Apple TV 'Take 2' HD Image Quality

[smallfield]

If Apple TV had Blu-Ray, I'd buy one...

Come on Apple, make it a fully-functional entertainment device -- or add Blu-Ray to the Mini...

You can't rent HD with the Mini. Frustrating. I was looking forward to this feature in iTunes, but if you buy the more expensive product, you can only rent the SD product.

Is the frame rate for 720p only 30fps? I though they had to decrease the rate to increase the resolution.

 

[matticus008]

i think this example is still simplifying things too much without even getting into quality of the original. firstly, that resolution (1900*1200) was only for still picture,

A pixel is a pixel. It doesn't matter for the sake of output whether it's a pixel in a video frame or one of an icon on a desktop. The poster you're replying to is correct in that regard.

If the output is 1920x1200 at 60Hz, then that's what gets pushed, 60 times a second, every second. Doing so takes relatively little computing power (though I'm not aware of any consumer hardware that offered 1920x1200 as a display mode before ~1995).

a 486 could never playback non-interlaced 320-240 stuff very well. as soon as the processor has to do the decoding of the 16 million colours moving and with sound and then add compression onto that, 1080p is reserved for truly high end computers.

That's what he said. Output isn't a problem; decoding is what takes muscle. AppleTV can push out the couple million pixels without a problem, but as a rendering device, it can't compose frames that complex for outputting.

 

[AidenShaw]

but shouldn't it be capit*A*lize?

I love your hardware posts, but a grammar Nazi has to watch out for spelling Nazis-

...and you honestly don't think that I intentionally made errors on both "MAC" and "capitolize"?

I hope that most of the regular readers caught those "errors" and realized that they were part of the joke....

 

[Sandfleaz]

A big boost for Apple TV ... maybe not perfect, but it's come a long way baby!
.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I highly doubt it's going to rival Blu-ray's selection. 80% of the movie studios are backing Blu-ray. In my opinion that is just wishful thinking.

First off, they're apples and oranges so you comparison isn't very good, IMO. One is a physical medium that you BUY (at ~$30 a pop no less) and the other is an on-demand RENTAL system. If they're not really competing (outside of Blockbuster Video at least), there's NO reason that the movie industry would/should want to not support Apple/iTunes as a distribution method. It just means MORE MONEY for them. Historically, on-demand pay-per-play is EXACTLY what the movie industry WANTS MORE THAN ANYTHING ON EARTH. It's the whole reason we got that stupid "Divx Dvd" system from Circuit City and friends because Hollywood LOVES the idea of charging you over and over and over again for watching the same movie. The public does not generally like that system, at least for physical media so they ended up dropping it.

Now if you look at the cable companies (who are also doing on-demand offerings now), they're getting all the big new movies on-demand. Maybe DVD comes out first, but the lag is getting pretty short even so. I'd imagine Apple will get similar treatment because ultimately that's what they're offering, on-demand movies.

I'm sure Blockbuster and other rental chains will HATE AppleTV as it directly affects their core business, but Hollywood doesn't care who is peddling their wares so long as they get their share.

That and Blu-ray obviously still looks better because it being a physical media and plenty of space for the Studios to work with, without being limited by the general public's internet connection. There are still more

Being a physical media has NOTHING to do with it. It all comes down to bitrates and that's it. There is no technical reason a downloadable HD movie couldn't be BETTER than Blu-ray (i.e. totally uncompressed, for example). Sure, it'd be a huge file, but that has more to do with bandwidth versus time and storage space than any inherent limitation in the method of transmission. They could in the future easily have an OPTION for compression (i.e. do you want to order high quality, medium quality or low quality HD based on your connection/time) and let the user decide what is acceptable based on time/storage capacity for their particular connection. I doubt they will do that, but it could be done.

1080i versus 1080P is negligible in the sense that any 1080i source made from film can be recombined back into 1080P through 3:2 pulldown the same way 480i sources can be easily converted into 480P with any halfway decent progressive DVD player and/or projector/tvs or external deinterlacers. The whole 1080P thing is overhyped given ALL LCD/Plasma/DLP sources can ONLY display 1080P on-screen (they all have to recombine either internally or before it gets the signal). The only question is whether they do it correctly/quality or not. Furthermore, most people wouldn't know the difference between 1080P and 720P because most people have TINY HDTV sets. By tiny, I mean under 60 inches. I've got a 720P Panasonic LCD projector with a 93 inch screen and it looks FANTASTIC. It's got one heck of a scaler in it also plus it's in near perfect calibration right out of the factory so even 480i tv looks better on it at 72" inches 4:3 mode than my old 57" CRT HDTV looked (46" 4:3) from just a few years ago.

