handbrake actually does a really go job of riping dvd to m4v i do not notice a quality loss
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Apple Updates Apple TV to Version 5.0.1
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handbrake actually does a really go job of riping dvd to m4v i do not notice a quality loss
The only thing I really dislike about the ATV is how long it takes to stream videos shot on the iPhone/iPad to it. I wanted to watch an 11 second video of my kid shot on my 4s over airplay on ATV, it took almost 2 minutes to load an 11 second clip. I really can't understand it. I assume it's some sort of video conversion, but I don't know why movies would just be saved in .m4V format on the phone. Also, ironically, you can go under video and stream an HD movie from there and it will start playing almost immediately with 2-3 seconds of buffering time.
And to circumvent issues people will raiseI have 4 ATV's including the new gen and they are all that way. I have the newest Airport Extreme. It happens with other routers and from all iPhones I have including 4 and 4s. This is an ATV that is 3 feet from the Airport.
Oh, when streaming music from my Mac Mini to the ATV's it occasionally breaks the audio stream as well.
I don't have a problem streaming from my (single) iPhone 4s to my (single) ATV with my (single) apple router.... maybe with seemingly so many devices as you describe there is some sort of interference going on? I have never seen streaming music break as well.
Airparrot
Just got a response from the people at AirParrot saying that this update from Apple does not break the Airplay interface with AirParrot.
This update will not affect your AirPlay connections. So update away!
Best,
Kyle
AirParrot
Just got a response from the people at AirParrot saying that this update from Apple does not break the Airplay interface with AirParrot.
This update will not affect your AirPlay connections. So update away!
Best,
Kyle
AirParrot
Bingo!
All my devices run through my AVR via HDMI, and each HDMI input is set per device (HDMI 1 - Blu-Ray, HDMI 2 - Mac Mini w/ proper settings, etc.) and one HDMI out to my Pioneer Elite 50". My Pioneer Elite AVR is the main "hub" that directs channels via HDMI to my Pioneer Elite 50". Each HDMI input is configured specifically for each device.
However, I have connected computer systems via HDMI without such tech and never experienced the issues you described. Not stating it doesn't happen, I'm sure it does, but I have yet to see it in my 10+ years in IT/Communications. Perhaps it depends on the system/video of the device itself as well.
It works for me too, I suggest checking your audio settings, I think I turned off "auto" select somewhere to make both active. I'm not at home to look at it, but seems like that was the deal. It will play audio out of both at the same time as well. I have HDMI going into my Home Theater amp and optical going to a second amp with speakers in another room. It will play to both at the same time so I can hear music in both places.
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I have tried using iPhone 4, same problem. To be fair, this is a pretty well know problem and I don't really expect a fix to come out of this, more just frustrated
There are multiple thread about this at Apple:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3711871?start=0&tstart=0
One article at Macworld even suggested caching all the videos to the ATV the night before if you had guests coming over. I LOL'd at that.
http://www.macworld.com/article/1159701/apple_tv_caching.html
It works for me too, I suggest checking your audio settings, I think I turned off "auto" select somewhere to make both active. I'm not at home to look at it, but seems like that was the deal. It will play audio out of both at the same time as well. I have HDMI going into my Home Theater amp and optical going to a second amp with speakers in another room. It will play to both at the same time so I can hear music in both places.
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I have tried using iPhone 4, same problem. To be fair, this is a pretty well know problem and I don't really expect a fix to come out of this, more just frustrated
There are multiple thread about this at Apple:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3711871?start=0&tstart=0
One article at Macworld even suggested caching all the videos to the ATV the night before if you had guests coming over. I LOL'd at that.http://www.macworld.com/article/1159701/apple_tv_caching.html
lol ya thats a pretty lame "fix", ill have to do some more testing i really only tested one video to see how airplay works ive only had the ATV3 for a few days,
Apple are a solutions company; they sell you a hardware (Mac/iPhone/iPad), software (OSX, iOS, iTunes) and services (iCloud, iTMS, App Stores, iTunes Match) solution.
I think it's just a "hobby" because they don't know exactly what the right home solution is yet. And they don't want to hype & oversell the ATV until they know what direction they're going in.
But with Airplay from iOS, and soon on OSX, I think they've found the 'killer feature', and they'll start pushing the ATV a lot more.
