the new apple tv - 1080p isn't needed

[jp102235]

bit rate

- 1080p looks better than 720p. FACT. If you can't tell the difference you need glasses

- True 1080p content (i.e high bitrate blu-ray quality) comes in at MASSIVE file sizes. Even on a 50mb connection, downloading something like 20gb of video will take ages.

- But, Apple should have allowed 1080p content to play back on the device - I suspect the only issue is the firmware which would need an update to allow this.

this is partially incorrect.

what looks better is based on the information content of the signal. Bit rate of the signal is a better quantitative predictor of image quality. example: I can upscale crappy youtube videos to 1080p - and they will still look crappy.
the difference is the source material, more specifically the bit rate.

I too wish that apple tv could handle high bit rate sources (I don't care about 1080p) - but it (and pretty much anything else) have difficulty doing it. I have seen complaints in the wd live forums, as well as other player forums about high bit rate playback capability.

I really hope someone could compile a list of players and their avg/max bitrate playback stats.

 

[AlienSexGod]

)2eality

FWIW, a Blu Ray rip is 20-40 gigs, while a 720p encode of that for Apple TV is 2-4 gigs. The bandwidth required to download a 1080p movie simply doesn't exist for the home consumer, and won't for a long time to come. Thus 1080p for Apple TV is wasted cost/effort.

Hey wayward & co. clearly you have not much experience with encoding movies. Most people do them in .mkv format and a quality H264 Blu-Ray backup comes in around 5-8Gb. I find using Handbrake that I can make a very good looking .m4v usually around 3-4Gb (yes less that SD DVD size) and the quality blows 720p out of the water if you have a 1080p screen.

Fact is Jobs & Co blow ... they are screwing us on purpose. Why do MacPros use slow server chips & slow serve ECC ram when they could make mass profit selling thinner aluminium towers with Sandy Bridge 2600k i7 processors running at 4Ghz with cheap Quality Corsair XMS3 2000Mhz DDR3 ram right now? iPad 1 had the cutout in the aluminium frame waiting for the cam. How much would 1 million cams cost from a manufacturer ... maybe $5... why wasn't it implimented? Because they are ********s who are laughing at us... we will wait till the market is saturated then give you a must have upgrade. Drip feed. They will supply a 1080p Apple TV in a year or so when people stop buying the other one.

Vote with your bucks, spread the word... I have been an Apple reseller and consultant for over 17 years and I won't sell that hobbled rubbish. I supply & use the below instead:

Asus O!Play HD2 USB 3.0 Media Player, Internal 3.5 HDD storage with NAS, Full HD 1080p, RMVB Support, Card Reader, Remote, USB/eSATA Combo, LAN, iTunes support.

UNix BSD based OS X rocks and Apple UI is elegant but their business practises blow .. they could have 30% Mac Market share now easy right now if they went for mid & long term rather than short term greed.

 

[toypadlock]

Hey wayward & co. clearly you have not much experience with encoding movies. Most people do them in .mkv format and a quality H264 Blu-Ray backup comes in around 5-8Gb. I find using Handbrake that I can make a very good looking .m4v usually around 3-4Gb (yes less that SD DVD size) and the quality blows 720p out of the water if you have a 1080p screen.

Fact is Jobs & Co blow ... they are screwing us on purpose. Why do MacPros use slow server chips & slow serve ECC ram when they could make mass profit selling thinner aluminium towers with Sandy Bridge 2600k i7 processors running at 4Ghz with cheap Quality Corsair XMS3 2000Mhz DDR3 ram right now? iPad 1 had the cutout in the aluminium frame waiting for the cam. How much would 1 million cams cost from a manufacturer ... maybe $5... why wasn't it implimented? Because they are ********s who are laughing at us... we will wait till the market is saturated then give you a must have upgrade. Drip feed. They will supply a 1080p Apple TV in a year or so when people stop buying the other one.

