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iOS 5 Opens Door to True 1080p Apple TV
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They can - even High L4.1 content, that is, the format 99,9% of the 1080p MKV's currently available around the Internet are encoded in (that is, of you correctly demux the MKV videos, you can get a playable MP4 in some minutes only). The output is pretty nice, albeit there surely is some stuttering with excessive pans. Nevertheless, it's not very visible or annoying. (Of course, the iPad 2 is even better - with it, I haven't even noticed any playback stuttering.)
Yup, unless you want to mirror it on an external screen, no JB'ing is needed, not even under pre-iOS5 or on, compared to the iPad2, slower devices (iPad / iPhone4).
Indeed you cannot synchronize these MP4 videos through the Movies tab. However, if you pass them to a third-party app that just passes them forward to the Videos app on the iPad (2) / iPhone 4 / iPT4, they'll happily play it back - on the iPad2, without any kind of stuttering.
A lot of third-party apps support this on all the above-mentioned platforms; e.g., Remux MKV Player etc. (I can compile a full list of these apps if anyone is interested - you see, I'm working on a Video playback bible for iOS so I've been testing all these apps.)
I find it odd that ATV2 can decode 1080p, but it cannot play it. Decoding is typically the hard part. Scaling is more work yet. It seems like it should be a software limitation. Otherwise, that is some odd GPU they're using.
In any case, most of the complaints about how crappy 720p is are due to El Cheapo scalers in most low-end 1080p sets (that would be MOST of them). It's the same as a cheap 24" LCD monitor. It looks great in its native resolution, but the minute you change to another resolution, it looks like blurry CRAP. I have such a 24" LG monitor here. It works fine for my MBP because I only use it in native resolution. Compare that to my higher-end LG 24" monitor that cost 2x as much that I have on my PC used for gaming (where changing to a difference resolution often makes a difference on newer games as the system ages or older ones that didn't support wide-modes) and other resolutions look MUCH better than on the cheaper LG and the difference is the quality of the SCALER used in the higher-end model.
I have a 93" screen with a top-rated 720p projector from a few years ago when 1080p projectors were priced out of the stratosphere ($1700 versus $5000+ for 1080p) and I'm sitting at 9 feet from the screen where you can tell 1080p from 720p (unlike where most people sit relative to much smaller screens) and 720p looks UNBELIEVABLY good. But that projector is native at 720p and so it looks as good as it possibly can with 720p material. I can guarantee that a cheaper 1080p projector with a so-so scaler would not produce the same results when playing 720p material and that is why 1080p material looks so much better on those than a slight resolution increase should suggest (about the same as standing back an extra 5 feet with 93" screen; you could not tell the difference at that distance at all). A really high-end 1080p projector would look similar at 720p, but probably still slightly less quality.
And THAT is the area that the modern flat-screen era has created new problems in. CRT multi-sync displays actually could switch modes and produce native output at each resolution and thus look perfect in any mode. A family member has a 1999 Panasonic 57" CRT HDTV that can do true 720p AND true 1080i (no 1080p back then even existed in the wild).
That brings me to my next point. Most HDTV material out there is not 1080p. Only BD and some PPV type stuff is 1080p. All other broadcast HDTV is either 720p or 1080i. They will not look as good as they can on most 1080p sets either. So unless you are mostly going to watch 1080p sources AND have a set size at a given distance that you're sitting that can show you the actual resolution distance (we're talking sitting <6 feet away with a 48" set, for example to actually tell 1080p from 720p at native resolution), you're wasting your time/money going 1080p. You could argue it's better to buy 1080p material now than have to replace it later and I wouldn't argue.
You can always encode to 720p for maximum quality on something like ATV, but you cannot get true 720p out of a poor scaler on a 1080p set; you WILL get a blurred/distorted version instead). This is because it's much easier to scale down than to scale up well. The whole reason you have DVD players with up-conversion is they are betting the scaler in your set SUCKS and so their 'better' scaler in the player will do a better job. If your set's scaler is better than the DVD player, you should generally not use the player's scaled output.
