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New Apple TV DOES Handle 1080P

I can't watch that Lion of Judah trailer any more. It's terrible.

Anyway, there are clearly hitches in the video when starting up a 1080p trailer, but after it gets going there are no clear places to pick out frame drops and it's just a feeling. I do feel like going back to the 720p trailer that it is smoother but it's not really based on anything. Either it is keeping up with the framerate or it is really good at dropping frames consistently.

I suppose for a more definitive answer someone could put the 720p and 1080p trailers side by side on two different tv's. Or run a high speed 600 or 1000 fps camera.
 
thecypher said:
Tell me if I am doing something wrong. I took my Avatar Blu-Ray disk and used Makemkv to make a full 1080p Mkv file which turned out close to 49+ GB. Then I used Quicktime Pro and loaded the mkv file (perian is installed). It took a long while for Quicktime to completely load the movie. Of course quicktime could not play the movie at all practically. The image was all disintegrated, freezing and I could barely see any picture. It played just fine using VLC and Plex however. After Quicktime loaded the movie completely I did a "Save As" mov file as suggested by some posts in this forum as the most straightforward way to convert mkv to mov. The save took quite a while and I ended up with a mov file slightly larger than the original mkv. Probably about 51GB. Added it to the iTunes library and tried to load it from ATV with no luck. I kept getting an error message something to the effect of the movie file could not be loaded try again later. Not sure what I am missing.
Click to expand...

Hi,
yes we are talking about compressed 1080p content. Your bluray rip IS compressed but just very little in comparison to the files the other people around here are testing. Your file has bitrates around 50mb/s I guess? The files that are being discussed here are around 5 to 10...
Even if the AppleTV COULD handle that kind of content, your network (doesn't really matter if wired or wireless) certainly could not.
 
rkuo said:
I can't watch that Lion of Judah trailer any more. It's terrible.

Anyway, there are clearly hitches in the video when starting up a 1080p trailer, but after it gets going there are no clear places to pick out frame drops and it's just a feeling. I do feel like going back to the 720p trailer that it is smoother but it's not really based on anything. Either it is keeping up with the framerate or it is really good at dropping frames consistently.

I suppose for a more definitive answer someone could put the 720p and 1080p trailers side by side on two different tv's. Or run a high speed 600 or 1000 fps camera.
Click to expand...

Look at 52 seconds the pan over the town it clearly drops frames. the clouds at the end clearly drop frames the birds drop frames.

Viewing the same trailer connected to the same TV playing on a 2009 Mac Mini through quicktime looks far superior no stutter jolting at all.
 
BlackMangoTree said:
Laugh all you want. The Apple Tv just doesn't play 1080p well.
Click to expand...

I find it funnier that you think it has an internal HDD when it doesn't.

It has 8gb of flash NAND memory. I'm sure it builds a library of the content and may even keep a certain amount cached. But with such limited storage it just isn't feasible or possible for it to store a lot of content.

I blame your network, not my eyesight.
 
Diveflo said:
Hi,
yes we are talking about compressed 1080p content. Your bluray rip IS compressed but just very little in comparison to the files the other people around here are testing. Your file has bitrates around 50mb/s I guess? The files that are being discussed here are around 5 to 10...
Even if the AppleTV COULD handle that kind of content, your network (doesn't really matter if wired or wireless) certainly could not.
Click to expand...

Yes, that rip is about 6 times larger than my compressed .mkv of Avatar. I believe mine is in the neighborhood of 5 mbps. So even at a rough calculation of 6 times my bitrate, his would be 35mbps which is far above the capabilities of his network & router unless he's running gigabit with something above cat5 (cat6 and fiber would handle it -- on paper anyway).
 
Sykotic said:
I find it funnier that you think it has an internal HDD when it doesn't.

It has 8gb of flash NAND memory. I'm sure it builds a library of the content and may even keep a certain amount cached. But with such limited storage it just isn't feasible or possible for it to store a lot of content.

I blame your network, not my eyesight.
Click to expand...

My network ? impossible, the video is played back once fully loaded onto the Apple TV. There is clear frames dropping. Yes, one must have bad eye sight not to see it.

Over the same network i stream the trailer from my iMac to my MacMini connected to the Plasma playing through xbmc and see no frames drop at all. Plays back smooth.

Just so we are on the same page this is the trailer we are talking about http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/thelionofjudah/ ?
 
BlackMangoTree said:
My network ? impossible, the video is played back once fully loaded onto the Apple TV. There is clear frames dropping. Yes, one must have bad eye sight not to see it.
Click to expand...