Vote with your bucks, spread the word... I have been an Apple reseller and consultant for over 17 years and I won't sell that hobbled rubbish. I supply & use the below instead:

Asus O!Play HD2 USB 3.0 Media Player, Internal 3.5 HDD storage with NAS, Full HD 1080p, RMVB Support, Card Reader, Remote, USB/eSATA Combo, LAN, iTunes support.

UNix BSD based OS X rocks and Apple UI is elegant but their business practises blow .. they could have 30% Mac Market share now easy right now if they went for mid & long term rather than short term greed.

 

[AlienSexGod]

Thanks man... I am kinda surprised that my rant is still public. It's the truth but the sometimes the truth is ugly and it hurts.

Oh & those Sandy Bridge Quad core i7 2600k (unlocked) processors run at 4.6Ghz rock solid stable on air cooling right now & cost less than $300 each in bulk. Cheap 2000Mhz ram has been available now for more than 6 months!
Imagine building a Mac Tower with fast PC gaming hardware, but mac eproms on the mobo so it booted OS X, that came with optional OEM Windows 7 Pro for gamers & people that desired it. All the Mac Bashers would go "Fark I hate Apple they finally built a Mac that I have to buy"... sexy aluminum tower with efficient cooling, lastest overclocked processor, last generic 3D fast graphics cards I can upgrade, fast high performance memory with industry standard LIFETIME warranty.

Everyone thinks Jobs is a legend but really he was just sales and marketing in the beginning and when he came back the second time and claimed the success of the iMac the truth was the iMacs were done by Gil Amelio but not quite released. Sure buying NeXt and getting OS X to run on UNix BSD was smart. The rest Apple engineers and designers did.

World domination of platforms so be the goal not short term greed. Apple has had the best platform for countless years but why have they made it so hobbled for so long? Why is market share still so small & marginalised?

But why didn't they drive the nail in Microsoft's coffin when Vista was a dog? Build cheaper faster macs based on PC gaming technology? Either they are dumb or screwing us short term ... you guys decide but please don't tell me 720 half high def is a great thing!

 

[AwakenedLands]

Thanks man... I am kinda surprised that my rant is still public. It's the truth but the sometimes the truth is ugly and it hurts.

Oh & those Sandy Bridge Quad core i7 2600k (unlocked) processors run at 4.6Ghz rock solid stable on air cooling right now & cost less than $300 each in bulk. Cheap 2000Mhz ram has been available now for more than 6 months!
Imagine building a Mac Tower with fast PC gaming hardware, but mac eproms on the mobo so it booted OS X, that came with optional OEM Windows 7 Pro for gamers & people that desired it. All the Mac Bashers would go "Fark I hate Apple they finally built a Mac that I have to buy"... sexy aluminum tower with efficient cooling, lastest overclocked processor, last generic 3D fast graphics cards I can upgrade, fast high performance memory with industry standard LIFETIME warranty.

Everyone thinks Jobs is a legend but really he was just sales and marketing in the beginning and when he came back the second time and claimed the success of the iMac the truth was the iMacs were done by Gil Amelio but not quite released. Sure buying NeXt and getting OS X to run on UNix BSD was smart. The rest Apple engineers and designers did.

World domination of platforms so be the goal not short term greed. Apple has had the best platform for countless years but why have they made it so hobbled for so long? Why is market share still so small & marginalised?

But why didn't they drive the nail in Microsoft's coffin when Vista was a dog? Build cheaper faster macs based on PC gaming technology? Either they are dumb or screwing us short term ... you guys decide but please don't tell me 720 half high def is a great thing!

Apple's goal is to make money. The rest is secondary. Their drip-feeding business model, coupled with an app-store nickel-and-dime strategy, seems to be working quite well.

