I think if you have 2s and 3s, you're ok to select 1080p as your preference as the 2 can handle that (it'll downscale it to 720p, which is where you would've been anyway). You don't need a 720p version at all.
It's my 1s that are the problem. They balk at anything above 720p.
Thanks rayward but this I was aware of. In fact I was able to play 1080p content with bitrates of 10-12 Mbps on my
TV 2 without much of an issue--only seems to hiccup/studder if the file size of the movie is larger than the RAM available for buffer (or at least that was what I figured as it only seemed to happen for movies greater than 8 GB) so I'd need to restart the movie and quickly advance to the same spot so that only the remaining portion of the movie would be buffered.
My question was directed more at brucewayne's comment...
I don't think the logic in iTunes works very well and was having the same problems with both my own content and purchased from the store. In some cases, the 720p selection was used on the ATV3.
My solution was to tag the name or show of anything 1080p as 'HD'. i.e. Casablanca HD, Mad Men HD.
Specifically his statement that, "In some cases, the 720p selection was used on the ATV3." This implies he had 1080p content as well in iTunes but his
TV 3 was playing the lower resolution. I also have both 720p and 1080p versions of some of my media in iTunes and haven't found a way to confirm it's actually playing the 1080p version since there's no 1080p identifier viewable on the
TV 3, at least that I've been able to see. As brucewayne's comment also implied he was able to determine that his
TV 3 was only playing the 720p, I was wondering how he was able to determine that.