In any case, most of the complaints about how crappy 720p is are due to El Cheapo scalers in most low-end 1080p sets (that would be MOST of them). It's the same as a cheap 24" LCD monitor. It looks great in its native resolution, but the minute you change to another resolution, it looks like blurry CRAP. I have such a 24" LG monitor here. It works fine for my MBP because I only use it in native resolution. Compare that to my higher-end LG 24" monitor that cost 2x as much that I have on my PC used for gaming (where changing to a difference resolution often makes a difference on newer games as the system ages or older ones that didn't support wide-modes) and other resolutions look MUCH better than on the cheaper LG and the difference is the quality of the SCALER used in the higher-end model.
I have a 93" screen with a top-rated 720p projector from a few years ago when 1080p projectors were priced out of the stratosphere ($1700 versus $5000+ for 1080p) and I'm sitting at 9 feet from the screen where you can tell 1080p from 720p (unlike where most people sit relative to much smaller screens) and 720p looks UNBELIEVABLY good. But that projector is native at 720p and so it looks as good as it possibly can with 720p material. I can guarantee that a cheaper 1080p projector with a so-so scaler would not produce the same results when playing 720p material and that is why 1080p material looks so much better on those than a slight resolution increase should suggest (about the same as standing back an extra 5 feet with 93" screen; you could not tell the difference at that distance at all). A really high-end 1080p projector would look similar at 720p, but probably still slightly less quality.
And THAT is the area that the modern flat-screen era has created new problems in. CRT multi-sync displays actually could switch modes and produce native output at each resolution and thus look perfect in any mode. A family member has a 1999 Panasonic 57" CRT HDTV that can do true 720p AND true 1080i (no 1080p back then even existed in the wild).
That brings me to my next point. Most HDTV material out there is not 1080p. Only BD and some PPV type stuff is 1080p. All other broadcast HDTV is either 720p or 1080i. They will not look as good as they can on most 1080p sets either. So unless you are mostly going to watch 1080p sources AND have a set size at a given distance that you're sitting that can show you the actual resolution distance (we're talking sitting <6 feet away with a 48" set, for example to actually tell 1080p from 720p at native resolution), you're wasting your time/money going 1080p. You could argue it's better to buy 1080p material now than have to replace it later and I wouldn't argue.
You can always encode to 720p for maximum quality on something like ATV, but you cannot get true 720p out of a poor scaler on a 1080p set; you WILL get a blurred/distorted version instead). This is because it's much easier to scale down than to scale up well. The whole reason you have DVD players with up-conversion is they are betting the scaler in your set SUCKS and so their 'better' scaler in the player will do a better job. If your set's scaler is better than the DVD player, you should generally not use the player's scaled output.
Just removed the limitation. Apart from the inability to sync as a Movie under pre-iOS5, all 4.x devices (particularly the iPad2, of course, which has absolutely no stuttering) are pretty capable at playing back 1080p Level 4.1 High - the format 99.999% of 1080p content is available in the H.264 format. There aren't other differences between iOS4 and 5, it seems - all my video format playback tests have resulted in equal results under both iOS4 and 5 on both my iPad1 and iPad2 (with the iPad2 being much faster, of course).
The best thing about native 1080p support (even if one's TV can't really show it) is that you only need one version of them (the 1080p), which you can deploy on any of your devices (notebooks, ATV, iPad2, iPhone5 or, if you can live with the occasional stuttering, even the iPhone4 / iPad1) without the need for getting a lower-resolution version or transcoding. The latter would take a LOT of time and CPU power - only the latest Sandy Bridge platforms support realtime H.264 1080p encoding.
Apparently blu-ray sales are down already for various reasons.
I think that for a slight decrease in resolution, people prefer not having to get up and put the disk in and wait for the un-skipable ads on a disk.
For me the benefit of hard copies is partly as a collector for my favorite movies and also for extras that come with the movie. But I'm starting to reserve my collecting of hard copies for true favorites. It also occurs to me that I can always use neflix to get the hard copy for the extras if i really want to see those.
