari and Firefox can be mem hoggers, but, let's think about it, restart them every 30 minutes, and they will release the extra 100MB of mem they aren't supposed to be holding. And if it doesn't fix, reboot the machine every 5 days (I like to do so after using Yasu) to bring it back to 3/4 free inital state. Right now, I have Safari/Firefox and 3 more apps along side a Linux running (but this one only taking 200MB of ram) and it says green+blue in the pie graph has just about a GB left...

Apparently the bench marks don't think so, as the 2.13 ghz Air is still heavily throttled down to 1.5ghz!

Coolbook lifts that limit, and run the chip at full speed if you want! Which really helped me when watching BBC HD Flash on my external 24" LED.

It's true, CoolBook helps on that front. But it's better to keep the lowest Ghz (without going b/2) available as well to save on the battery/heat/fan when the full power is not required.

I would say you could make it work and still be very! happy with the performance if you realise their are some downsides, eg, limited disk size 128GB , no firewire and bare minimum ram!

Again... do you store massive porns? I have 3 OS installed, some 20GB of music and other stuff, no, I really can't fill it up... yeah, bare minimum, which is enough for 95% of users.

The real downsides of MBA is lack of connectors but usually a USB hub will fix that and the ability to barely play or not play full HD videos. (and the lines/yellowness...)

 

[Macintox]

+1. Even the LaCie 324 has S-PVA which although miles better than TN is still a little bit worse than a good IPS for color critical work.

Honestly, if the lack of input/output, limited adjustment axes, and glossy screen are not big issues to you and your needs, the Apple LED Cinema display is a pretty good value considering it is a LED backlit S-IPS display. There are not many of them out there and I believe that Apple's is the cheapest. The best? Certainly not, but pretty good for the money.

Ruahrc

it is "supposed" to be an s-ips , Apple never communicated on this point and have never done it before. They want to be able to change without saying anything.
But we are prisoners aren't we ?
if not, how would a 2009/2000$ client accept no option for a glass screen with black 1 inch bezel and a 1440x900 on a powerbook 15" .. less resolution than even a 5 years old powerbook G4 !

 

[Cave Man]

it is "supposed" to be an s-ips , Apple never communicated on this point and have never done it before. They want to be able to change without saying anything.

It's even better - an H-IPS panel (LM240WU2). If history is any indicator, Apple won't change the panel unless they get a new model.

But we are prisoners aren't we ?
if not, how would a 2009/2000$ client accept no option for a glass screen with black 1 inch bezel and a 1440x900 on a powerbook 15" .. less resolution than even a 5 years old powerbook G4 !

I have no idea what you're talking about here.

 

[jdechko]

I skimmed the thread because it seemed to fall into a debate about screens. I had the same question as you did about 1080p and I can say that I tried the 2.13 at the Apple store and had it play several 1080p trailers from the quicktime site and they ran flawlessly (24fps, no dropped frames). That was on the internal screen, but I'm thinking that the 24" ACD would be fine as well.

Of course, I'm sure that the trailers were H.264 (as is the HD content on the iTunes Store), and therefore the 9400m did a lot of the heavy lifting. It's possible that an MKV file would stutter. But the 2.13 does meet the minimum 2.0 C2D requirement for HD in iTunes.

 

[Cave Man]

Of course, I'm sure that the trailers were H.264 (as is the HD content on the iTunes Store), and therefore the 9400m did a lot of the heavy lifting. It's possible that an MKV file would stutter.

With Plex, even the current 1.83 model can play high bit ray Blu-ray rips just fine, so long as you don't ask it to transcode True-HD or DTS-HD to DD or DTS. So I suspect that MKV containers will just fine, too, whether they have h.264 video or not.

 

[jdechko]

With Plex, even the current 1.83 model can play high bit ray Blu-ray rips just fine, so long as you don't ask it to transcode True-HD or DTS-HD to DD or DTS. So I suspect that MKV containers will just fine, too, whether they have h.264 video or not.

Cool, I don't watch too much HD video as my current machine is nowhere near capable of decoding HD.