As for 720p vs 1080p, not a big deal to me. I seriously cannot tell the difference when watching a movie. While it would be nice to push the limits of hardware, you already explained pretty well why Apple won't do it. I've had the original Apple TV for a few years now, and it's always had issues for me. I finally moved on to Boxee on a home-made Ubuntu system that is running perfectly, kicks my old Apple TV's butt, and isn't locked down.

 

[fabian9]

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Thanks man... I am kinda surprised that my rant is still public. It's the truth but the sometimes the truth is ugly and it hurts.

Oh & those Sandy Bridge Quad core i7 2600k (unlocked) processors run at 4.6Ghz rock solid stable on air cooling right now & cost less than $300 each in bulk. Cheap 2000Mhz ram has been available now for more than 6 months!
Imagine building a Mac Tower with fast PC gaming hardware, but mac eproms on the mobo so it booted OS X, that came with optional OEM Windows 7 Pro for gamers & people that desired it. All the Mac Bashers would go "Fark I hate Apple they finally built a Mac that I have to buy"... sexy aluminum tower with efficient cooling, lastest overclocked processor, last generic 3D fast graphics cards I can upgrade, fast high performance memory with industry standard LIFETIME warranty.

Everyone thinks Jobs is a legend but really he was just sales and marketing in the beginning and when he came back the second time and claimed the success of the iMac the truth was the iMacs were done by Gil Amelio but not quite released. Sure buying NeXt and getting OS X to run on UNix BSD was smart. The rest Apple engineers and designers did.

World domination of platforms so be the goal not short term greed. Apple has had the best platform for countless years but why have they made it so hobbled for so long? Why is market share still so small & marginalised?

But why didn't they drive the nail in Microsoft's coffin when Vista was a dog? Build cheaper faster macs based on PC gaming technology? Either they are dumb or screwing us short term ... you guys decide but please don't tell me 720 half high def is a great thing!

Apple choose their Market very carefully. Cheap low quality computers for the masses yield very low profits and is not something they are interested in. The money, as with most other things, is in the high end of the Market!

 

[AlienSexGod]

Apple's goal is to make money. The rest is secondary. Their drip-feeding business model, coupled with an app-store nickel-and-dime strategy, seems to be working quite well.

Well obviously they are doing well financially but most of it now comes from ipod/pad, iphones now & my point is they could and arguably should be doing much better in computer market share considering.

Regarding 720 vs 1080 ... I admit from a distance on some screens the difference does not appear huge .. ie 720 is a massive upgrade from SD but if you care to A/B 720 vs 1080 on say a 50+ inch Panasonic/LG/Samsung plasma whihc these days are around 1k mark the differnce & detail is very noticeable.

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Apple choose their Market very carefully. Cheap low quality computers for the masses yield very low profits and is not something they are interested in. The money, as with most other things, is in the high end of the Market!

Duh Fabian ..... what did I talk about? .... elegance and superiority of Unix based OS X & ALUMINIUM (ie expensive case) towers.
30% pc market share with superior OS & design would still be high end, achievable and be very profitable.

If you sell 6 times what you were even at an lower margin you are still making much more.

Part of my point is that giving us 1080 Apple TV now would assist Apple in increasing market share and those additional profits would assist countering the loss of profit of the drip feed sales & marketing. It would cost maybe $2 more to produce if a chip change was needed which I doubt.

 

[fabian9]

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6 times more customers to support, possibly more issues if cheaper products are used to maintain a sensible profit margin, this leads to a decrease in customer satisfaction, destroys apples reputation and brings it in line with all the other pc manufactures...

 

[Topfry]

Yeahbutnobut

The thing is - I think there is a definite difference in 720 v 1080p, but even though I am a big film fan, I personally really don't mind the slight difference in resolution, if the frame rate is acceptable, and the focus of my attention can remain on the movie rather than the technology.

In the case of apple tv, the gains of (relatively speaking) renting a movie as you need it, balance out the compromise over resolution; and being a smaller file than a 1080, regular streaming doesn't aggravate my ISP, (or my wife, while we wait for a movie to be buffered) I think the longer wait for slower real world streaming of 1080p films would be more irritating, unless of course you have a very fast Internet connection.