You are missing the point. How do you know it is fully loaded onto the ATV? Because the bar across the bottom is full? All that indicates is that it has buffered it's default amount. It doesn't mean it loaded the entire video onto flash memory.

More likely is that it's buffering it enough that you don't see the frames dropping early and then you do when it actually has to rely on your network speed again.
 
Sykotic said:
You are missing the point. How do you know it is fully loaded onto the ATV? Because the bar across the bottom is full? All that indicates is that it has buffered it's default amount. It doesn't mean it loaded the entire video onto flash memory.

More likely is that it's buffering it enough that you don't see the frames dropping early and then you do when it actually has to rely on your network speed again.
Click to expand...

Either way there is nothing wrong with the netwrok over wirelessN tried with 2 different routers and even over ethernet it drops frames. When playing the same trailer on a MacMini over the network it plays back smooth.
 
Sykotic said:
You are missing the point. How do you know it is fully loaded onto the ATV? Because the bar across the bottom is full? All that indicates is that it has buffered it's default amount. It doesn't mean it loaded the entire video onto flash memory.
Click to expand...

Once the bar is full white the whole movie is fully loaded onto the Apple TV. You can even turn the Apple TV off and come back 10 hours later and play the same movie and it wont buffer at all as it's still loaded onto the Apple TV.
 
Sykotic said:
Yes, that rip is about 6 times larger than my compressed .mkv of Avatar. I believe mine is in the neighborhood of 5 mbps. So even at a rough calculation of 6 times my bitrate, his would be 35mbps which is far above the capabilities of his network & router unless he's running gigabit with something above cat5 (cat6 and fiber would handle it -- on paper anyway).
Click to expand...

So is there a setting in makemkv that you need to use to compress the rip by reducing the bitrate? I do have a gigabit network over which my blu-ray iso files play fine in media center. I understand atv only does 100 Mbps Ethernet. But if I recall right I have played blu-ray iso over 100mbps ethernet in the past without issues. Can't play over wireless n without stuttering and freezing but I believe it plays over 100 Mbps LAN.
 
thecypher said:
So is there a setting in makemkv that you need to use to compress the rip by reducing the bitrate? I do have a gigabit network over which my blu-ray iso files play fine in media center. I understand atv only does 100 Mbps Ethernet. But if I recall right I have played blu-ray iso over 100mbps ethernet in the past without issues. Can't play over wireless n without stuttering and freezing but I believe it plays over 100 Mbps LAN.
Click to expand...

MakeMKV and Apple TV don't go together, after you use MakeMKV you will need to encode your movie with another application like Handbrake.
 
i recommend to use dual band router. "simultaneous" my apple TV and MAC are connected to 5GHz. my all other wireless devices are on 2.4GHz. no buffering at all
 
thecypher said:
So is there a setting in makemkv that you need to use to compress the rip by reducing the bitrate? I do have a gigabit network over which my blu-ray iso files play fine in media center. I understand atv only does 100 Mbps Ethernet. But if I recall right I have played blu-ray iso over 100mbps ethernet in the past without issues. Can't play over wireless n without stuttering and freezing but I believe it plays over 100 Mbps LAN.
Click to expand...

If you use Blu-Rays as source you need to encode them down with a 3rd party application. Handbrake the guy above me mentioned is a good choice.
The best settings for the new AppleTV are still being discussed (the preset "Apple TV" in Handbrake is for the old one, your's will handle much much more!). You can check handbrake.fr for further info, on what the guys over there figure out...they're the real experts in that field.
The encodes will unfortunately take some time to finish, but you will have unbelievably great encodes if you let it take it's time and use Blu-Ray as your source ;)
 
For the new Apple TV a good setting is:

ref=5:me=umh:b-adapt=2:weightp=0:direct=auto:no-dct-decimate=1:merange=32:bframes=5:subq=9:vbv-maxrate=12000:vbv-bufsize=12000

No filters and set the resolution to 1280 by 720 or lower depending on the movie. Set the Audio to your liking and the subtitles and set the RF to 22 for HD and 20 for SD.

The results are very good quality video and pretty small file sizes and the file will play on Apple TV 2, iPhone 4, iPod Touch and obviously your computer.
 
BlackMangoTree said:
Sorry this i cannot believe, i have tried the same trailers on 3 different Apple Tv's and they clearly drop frames. The lion of judah is very bad.

And i don't think i am the only person having dropped frames, i think i'm the only person reporting the truth or there are many blind people lol.

Take the The lion of judah trailer convert it in Handbrake with the high profile peset set the RF to 16 and the resolution to 1280 x 720 and play that back and see how much smoother it is.