With regards to uncompressed HD audio and the macbook air, there is no way to play that through the Air anyway, as there is only a mono speaker and a stereo output, so it's probably a moot point anyway. The only other thing I'm thinking about that would be that I know handbrake can rip a DVD to have AC3 + AAC (so both 5.1 and 2-CH). If something like that were possible with a Blu-Ray encode, then you could have the AAC for the Air and HD audio for a HTPC/Mini/TV/etc.

But I have neither an Air nor any Blu-Ray movies to rip (hoping to get both soon, though), so I'm just speculating on what I do know.

 

[Cave Man]

With regards to uncompressed HD audio and the macbook air, there is no way to play that through the Air anyway, as there is only a mono speaker and a stereo output, so it's probably a moot point anyway.

It could if Apple would enable audio passthrough in the Mini DisplayPort. It's kind of silly that they haven't. Right now, the best one can get from the MacBook Air is 5-channel DPLII.

The only other thing I'm thinking about that would be that I know handbrake can rip a DVD to have AC3 + AAC (so both 5.1 and 2-CH). If something like that were possible with a Blu-Ray encode, then you could have the AAC for the Air and HD audio for a HTPC/Mini/TV/etc.

Handbrake already is able to transcode Blu-ray video and audio to MPEG-4 (and others), including the packaging of AC3 (and DTS with MKV) into the container. Plus, with Plex or XBMC there's no need to transcode as they already handle m2ts (or ts) containers from Blu-ray discs.

 

[Vikz]

MBA won't be ideal for that, fan will run non stop, video may be choppy, will get hot etc.

a MBP is what you're looking for, if size is a concern get the 13" that's the thinnest / lightest option capable of doing what you want it to do.

my mid 2007 macbook was my primary computer 2 years straight with 1GB of RAM and I never had problems watching HD videos or encoding them (if you don't count the extreme heat it produces) but the MBA right know is more powerful than the first mbps(and they make a fine job seeing those kind of videos) so i don't know why is it going to be a problem for what he is going to do.

 

[jdechko]

It could if Apple would enable audio passthrough in the Mini DisplayPort. It's kind of silly that they haven't. Right now, the best one can get from the MacBook Air is 5-channel DPLII.

Forgot about the Display Port Audio Spec. That would be great if it were enabled. The thought of PL2 crossed my mind as I was typing the post, and while it is a step up from stereo, I know that the quality compared to uncompressed audio isn't close.

Handbrake already is able to transcode Blu-ray video and audio to MPEG-4 (and others), including the packaging of AC3 (and DTS with MKV) into the container. Plus, with Plex or XBMC there's no need to transcode as they already handle m2ts (or ts) containers from Blu-ray discs.

Did not know this (like I said, no Blu-Ray). Thanks. But what are the sizes of the transcode streams? 15-30GB depending on the movie? I would imagine that they are pretty large compared to what you get off of iTunes (I know that iTunes HD is 720p and pretty compressed). I think that you could get something in between 720p/~4MBps and the 1080p24/30+MBps that would give you a good balance between Quality and File size. That's what I go for on my DVD's anyway, and plan to do the same for Blu-Ray rips.

 

[Cave Man]

I transcode for the Apple TV to 720p/24fps using 59% constant quality (usually). Sometimes I go for 5500 kbps video rate, which improves the video throughout, but at a cost of file size. Typically, the difference is about 4 gb vs. 6 gb file size using those parameters.

 

[jdechko]

I transcode for the Apple TV to 720p/24fps using 59% constant quality (usually). Sometimes I go for 5500 kbps video rate, which improves the video throughout, but at a cost of file size. Typically, the difference is about 4 gb vs. 6 gb file size using those parameters.

Those numbers sound pretty good. Typically, I will encode a DVD for both the XBox 360 and iPhone Legacy preset settings in Handbrake. The Xbox 360 profile gives me a full size rip that's about 2GB each. The iPhone size ones clock in somewhere just under 1GB, depending on the file length (LoTR is about 1.4GB or so). I'm quite happy with both of them.