Would I like a 1080P projector instead? Sure. Is it going to be night and day even at 93"? No, I don't think so. It would be noticeably sharper, but 720P on this screen/projector combo already looks like I'm looking out a window. Now if I'm going to use my laptop on it, the 1080P projector would come in handy for higher resolution/larger desktops.

people out there that prefer to have physical media over digital media. DVD sales prove this. Blu-ray players have dropped from $1200 to $350 in little

I buy DVDs because they're CHEAP. Why rent a new movie for $4-6 if I can BUY it for $5-12 on average? At the very least, I won't have to return it it to the rental store. More to the point, up until recently, on-demand and PPV movies have been abysmal quality. DVDs were better looking and CERTAINLY better sounding (5.1 DD or even 6.1 DTS blows away 2-channel stereo with dolby decoding) so OF COURSE I'm going to go for DVDs over on-demand offerings in those circumstances.

Recently, however, I moved where there is a DVD rental store less than 1/2 mile from my house. I find myself renting recent releases instead of going to the movie theater. Most movies I only watch once, maybe twice ever so why buy it if I can rent it for LESS than the cost of one matinee movie ticket and watch it in peace on my 93" screen with a high quality 6.1 sound setup with a good meal and beer at home instead of having kids kick my seat at the cineplex? But what makes it MORE interesting is that lately my cable company has started offering HDTV on-demand movies. They have a limited selection at the moment (obviously AppleTV would have a HUGE advantage here with 1000+ to start whereas my cable company only offers around 12 choices at any given time and they change over time).

So what I would have here is a situation where I can stay AT HOME (no trips to a rental store where they may or may not even carry blu-ray to rent; most places do NOT and WILL NOT any time soon carry them or any quantity/selection of them to rent) and watch very recent movies in high definition for under $6 a pop. How great is that? Or I can go buy a blu-ray player and spend $30 a pop to OWN a movie I will only watch once anyway.

Admittedly, there are SOME movies I'd prefer to own because I DO watch them several times a year, but that's about a dozen movies period over the history of movie-making (i.e. my favorites). If Playstation3 ever gets some interesting games out, I might buy one and get those few movies on blu-ray or something, but otherwise, I'm thinking AppleTV is where it's at for sheer convenience and savings. Because until I can buy a blu-ray movie for what I can buy a DVD for, there's no incentive for me to 'own' HD movies. I can use the savings in just renting them to do something more fun like go out to dinner afterwards.

 

[ravenvii]

*snip*

Just wanted to say... 93" plasma HDTV?! Drooooool, man you must have paid out the ass for that!

Still, to imagine, I paid only $750 for my 720p projector, and now have a ~120" (yeah, that's a 10' screen, baby) with great image quality, for a fraction of a fraction of what your TV costs, probably.

Yeah, it does have negatives - lighting issues, having to have a clear wall for it to project on, having nothing in the way between the projector and the wall, having to watch where you sit so you don't block the screen, etc etc. It's a pain, but when I think of the cost-to-size ratio, it makes it all worth it.

And to think, this is a entry-level projector. I can just imagine how good the picture quality would be from a projector even just twice the price (~1,500-2,000). That's the realm of the 1080p projectors, baby.

(Sorry folks for the off-topic post, back to AppleTV... I'm not using it until they put subtitles or captions in at least MOST of the movies. Until then, Netflix for the win.)

 

[Wiggin]

For people debating 1080 vs 720, you really should take a look at this chart:

http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html

It's one of the better representations of the fact that the human eye can only resolve a finite amount of detail. Just like a digital camera can only record a certain number of pixels. If you want to see more detail, you have to move closer to your subject (or TV, in this discussion).

So if the discussion is purely about resolution (not color accuracy, compression artifacts, bitrate, etc, etc), and taking the guy with the 65" TV as an example, if you are sitting more than about 8' from the TV, you are not seeing all 1080 lines of resolution. It doesn't matter who you are or how good your TV is. And if you sit more than about 12.5', you wouldn't even be able to see all the pixels if it were at 720p 65' TV.

And if you take a more typical 50" TV, you'd have to sit a mere 5' from the screen to see all 1080 lines of resolution. But as long as you are sitting closer than 9 feet, you'll get some improvement with 1080 vs 720, but it will only be marginal. So, if we assume the average TV is 42-50" and the average viewing distance of 8-10 feet (unless you live in a dorm or have a very specific set-up purely for movie watching, which most people don't), most people will not benefit significantly with 1080p.

