Mountain Lion Airplay Resolution

tbabb said:

Curious if anyone knows when using Airplay to send video to ATV3 if the output resolution can be 1080 even if the Mac used to stream the video does not have 1920 x 1080 resolution. Such as with a MBP 15".

I assumed that it would be the resolution of the screen, so in the case of the MBP 15" 1440 X 900. Airplay would probably scale the video?

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Sounds like you could be right

It would probably work the same way it does with an iPad.

I have a 1080p TV, an aTV2 and the iPad2. When I airplay the iPad in portrait mode, it sends the 768x1024 iPad screen to the aTV2. The aTV has to convert that to a 720p resolution, so I end up with the aTV2 output a 540x720 picture (with huge black bars on the side). Since my TV is 1080p, the TV scales the 540x720 image to an 810x1080 screen.

Even with all of the downscaling and upscaling, the picture looks fine.

With a Mac and the aTV3, it'll be even easier ... no scaling between the aTV3 and a 1080p TV. Plus, the Mac will typically always be used in landscape.

If your Mac is less than 1080p, then it will upscale. If it's more than 1080p, it'll downscale.

I'm not sure if this would be the case sending it to ATV3....but just because the screen res of the 15 MBP is 1440x900 doesn't mean that the video is limited to that. Take for example if you hooked it to a cinema display....you would then get 2560x1440.

tfa8rva said:

I'm not sure if this would be the case sending it to ATV3....but just because the screen res of the 15 MBP is 1440x900 doesn't mean that the video is limited to that. Take for example if you hooked it to a cinema display....you would then get 2560x1440.

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You have a point. My answer was based on the OP's intent ... I had read it as he wanted to mirror his screen. I'm not sure if MtLion allows for Airplay'ing a video like how iOS does it. I think it just mirrors on ML.