If I worked for the movie companies, I would start offering hard copies in true collectors version: buy a movie and you get the blu-ray, digital copy, the soundtrack, extras and perhaps a booklet. But the movie industry will continue with the "tried and true" formula.
compatibility list
I've compiled a list of current iOS players that use hardware H.264 decoding - that is, ones that are able to play back even L4.1 High without problems on the iPad2 and only with small stuttering / problems on prev-gen hardware.
They're as follows:
Videos (only iOS5+, as has been explained)
DOTORI PLAYER By JUNG DISK 1.3.4
BUZZ Player HD by BUGUN Software 1.8
ATK Player By Khoa Tran Anh 2.0
Azul Media Player - Video player for your iPad By Gplex 2.0 (don't select SW decoding!)
AVPlayerHD By EPLAYWORKS.Co.Ltd 1.422 (don't select SW decoding! NOTE: HW acceleration does NOT work under the current iOS5 beta – at least on the iPad2!)
yxplayer By mobilesoft.kr 1.2.5
(Even on the iPad2) uselessly slow software-only decoding (and no way of selecting HW decode) or plain incompatible (unsupported format) players:
XBMC (Cydia only; despite the devs' claim, I've found it slow at decoding L4.1 video)
OPlayer HD By olimsoft 1.0.16
GPlayer By Ginkgo Tech 1.0.00
Movie Player – Plays any Video! By Dominic Rodemer
eXPlayer HD By Zhigang Chen 1.3
GoodPlayer By Hustmobile 2.2
Sub Video Player for iPad By Noteloop 1.0 (=Remux MKV Player) (nonsupported format of the test file - with supported formats, it does use HW acceleration. However, I still don't recommend it - I'll explain later why)
VLC (AppStore; removed)
CineXPlayer – The best way to enjoy your Xvid movies By NXP Software B.V. 2.1 (nonsupported format)
I've compiled a list of current iOS players that use hardware H.264 decoding - that is, ones that are able to play back even L4.1 High without problems on the iPad2 and only with small stuttering / problems on prev-gen hardware.
They're as follows:
Videos (only iOS5+, as has been explained)
DOTORI PLAYER By JUNG DISK 1.3.4
BUZZ Player HD by BUGUN Software 1.8
ATK Player By Khoa Tran Anh 2.0
Azul Media Player - Video player for your iPad By Gplex 2.0 (don't select SW decoding!)
AVPlayerHD By EPLAYWORKS.Co.Ltd 1.422 (don't select SW decoding! NOTE: HW acceleration does NOT work under the current iOS5 beta – at least on the iPad2!)
yxplayer By mobilesoft.kr 1.2.5
(Even on the iPad2) uselessly slow software-only decoding (and no way of selecting HW decode) or plain incompatible (unsupported format) players:
XBMC (Cydia only; despite the devs' claim, I've found it slow at decoding L4.1 video)
OPlayer HD By olimsoft 1.0.16
GPlayer By Ginkgo Tech 1.0.00
Movie Player – Plays any Video! By Dominic Rodemer
eXPlayer HD By Zhigang Chen 1.3
GoodPlayer By Hustmobile 2.2
Sub Video Player for iPad By Noteloop 1.0 (=Remux MKV Player) (nonsupported format of the test file - with supported formats, it does use HW acceleration. However, I still don't recommend it - I'll explain later why)
VLC (AppStore; removed)
CineXPlayer – The best way to enjoy your Xvid movies By NXP Software B.V. 2.1 (nonsupported format)
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it's apparent viewing angle, not screen size
You can easily see the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 10" screen - if you hold it close enough.
You can easily see the difference on a 40" screen that's at a close viewing distance. You can't see the difference on a 120" screen that's 30m away from you. A lot of people have setups that can distinguish the difference - they may have smaller TVs, but they're sitting closer.
Here's a quick, rough check. Sit where you watch TV, and hold a ruler at arm's length. Measure the apparent height of your TV screen. If it's about 15cm or more (6" for the colonials), it's big enough for most people to be able to tell the difference.