Nevertheless I would love Apple to offer the higher resolutions, if it meant reducing the price of 720 movies to the price of standard def; the biggest problem with the apple tv is the price of the rentals, if they could renegotiate these to something more competetive, I'm sure there would be a much bigger take up of the atv. There's a psychological barrier I have to overcome, every time I'm about to rent a movie... Can't I get this cheaper somewhere else?

 

[Dr McKay]

Could you name a single company who stream video at 1080 please? I know plenty of boxes with 1080 out, but not a single content provider who streams it.

Microsoft stream 1080p via their Zune service on the Xbox 360, or you can download a copy if you dont want to stream.

Im pretty sure Sony offer 1080p streams via PS3 too.

 

[AlienSexGod]

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6 times more customers to support, possibly more issues if cheaper products are used to maintain a sensible profit margin, this leads to a decrease in customer satisfaction, destroys apples reputation and brings it in line with all the other pc manufactures...

Fabian please stop trying to put words into my mouth ... never suggested cheaper components ... maybe thinner aluminium on the overkill current tower that is all. Also how about some balance in your perspective? .... that means 6 times more people to sell Applecare to and other Apple products, more resources to improve UI & OS to leave MS & Google in the dust.

Looking at your signature now I can see why you have little idea of what I am talking about ... you use a 13" MacBook which uses or in your case used leading edge technology for not much more than the PC competition. Buy a Mac Pro right now mate & see how you feel huh? ... unless you have money to burn & don't care.

 

[Dr McKay]

Looking at your signature now I can see why you have little idea of what I am talking about ... you use a 13" MacBook which uses or in your case used leading edge technology for not much more than the PC competition. Buy a Mac Pro right now mate & see how you feel huh? ... unless you have money to burn & don't care.

His signature says 13" Macbook Pro...

 

[ThatsMeRight]

And don't forget the PS3 with blu-ray. It isn't that popular in the US, but in Asia and Europe the PlayStation brand is more popular than the Xbox brand.

 

[Sparky9292]

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The thing is - I think there is a definite difference in 720 v 1080p, but even though I am a big film fan, I personally really don't mind the slight difference in resolution, if the frame rate is acceptable, and the focus of my attention can remain on the movie rather than the technology.

In the case of apple tv, the gains of (relatively speaking) renting a movie as you need it, balance out the compromise over resolution; and being a smaller file than a 1080, regular streaming doesn't aggravate my ISP, (or my wife, while we wait for a movie to be buffered) I think the longer wait for slower real world streaming of 1080p films would be more irritating, unless of course you have a very fast Internet connection.

Nevertheless I would love Apple to offer the higher resolutions, if it meant reducing the price of 720 movies to the price of standard def; the biggest problem with the apple tv is the price of the rentals, if they could renegotiate these to something more competetive, I'm sure there would be a much bigger take up of the atv. There's a psychological barrier I have to overcome, every time I'm about to rent a movie... Can't I get this cheaper somewhere else?

There's no difference between 1080 and 720 other than filesize for me. Plus I have Rodgers cable which has caps on bandwidth so I really suffer with file size.

AppleTv rental prices are too high $5.00

Redbox rents for $1.00!! And I can rip those with handbrake too.

 

[AlienSexGod]

His signature says 13" Macbook Pro...

Very good Benji Boy! Last I looked a MacBook Pro was in the MacBook family. My point stands ...those series use bleeding edge tech and are decent value for money. Hobbled Apple TV, MacPros & iPad 1's are/were not value for money.

Back on topic anyone actually had a look at 1080 P rips on a large 1080 quality screen? Even on a iMac 27" they look amazing!

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There's no difference between 1080 and 720 other than filesize for me.

Your screen and/or eyes must be weak then.