I don't have an issue with it but I do wish Apple would let users "hide" channels they don't use like MLB, Netflix, etc. That would go a long way to making it less cluttered and even an early model DirecTV recv'r allows users to hide unwanted channels.
agreed with some customizing options, also maybe a choice to turn on or off that "top shelf" or maybe an option to pick what shows up there it seems very random what movies from my iTunes for instance are displayed on that top shelf
Yes, totally not like usual Apple elegance, plus user unfriendly!
Cluttered busy, too many colors! Icons bigger than they have to be.
Why not make them identical to the way they look on the iphone and ipad?
Same iOS.
And give me a remote that works that way too.
Just missing the "INTEL inside" circle on it.
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Screen size output "modified" after 5.0.1 update
So I ran the update yesterday, and noticed that the screen didnot fit full screen to my HDTV any more... (bars showed up on both sides of the TV, like I'm watching SD channels on DirecTV or something). I checked the settings and the default setting has always been on "AUTO" for the screen size. I manually set it to the first option, 720P 60Hz, and it is back to normal as it was yesterday before the update. Screen filled, HD movies look great, all is good again. Don't notice any other visual changes.
Of course, I'm sure the new ATV3 would have the first option as 1080P 60Hz instead, but otherwise I assume the same as the ATV2 that I have.
So I ran the update yesterday, and noticed that the screen didnot fit full screen to my HDTV any more... (bars showed up on both sides of the TV, like I'm watching SD channels on DirecTV or something). I checked the settings and the default setting has always been on "AUTO" for the screen size. I manually set it to the first option, 720P 60Hz, and it is back to normal as it was yesterday before the update. Screen filled, HD movies look great, all is good again. Don't notice any other visual changes.
Of course, I'm sure the new ATV3 would have the first option as 1080P 60Hz instead, but otherwise I assume the same as the ATV2 that I have.
Apple TV has always included a YouTube app, from the first model, and it's much better than watching on a computer screen IMO. There's also Netflix, Vimeo, MLB and plenty of others. But my favorites (which no one else has) are Podcasts and iTunes U. All podcasts are free and there is tons of stuff there, including many news-type television shows (Rachel Maddow, The Today Show, etc.) And iTunes U has instructional videos and lectures from colleges, universities, private parties, and there is a wealth of information there. And all of it free. On your television. I think it's kind of amazing really. And it's not anything that you'll find on Google or Amazon.
I tried that...complained every day for two months...finally got a response from Netflix telling me that the problem was with the Apple TV.
Complained to my ISP but they said the same thing...besides this one does not make sense because the Netflix app on my laptop, iPhone, iPad, and my Samsung TV all work flawlessly...only the Apple TV has issues.
Complained to Apple and they told me that it is either a problem with Netflix or my ISP.
I hate going in circles...somebody grow some balls and tell me that the problem is their fault and will be handled!!!
Trailers says unavailable try again later for me, so I guess they do have a problem right now
The only thing I really dislike about the ATV is how long it takes to stream videos shot on the iPhone/iPad to it. I wanted to watch an 11 second video of my kid shot on my 4s over airplay on ATV, it took almost 2 minutes to load an 11 second clip. I really can't understand it. I assume it's some sort of video conversion, but I don't know why movies would just be saved in .m4V format on the phone. Also, ironically, you can go under video and stream an HD movie from there and it will start playing almost immediately with 2-3 seconds of buffering time.
And to circumvent issues people will raise
Oh, when streaming music from my Mac Mini to the ATV's it occasionally breaks the audio stream as well.
The reason HD movies start playing so fast is that they are encoded with Apple's HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). They encode these at multiple bit rates and your Apple TV requests a lower rate to begin with so that the user gets to see video right away --- better user experience. At this point the Apple TV then starts testing out the bandwidth and selects the appropriate bit rate based on your connection speed. Most people won't even notice the inferior quality at the expense of the quick start time.