The Apple Tv will fully load the entire movie onto the Apple TV even if you switch it off and then play back the same movie it will but still all on the internal HDD.
Click to expand...

I downloaded all 180mb or whatever it was. Dropped it in my iTunes and it played perfectly.

Mine is streaming because it starts playing almost immediately.
 
The 1080p lion of Judah trailer does NOT play smoothly. i have verified this on three Apple Tv's connected to 3 different TV's all looked and played exactly the same, dropped frames all over the place. Just look 52 seconds into it the camera pan over the town dropped frames galore.
 
BlackMangoTree said:
The 1080p lion of Judah trailer does NOT play smoothly. i have verified this on three Apple Tv's connected to 3 different TV's all looked and played exactly the same, dropped frames all over the place. Just look 52 seconds into it the camera pan over the town dropped frames galore.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I tested it out, and there is definitely a lot of dropped frames. Anyone who doesn't see this really has no clue what a movie with dropped frames looks like. It's not that hard to see, if you play both the 1080p and 720p versions you will see how much better 720p is. There is no doubt that the Apple TV can playback 1080p, but it definitely can't play it back smoothly.

Jailbreaking and such probably won't help either unless they can somehow get more processing power out of it or something. I bet if you threw a low enough bitrate 1080p movie it *might* playback without drop frames, but at a major sacrifice in quality that just isn't worth it. There is a reason Apple listed 720p as a specs, because it's the best the Apple TV is capable of doing with no issues.

End of thread, no real debate needed here.
 
ovrlrd said:
Agreed. I tested it out, and there is definitely a lot of dropped frames. Anyone who doesn't see this really has no clue what a movie with dropped frames looks like. It's not that hard to see, if you play both the 1080p and 720p versions you will see how much better 720p is. There is no doubt that the Apple TV can playback 1080p, but it definitely can't play it back smoothly.
Click to expand...

Finally someone who is watching the trailer with their eyes open.

The Apple Tv is just not up to the task, playing 1080p back smoothly.
 
While I can appreciate a good, helpful thread, this is not an example of one. For one thing, we have people splitting hairs between "I said it could play" 1080 and not "I said it displays". Most people do not distinguish between the two and it is very misleading. Yes, I know the videophiles will argue this point until the cows come home, but it doesn't really get us anywhere. Also, I'm not sure it does much good to rant about how one format is better than another, or interjecting bogus facts somehow makes one argument more coherent than another. So, can we simply move along?
 
Why make it confusing lol

It's simple the Apple Tv will play back 1080p just not without dropping frames.

I have been trying to encode some blu ray discs to 1080p to play back smoothly on the Apple Tv still no luck, i'll continue trying hopefully i can come up with something with high bitrate that plays smoothly.
 
Diveflo said:
Your file has bitrates around 50mb/s I guess? The files that are being discussed here are around 5 to 10...
Even if the AppleTV COULD handle that kind of content, your network (doesn't really matter if wired or wireless) certainly could not.
Click to expand...

Sykotic said:
I believe mine is in the neighborhood of 5 mbps. So even at a rough calculation of 6 times my bitrate, his would be 35mbps which is far above the capabilities of his network & router unless he's running gigabit with something above cat5 (cat6 and fiber would handle it -- on paper anyway).
Click to expand...

The maths isn't particularly hard :)
50mbps and 35mbps are both less than 100mbps... - So, even an old pc with old network cards running through an old router at 100mbit has plenty of bandwidth to play a straight-ripped bluray disc.

Upgrade your network to incredibly cheap soho cat5e cables and switches and you've got the potential for over 30 multiple streams of the biggest bluray images - your brand new source machine is going to choke long before your 5+ year old copper cabling when dealing with multiple clients.
 
VoR said:
The maths isn't particularly hard :)
50mbps and 35mbps are both less than 100mbps... - So, even an old pc with old network cards running through an old router at 100mbit has plenty of bandwidth to play a straight-ripped bluray disc.

Upgrade your network to incredibly cheap soho cat5e cables and switches and you've got the potential for over 30 multiple streams of the biggest bluray images - your brand new source machine is going to choke long before your 5+ year old copper cabling when dealing with multiple clients.
Click to expand...

Well the ATV only has a 100mbits card inside, so you've got a limitation there.
Then in the real world a wired connection through a router will get you what? 70? 60? Overhead protocol etc.
And then there's your REAL problem: a 50mbits rip does not have 50mbits all the time...it got peaks, and these are were the fun starts. I don't want to watch a movie where every time a scene has a lot of fast movement my Apple TV starts to choke.
 
Once the movie is fully cached onto the Apple TV the network speed would be irrelevant. The network speed would only concern the time it take to start a movie.
 
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