For the example of Ratatoui (or however you spell it!), the perceived improvement on blu-ray is probably as much do with with color and lack of compression artifacts as it does with resolution. Blu-ray has significantly higher bandwidth to play with than other sources. The increased resolution from 720 to 1080 is only a 2.25x increase. Yet the bandwidth used in your blu-ray move far exceeds 2.25x the bandwidth used by other sources. So they are using that for something...higher quality compression. If you used those same compression settings at 720p, I'd wager you'd still have stunning quality. (And from the sounds of the reviews, Apple is using some very good compression settings for their HD content.)

For example, I have Comcast. There are some channels (Sci-Fi is one) where their standard def channel has better overall quality than their HD channel. Yes, I can see more pixels on HD. But the color banding, stuttering (dropped frames?), and severe macroblocking make it at times unwatchable. USA is another channel that suffers from this problem (at least here in Chicago). The SD channel may have fewer pixels, but the overall quality is better.

Similarly, my standard, non-upconverting DVD player shows a better picture on my Panasonic 42" 1080p TV than any of Comcast's HD channels. The picture just a wee bit soft, but the color accuracy and motion blows Comcast's picture quality away. This is because Comcast compresses the crap out of their channels and because the Panasonic has a damn good scaler in it. If you are sitting more than 12 feet from that 65" TV (or more than 9 feet from a 50" TV) and you say that 1080p looks better than 720p, I assure you it's not because of the increased resolution. It's because either your 720p video was poorly compressed (perhaps for bandwidth reasons) or because whichever component in your system is scaling the signal to 1080 to display on your TV (it has to be scaled), whether it's a receiver or your TV, it's doing a poor job of it.

 

[winterspan]

But it's still not powerful enough to play my downloaded 1080p mkv files, so screw it.

That is totally irrelevant to that matter at hand. And besides, It's not as if it was designed to play pirated files from the net. But, if you are looking for a great solution (dont know about mkv, may have to re-encode) get a Playstation 3. Great media player functionality.. I have a network share setup with a load of 720P DIVX files and they play great over Wifi. lower-mid bitrate 1080P will work too with wired ethernet or with a very high signal 802.11N.

 

[winterspan]

For people debating 1080 vs 720, you really should take a look at this chart...

You can sit here all day and analyze data about retina resolving power, but I will tell you straight up that I notice a difference between 720P content and 1080P content on my 46" Samsung LCD from about 8-9'. However, It's not enough to warrant animosity towards the AppleTV, and for a download solution, I would take it in a heartbeat for quick rentals. For more desired movies/special events and when I want to purchase I'll stick to BluRay.
However, Having a cablebox, amp/receiver, Tivo, and playstation 3, adding another box is such a pain.... It'll be like a big electronics orgy...

 

[nuhusky001]

Sync? Just stream it

i totally agree. i didn't buy an ATV because ripping and streaming stuff to the ATV and having a movie library that needs to be synced and all that is not convenient. but with movie rentals directly to the ATV and being able to start watching after a few min. of download/buffering is what i want. i can't care less about 1080p or 5.1 or whatever. it's supposed to be easy. it's just TV, nothing important.

i might cancel my comcast and buy an ATV. at $39/month for my comcast i can easily buy the ATV and rent the TV shows and movies i want.

Yes, syncing is kinda a pain... I agree. But I just stream it. I never sync ANYTHING. Of course my iMac never goes to sleep anymore. But I don't care. My hard disks still spin down. I also have a EyeTV Hybrid and "Digital" UHF antenna in my attic and get 18 stations. So I record network television shows on my iMac, convert it automatically to the apple tv format. And I only buy shows from cable channels. (Discovery, NGC etc) I've lived without cable for about 8 months... $70 a month... I'm figuring as of August '08 I would have paid for all the equipment I bought for my iMac DVR and my tosh 32" LCD television. Thats only 15 months without a cable bill. Scary how fast it adds up. (two EyeTV Hybrids, Antenna, Apple TV, 32" Toshiba = $1100)

 

[slate1]

I've got to ask the question....

... how the hell close are you guys sitting to your TV that you "just got to have" 1080p???

There gets a point where the real-wold application of higher and higher resolution just begins to get silly - I see the same thing with digital cameras. People insist on having 10mp digital cameras and then print out the pictures at postcard size on an inkjet printer.

Maybe I'm blind, but I own a 42" Panasonic (series 5) Plasma 480p EDTV that I purchased very early in on when plasma flat panels first hit and I also own a 50" Panasonic (series 8) Plasma 1080p HDTV. Side by side standing 2 feet away from the screen, of course I can see a difference. But sitting at the typical viewing distance of 8-12 feet they look remarkebly the same with the same content (yes, the EDTV will internally scale 720p and 1080i to 480p). This is with 480p -vs- 1080p, I can't imagine that you'd see ANY difference at even a few feet away between 720p and 1080p.