As for your iphone 4/4s encodes. There can be a number of issues. These are just encoded at one rate m4v files. We did a test the other day and some of the content was encoded at 25 mbps!!!! So you could have 802.11 g (instead of n), you could have your appleTV connected wirelessly, etc. So then what is happening is that your phone is sending 25mpbs to your router, then your router is sending 25mbps to your appletv. If you are on g or even on n, this is quite a load! Also the player on AppleTV tries to buffer some such that, based on throughput it is seeing, will playback the clip without having to pause --- in an ideal situation. So here is some trouble shooting you can do:
1. Verify you have 802.11n
2. Connect your AppleTV via ethernet instead of wireless (if #1 doesn't help) --- This will take 25mbps off the wifi.
Hope that helps. Since you have 4 ATVs, you really should consider running ethernet to all 4 of them and you need to have gigabit ethernet if you want to support the use case of more than one user sending video encodes to more than one ATV. Of course at some point your 802.11n network will be overloaded so you can't support too many of these.
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The layout is workmanlike but the product is not intended for technofiles. However, the remote is far too small and I always end up hitting select instead of the directional pads. Not fun when typing in passwords, searching, etc.
Easy solution, though. I programmed my Logitech universal remote and no more button issues, plus of course all devices consolidated.
Easy solution, though. I programmed my Logitech universal remote and no more button issues, plus of course all devices consolidated.
Thanks for the suggestion, I will try plugging it in wired and see if that changes anything. All of my devices are 802.11n so I'm really doubting the issue is bandwidth, more like you mentioned, these are encoding issues. Just seems weird that Apple would take that approach.
Here's another way of looking at this though. The video file is only 28 megs. I can easily stream more than 28 megs from my phone from the video app to the ATV in a few seconds. It takes almost 2 minutes from the Photo app. This is just comparing actual file sizes. The entire movie should be able to transfer faster regardless of compression.
Hope their address their iTunes issue with streaming movies. Big headache. It can take many hours to be ready to play, than it suddenly jumps to 30, 25, 18, minutes, to 5 and than could start - or go up to 3 hours. Sometimes it interrupts with the spinning wheel going for minutes. At the same time Netflix streaming works usually well, only that it than occupies the buffer so the downloaded movie from iTunes is deleted again. Over 50 pages on the Apple forum on it. I stopped renting movies from iTunes, only occasionally and than i download the entire movie to my iPad and airplay it to the Apple TV...
Thank you for posting. This is what I was wondering.
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You know, I actually stopped using it because of the watchespn app was no longer working but the more that I think of the post you wrote, you make a lot of valid points. I have Netflix and Hulu on the PS3 and use amazon prime even though the selection is not as good. However, the few times that I have rented a movie I do use the amazon service. It would be nice to have lower prices to rent. I mean blockbuster used to charge 3-4 bucks for 2 nights/3 days. Now I definitely feel like an old man recalling "the good old days"....such a drag. I'm beginning to question whether I'm honestly under 30 still...
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You know, I actually stopped using it because of the watchespn app was no longer working but the more that I think of the post you wrote, you make a lot of valid points. I have Netflix and Hulu on the PS3 and use amazon prime even though the selection is not as good. However, the few times that I have rented a movie I do use the amazon service. It would be nice to have lower prices to rent. I mean blockbuster used to charge 3-4 bucks for 2 nights/3 days. Now I definitely feel like an old man recalling "the good old days"....such a drag. I'm beginning to question whether I'm honestly under 30 still...
Just bought an ATV today, coincidentally enough.
Liking it so far, especially as I watch a lot of YouTube content.
Total joke that it's not properly regionalised for the UK market, though. Who cares about the WSJ?
Still, no issues AirPlaying from the BBC iPlayer app.
Liking it so far, especially as I watch a lot of YouTube content.
Total joke that it's not properly regionalised for the UK market, though. Who cares about the WSJ?
Still, no issues AirPlaying from the BBC iPlayer app.
Yeah, exactly. I'm not sure why either of the audio outputs on the ATV have to be dependent on the status of the other, I just want it to output audio to both at all times. I guess a solution would be to get a newer HDMI-switching receiver and run the video through the receiver on the way to the tv, but that's a pretty expensive proposition.
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Thanks, smp, I have looked in all the tv menus, I can't find anything like that. It is a 4+ year old plasma, maybe the HDMI is out of date, although I believe it's HDMI 1.3. Also the possibility that the "secret" menus have some such settings, I'll have to look up how to access those.
As for having audio continue when the tv gets turned off, that's something, but I'd rather not have to turn the thing on at all to start streaming.