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Ripping for new Apple TV vs. old Apple TV

C

canyonblue737

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jan 10, 2005
2,238
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I saw that the new Apple TV can do 720p at 30 fps vs. the older at 24 fps. Some complex talk on the Handbrake website implies having the same hardware as the iPhone 4 and iPad it can support their higher ripping quality settings. As of now I have ripped 40 or so kids DVDs via the handbrake "universal" setting but before I move on to my more extensive collection of regular movies can I use a better / more superior quality setting than universal or the current apple tv settings? I have an iPhone 4, an iPad, and now several of the new model Apple TVs so maintaining backward comptability with pre A4 chip models isn't an issue but interoperability between those is important.

Thanks.
 
I'm wondering the same thing. But I also have an old apple TV that I need to make sure files work on it as well.
 
If you need to work on the old Apple TV then Handbrakes current Apple TV or Universal settings are the way to go. Folks on the Handbrake forum imply that even with DVDs 480p limit there are advantages to certain settings the iPad/iPhone4 have that it appears the new Apple TV can take advantage of that it may be useful to customize your encoding or wait for updated preferences if you don't need to support any pre Apple A4 chip devices.
 
I have a mac mini 2.53Ghz model, what would be good settings to use for rips with the mini?

It uses the 9400m Nvidia GPU...

I was also considering getting an old aTV since our base PX is selling them NIB for $119 (always wanted one but wouldn't pay full price for it)... is the original aTV worth this price?
 
J&JPolangin said:
I have a mac mini 2.53Ghz model, what would be good settings to use for rips with the mini?

It uses the 9400m Nvidia GPU...

I was also considering getting an old aTV since our base PX is selling them NIB for $119 (always wanted one but wouldn't pay full price for it)... is the original aTV worth this price?
Click to expand...

How you plan to play the rips is probably a more important issue for your first question. Are you feeding direct to a TV using the Mac Mini? In that case, I would be inclined to stick with the Apple TV settings for anything except HD sources.

It depends on the features you want for the second. Is Netflix likely to be important for you? Do you prefer to stream everything with your computer on all the time or do you want to play from a hard drive with the computer off? Do you want to be able to buy from the Apple TV rather than rent? If the answer to the first is yes and to the second no, then you should probably wait for the new ATV. Otherwise, it's a good price on the old one.
 
Again, as I understand handbrake, if you're ripping DVD's the :apple:TV setting is fine. The (old) :apple:TV does have the full horsepower to playback DVD's SD video just fine. It looks great!

More powerful hardware such as the new :apple:TV having 720p30fps vs. the old one's 720p24fps limitations seems irrelevant to the consideration, since DVD rips are SD, so there's no 720p to be ripping anyway.

I guess someone might argue that you could crank up the MBPS settings beyond what the current :apple:TV can handle, which should- in theory- result in more detail in the picture. But I can tell you from direct experience using the old version on a 65" HDTV screen, the default settings (I just slightly tweak them by moving the slider up just a bit) look really great vs. the DVD itself. I have a hard time seeing any difference.

Now, if you're going to rip Blu Ray, then you have lots of considerations, as the new :apple:TV owners will probably find that that extra 6 frames per second makes a noticeable difference for 720p rips.

However on a Mac Mini, you can do better than 720p, so you can rip HD content at 1080 resolution. For that, I would encourage you to do some searches for ripping 1080p content for a Mac Mini used instead of an :apple:TV and make your own decisions about quality vs. resulting file sizes. There's plenty on that topic in other threads in this and other forums.
 
To the original poster ... use the high profile setting for the most efficient encoding across all those devices. That's what I'm doing. All A4 devices support it. No one has the new apple TV's in hand but the odds that they perform differently from the iPad and iPhone 4 are slim to none because the chip is the same.
 
mike457 said:
How you plan to play the rips is probably a more important issue for your first question. Are you feeding direct to a TV using the Mac Mini? In that case, I would be inclined to stick with the Apple TV settings for anything except HD sources.

It depends on the features you want for the second. Is Netflix likely to be important for you? Do you prefer to stream everything with your computer on all the time or do you want to play from a hard drive with the computer off? Do you want to be able to buy from the Apple TV rather than rent? If the answer to the first is yes and to the second no, then you should probably wait for the new ATV. Otherwise, it's a good price on the old one.
Click to expand...

The more I read on the subject, the more the aTV seems like an added not needed box by my TV...

If I have a PC or mini hooked up to each TV in the house to stream from my networked HDD or directly from netflix the aTV becomes irrelevant, right?
 
J&JPolangin said:
The more I read on the subject, the more the aTV seems like an added not needed box by my TV...

If I have a PC or mini hooked up to each TV in the house to stream from my networked HDD or directly from netflix the aTV becomes irrelevant, right?
Click to expand...

Pretty much so. If you have a PC or mini, the DRM iTunes store content will play on that device. The only tradeoff in this scenario is UI, as that is done very well on the :apple:TV. If you need a UI that even grandma can use, :apple:TV typically wins that race. If the PC is noisy (fans), that could be another factor. But that's about it.

Some might argue that dedicating a PC to this purposes is overkill. But I would call the 2 Apple TVs I own underkill, in that they are limited in design to only the most modest resolution of HDTV- enough to get away with calling them HD, but it's just barely there. I sure wanted to buy a couple of new 1080p Apple TVs, a feature that many on these very boards have been longing for for a very long time. It took 4 years to get to a completely new generation, and the graphics hardware upgrade went from up to 720p24fps to 720p30fps. Woo hoo! Or is that Boo hoo?

So, if you have a great HDTV capable of better than 720p30fps, another good reason to go with a Mini or PC is so that you have the hardware to really take advantage of your full resolution. I myself am thinking of doing the same, just wishing that the AppleTV UI would become the new "front row" software.

However, I'm also about to replace my HDTV, so I'll probably just let Samsung ship my new (sorta) Apple TV built in. Check out the apps: http://www.samsung.com/us/appstore And it comes with normal USB ports to which I could connect all of my own media currently streaming to the Apple TV. I'm hoping that Samsung can handle my 1080 Camcorder videos, converted in iMovie to 1080p renders- which, by the way, will play just fine in iTunes (just can't pipe them from there to the HDTV via Apple TV). If so, that's probably my next move. If you don't need a new TV soon though, using a PC will pretty much give you a way to access everything video on the web, far superior to just iTunes, some youtube, netflix, flickr, and internet radio in the new Apple TV.
 
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