There's also the issue that since more and more TVs even in modest sizes are 1080p (at BestBuy nearly half the TVs in the 30" to 40" range are 1080p, and all above 40" are 1080p), 720p content has to be scaled to native resolution. Common sense says that scaling an image isn't helpful for its quality.
You can easily see the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 10" screen - if you hold it close enough.
You can easily see the difference on a 40" screen that's at a close viewing distance. You can't see the difference on a 120" screen that's 30m away from you. A lot of people have setups that can distinguish the difference - they may have smaller TVs, but they're sitting closer.
Here's a quick, rough check. Sit where you watch TV, and hold a ruler at arm's length. Measure the apparent height of your TV screen. If it's about 15cm or more (6" for the colonials), it's big enough for most people to be able to tell the difference.
There's also the issue that since more and more TVs even in modest sizes are 1080p (at BestBuy nearly half the TVs in the 30" to 40" range are 1080p, and all above 40" are 1080p), 720p content has to be scaled to native resolution. Common sense says that scaling an image isn't helpful for its quality.
I wouldn't call it low quality. On a proper 720p native projector (high quality Panasonic PT-AX100u) with a 93" screen at a mere 9 feet viewing distance, I see absolutely no signs of distortion or other effects that you get with bit-rates that are too low. I think most of the people that bad-mouth ATV's video quality either have bad quality scalers on 1080 native sets that are doing the damage (or worse yet watching it on a high resolution monitor at 2 feet away) or have never seen it and are going by their imagination with numbers.
I have seen such artifacts on cable PPV HD movies and very bad ones at that, but never on an Apple HD rental.
Give me a break. The AppleTV is not low quality. Next thing you'll tell us that you watch Netflix in 1080p on device X.
I have purchased TV shows from iTunes and can see blotchiness in the blacks in darker scenes. I have a 4 year old Sony DLP and never see this on any other media source - Bluray, HD-DVD, or games.
It is not horrible, but defiantly noticeable.
I don't have a lot of iTunes TV shows to comment (just Doctor Who and only the last season an current is in HD; the SD seasons were awful 'jaggy' quality looking, but I got them on sale for like $10 a season.
I've never seen that effect on an iTunes movie rental. I have seen it on some of my own Handbrake encodes while testing encode rates (i.e. the maximum rate ATV1 can handle over the air streaming tends to be different than what it can handle when I sync the movie first. I had to find the highest reliable streaming rate. Fortunately, it doesn't have the problem at that rate (set #23 on HB as opposed to #20 default). The upstairs ATV can handle faster rates (higher speed connection over the air). I'm still thinking I should just run an Ethernet cable downstairs and be done with it. I could then put in the Crystal HD card and never have to re-encode anything for that room and get true 1080p at some point if I need it by going Linux + XBMC install on that ATV.
I was just thinking about Steve's comment about 1080p being redundant. Has he changed his mind?
Thanks a lot for this post. I got Dotori for my iPhone 4 and it plays the 1080p videos I have perfectly.
Also to add to your list, on iOS 4 the iPod app can play 1080p. You can't actually sync 1080p content on, but if you use home sharing it'll play it back no problem.
On that note, what's the status on home sharing in iOS 5?
not a hardware issue
Some jailbroken ATVs are already playing 1080p so it is not a hardware issue.
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I have a 63" plasma and the difference between 720p and 1080p is noticeable.
Some jailbroken ATVs are already playing 1080p so it is not a hardware issue.
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I have a 63" plasma and the difference between 720p and 1080p is noticeable.
All good progress.. though most of the time I couldn't tell a 720p from a 1080.. yes, my sight is that bad
Most people can't, unless you get real close to the screen.
Can you post a link that proves this? I've never heard it was even capable of 1080p on the hardware level, just playing 1080p files at 720p resolution.
Yes, Gen 1 ATV can output 1080p if you have the CrystalHD card and run Linux with XBMC on the machine instead of OSX/ATV interface. But that's not the same as jailbreaking Gen2 and somehow getting 1080p out of it instead of just 720p.
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