I'm an avid audiophile as well - and I am one of those that can hear minute differences in equipment. I can understand how some videophiles can become obsessed with such things as monitor resolution. What I learned on the audio side of things is to quit listening to the equipment and to start listening to the music. It sounds like some of the videophiles here are suffering from the same problem I had with audio - you're concentrating on the minute details of the equipment and not on the enjoyment of the experience.

Some people just have to have the biggest and the baddest - I can appreciate that, but to dismiss a great product like the AppleTV simply because it doesn't spec outside of real world application makes no sense to me whatsoever.

 

[smallfield]

Maybe I'm blind, but I own a 42" Panasonic (series 5)
Plasma 480p EDTV that I purchased very early in on when plasma flat panels first hit and I also own a 50" Panasonic (series 8) Plasma 1080p HDTV. Side by side standing 2 feet away from the screen, of course I can see a difference. But sitting at the typical viewing distance of 8-12 feet they look remarkebly the same with the same content

Do you have your source plugged in right????

I had a friend that got a Samsung HDTV and was using antenna cable from his HD box instead of HDMI and had a similar issue. Make sure your wiring is capable of HD.

I think 480p--> 1080i/720p/1080p is a HUGE difference. My 46" is about 10-12' from my couch and I can tell easily if the source is HD or not. Although I can't tell blu-ray v. 720p/1080i HD broadcast (excluding broadcast artifact), upscaled DVD v. BD is easy.

 

[ChrisK018]

Life is short. Enjoy what's available today. That's my motto.

I totally agree with this sentiment most of the time, and have to guiltily shrug my shoulders about being a 1080p snob-- as some other posters have noted. I am close to getting a new HD tv, and I know it is going to have to last me for 5+ years, so I want to get one that is as future proof as possible since they cost so much friggin' $$$.

 

[mchalebk]

I've had a 1080i capable TV (42" CRT rear projection) for six years now, but the AppleTV is the first HD source I've ever connected to it. Why no HD cable or satellite? Because they're hosing it up. They charge too much for it and I don't watch much live TV. Why no Blu-ray or HD-DVD? Because they're hosing it up. The format war was an amazingly bad set of decisions.

I did not buy AppleTV for the HD content, but I do plan to check it out. I know that, for my TV, HD rentals will look amazing. maybe not the extra detail so much, but I'm really looking forward to less motion artifacts.

In the not-too-distant future, I will be buying a flat panel TV. I'm starting my research now and I'm sure I'll end up with a 1080p set. The only good reason these days to not go that way is money and I can afford it, so why not? I don't have the world's greatest eyesight, so the extra resolution won't be that big a deal, but I certainly look forward to the absence of motion artifacts (which drive me nuts).

Just an aside for people who wonder what's so great about AppleTV: the main reason I bought my AppleTV was so I could quit using my computer as a music server and so that I can put home videos on it. This way my wife won't have to shuffle DVDs to watch her horse show videos or go through all the gyrations that were necessary to listen to music with my previous setup. It's also great the way it uses my iPhoto albums as a screensaver. Rentals are just a bonus for me.

 

[Digitalclips]

A big boost for Apple TV ... maybe not perfect, but it's come a long way baby!
.

I agree and I was so happy it was a software upgrade too, having bought an ATV the day it came out.

The quality of Apple's HD content on our 50" Sony HD set is fabulous and the FiOS we have (25/5) serves up the movies in almost real time. Flipping between HD material from Verizon FiOS HD and ATV HD to us, the difference is imperceptible.

My only suggestion to Apple is offer both SD and HD previews of movies in rental section. I have to go to the Theatrical Trailers to view in HD which seems silly if I am browsing rental section, if they are in the system anyway why not put an extra link on the Rental page to those HD previews as well as the current SD ones.

Excellent product Apple, keep the goodies coming

 

[Lucidmind]

If Apple TV had Blu-Ray, I'd buy one...

Come on Apple, make it a fully-functional entertainment device -- or add Blu-Ray to the Mini...

Yes please! Damn, that would sell.

 

[megfilmworks]

I thinks this chart explains best why film shot at 24 fps is not adversely affected by the difference between 1080i and p.
Most of the differences people are noticing are from other factors.

 

[daisydog]

EyeTV....

Here's what I've not been able to figure out about EyeTV-type solutions...
Exactly what does this allow me to do with a cable connection?
- I know it can't do premium content (HBO etc). Even if ATV implemented cable card, that's been pretty much a flop in the market because of the need to accommodate the various cable providers.
- But beyond premium services, there's also the different levels of non-premium content. Basic service, Basic digital, Extended digital, etc.

