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Scarpad

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jan 13, 2005
2,152
655
Ma
I replaced the ATV2 on my Living Room TV with a 2009 mac mini to use Plex on that TV. The video quality looks alot better with the same video files with the ATV2 compared to the mini running out a display port to HDMI jack into HDMI on the set. Now some of it could be the playback quality of Plex itself, but is there anything I could do to get the output closer to the ATV? The mini is running at res 1080p out to an Onkyo Reciever the TX606 into the TV. The ATV was also going the same route.
 
The ATV was not outputting 1080P so that is something to consider.

What does a 720P encode played via iTunes look like? I never tried them back to back, but I never noticed a difference between ATV & Mini playing the same file. In fact I'm now using 3 ATVs and mini is just a headless server I VNC into occasionally. The minimal loss in quality that comes with not being able to do 1080P is more than made up for in the simplicity of the ATV IMHO.
 
The ATV was not outputting 1080P so that is something to consider.

What does a 720P encode played via iTunes look like? I never tried them back to back, but I never noticed a difference between ATV & Mini playing the same file. In fact I'm now using 3 ATVs and mini is just a headless server I VNC into occasionally. The minimal loss in quality that comes with not being able to do 1080P is more than made up for in the simplicity of the ATV IMHO.

Well I think you're right that the shift in Resoltion is enough to show the flaw in the encodes. I've decided to start reripping my content to uncompressed mkv files. with Storage cheap, and Plex having the ability to stream to IOS devices, there is no lnger a need to really encode anymore.
 
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