Can EyeTV do everything EXCEPT Premium, or only a subset of the other cable flavors?

Any DRV solution that doesn't give me everything that the (admittedly crappy) Comcast DVR does (for $12/mo) isn't going to compete.

And that's why Apple isn't going to do DVR. They want to replace Cable/DVR, not support it.
Apple wants to be the 'ala carte' solution that everyone claims they want.

I too am interested in this topic. My wife likes watching local news, SEC football, PBS and a few select shows like HGTV. I don't watch cable at all or news (except fstv/Democracy Now). I watch occasional movies and just bought an ATV, especially to view photo/music content. I was wondering if the content my wife watches might be available using EyeTV? If so, she might be more willing to boot cable.

Thanks!!

 

[garty]

Yes please! Damn, that would sell.

It might but it won't ever happen. Neither will it ever have DVR functionality.

For me it's not about resolution, after all the most important aspect of the movie is the content, i.e. how good is it? I'm not going to watch a film just because it happens to be viewable at 1080p! There are many other factors to consider other than just resolution.

I doubt I'll ever buy a Blu-ray Disc player (note capitalization ) I'll use a region free upscaling dvd for the few I own and the ones I get from Netflix and I'll rent both HD and SD movies on my TV for convenience and probably drop my Netflix subscription down to the basic minimum to get movies I can't get on the TV and TV shows.

 

[GQB]

Do you have your source plugged in right????

I had a friend that got a Samsung HDTV and was using antenna cable from his HD box instead of HDMI and had a similar issue. Make sure your wiring is capable of HD.

I guarantee he is properly connected. (Kinda condescending to assume someone can't plug in a cable properly.)
I have the same rig... got the 480p 37" Panny commercial ED monitor after long discussions on AVSforum showed me the LT 42" > 8 ft rule.
The funny thing is to watch the folks who popped big $$ for their 1080p justify their pursuit of diminishing returns by dismissing those (as someone just put it about music) who are watching the content, not the monitor.
Yes there's a difference for really large screens simply because they put you functionally closer to the screen.

But most hilarious are those who call for HD on the iPhone. THAT's 'spit-take funny'.

 

[slate1]

Do you have your source plugged in right????

I had a friend that got a Samsung HDTV and was using antenna cable from his HD box instead of HDMI and had a similar issue. Make sure your wiring is capable of HD.

I think 480p--> 1080i/720p/1080p is a HUGE difference. My 46" is about 10-12' from my couch and I can tell easily if the source is HD or not. Although I can't tell blu-ray v. 720p/1080i HD broadcast (excluding broadcast artifact), upscaled DVD v. BD is easy.

You're misunderstanding me. I'm not talking non-hd content versus hd content. I'm talking taking the same HD content (720p, 1080i, whatever) and sending it to the 480p and the 1080p set - from 10' away it's not a huge difference on a 42" plasma.

Blu-ray is a whole other issue and, frankly, doesn't even belong in the equation. There's no way ANY streamable deliverable on-demand medium is ever going to be able to compete with Blu-ray. That being said - for a rentable, on-demand service - in my mind AppleTV is hard to beat for image quality, ease of use, etc.

 

[andy721]

ok

Lets just put it this way, blu ray owns all for now till the laser tvs come out, apple nice try but I would have expected something better then bluray. Something a lot more color coordinated, Also sharper and more realistic to the eye, sense you guys like putting your hardware ahead 3-5years.
Well I'm disappointed once again.

 

[fastbite]

I WANT IT!!! But I'm in the UK -- so no flicks for me. I'll keep on torrenting until they do. Hollywood is crap!

 

[killmoms]

Lets just put it this way, blu ray owns all for now till the laser tvs come out, apple nice try but I would have expected something better then bluray. Something a lot more color coordinated, Also sharper and more realistic to the eye, sense you guys like putting your hardware ahead 3-5years.
Well I'm disappointed once again.

You forgot to add a [/sarcasm] tag so people wouldn't be confused.

 

[Wiggin]

You can sit here all day and analyze data about retina resolving power, but I will tell you straight up that I notice a difference between 720P content and 1080P content on my 46" Samsung LCD from about 8-9'.

I have no doubt the picture is better, just saying that at that distance, it's not the resolution that making most of the difference.

So the people who fault Apple for not having 1080p content are just being impracticle. The file sizes need to be kept reasonable for downloading. And as my experience with Comcast SD vs Comcast HD vs DVD shows, I'd much rather have a high-quality encoding at a lower resolution than an overly compressed video at higher resolution. Apple made the right choice.