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ATV Questions

Avatar74 said:
I'm talking about how iTunes encapsulates what it transmits to AppleTV (or AirPort Express)... It was my understanding from conversations with people who broke this down backwards and forwards that any bitstream larger than 320Kbps is transcoded on the fly to 320Kbps AAC.
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Link please.

My understanding is that the Airport Express AirTunes is always Apple Lossless which is just 16 bit stereo PCM in about half the bandwidth, but there are no added compression/decompression artifacts here since if you send out 128 kbps MP3 as Apple Lossless it is indistinguishable from a WAV since it is lossless. This was done so that the Airport Express hardware could be kept simple & cheap, so all it needs to do in uncompress the Apple Lossless and send it to the optical port or to a DAC.

:apple:TV is quite different. It is perfectly capable of decoding the AAC/MP3 files it stores on its internal HDD, so just like iTunes to iTunes sharing it can send out the compressed data, which it will convert to 16 bit stereo PCM to send to the digital audio port or to a DAC and the analog port.

B
 
Avatar74 said:
I understand... my point is that you shouldn't have to encode them in anything higher than 192Kbps AAC at most. I can spot the very insinuation of audiophile snobbery from low Earth orbit, and as one who records, mixes and masters in 24-bit Linear PCM, I don't stand for that pseudoscientific nonsense. So I guess that was my way of firing a warning shot back across your bow... but I wouldn't go the trouble of changing what you've already encoded. It has to get reconstructed to 16-bit Linear PCM anyway before your HT can play it. I'm just saying iTunes sends it to AppleTV during streaming as 320Kbps bitstream... but then AppleTV reconstructs the 16-bit LPCM and sends to your HT over fiber. There's no reason that you'd ever know because there aren't enough errors upon reconstruction so as to be perceptible. (see my above paragraphs in response to the other poster)

What you're doing is equivalent to unplugging the AppleTV... A computer remembers settings because it saves them to preference files on quitting an application and upon shutting down the system. RAM is volatile storage. When you cut power to it, whatever it stored is gone. By switching AppleTV off hard with that "power conditioner" (a bunch of overpriced audiophile snake oil btw)... since you're not running AppleTV through any kind of power down cycle (it doesn't have one)... you're erasing that information. If the ability to shut it all off in one switch is more critical to you, then just deal with the fact that you have to reselect your stream source every time.

As for your home theater being complicated... Well, uncomplicate it. Anything that looks convoluted probably is.
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You're making some assumptions here.....I have never bought into the big audio difference between formats and when I ripped my CD collection almost five years ago I did a lot or research on the topic and came to the conclusion that 192 kbps was the right compression for me. Sometimes I can hear a difference but for the most part I don't. No need to debate this topic further since it's been done a million times before. Five years ago storage was a lot more expensive than it is today. It would still be nice to be able to identify what files are which format. Seems like an easy enough problem to solve to me.

While my power source is a conditioner it's main purpose it to turn everything on and off. No claims of improved picture or sound quality. It's complicated so my friends all go oooohhh and aaaahhhhh when them come over to my house. 😉
 
balamw said:
?Que? It's either Apple Lossless or 320kbps, but it can't be both. Most Apple Lossless files I have ever encoded come in around 600-800 kbps. and I don't think either Apple Lossless or 320 kbps AAC/MP3 would be very useful coming out of the digital audio port, since that is expected to be straight PCM (a.k.a. WAV).

Are you perhaps thinking of the Airport Express' AirTunes?

B
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Did we ever determine what audio stream the ATV outputs via the optical digital output? Kevin???
 
imlucid said:
It will only use iTunes on a Mac or PC as a source.

Kevin
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Background info:
I have my music/videos stored on an external HDD connected to my Airport extreme router. My MBP itunes points to the air disk as its library so that I don't have to use the MBP's HDD space.

Question:

If my MBP itunes is the source for an appletv, will streaming work with this type of setup? And if so, does it stream air disk->MBP->appletv, air disk->appletv or MBP->air disk->appletv?

Reason for asking:

I'm debating between buying a 1TB time capsule (and point my MBP itunes to it) or a mac mini (w/ 1 TB external drives).

time capsule would seem to be cheaper and more of a minimalist approach (which I prefer)

Any insight would be greatly appreciated 🙂
 
liquidh2o said:
If my MBP itunes is the source for an appletv, will streaming work with this type of setup? And if so, does it stream air disk->MBP->appletv, air disk->appletv or MBP->air disk->appletv?
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It will stream air disk -> MBP -> Apple TV

It is iTunes that is directly streaming content to the Apple TV. It doesn't matter where iTunes is getting its content from (local file, NAS, etc.) it still has to serve it out to the Apple TV.

Kevin
 
Take 2 frameworks based off Leopard?

After the Take 2 update, will the Apple TV's frameworks now be based on Leopard rather than Tiger?

Also, how does Take 2 support Dolby Digital? Via the .MOV container? Does the original file need a 5.1 AC3 soundtrack or does Take 2 somehow convert 5.1 AAC to AC3 automatically?
 
I'm doing some long-term thinking about :apple: TV, and have a serious impediment to purchasing. Why doesn't :apple:TV include a DVD player? Is there ever likely to be a version of :apple:TV that includes an optical drive? I would love to purchase an :apple:TV to replace my DVD player, but I don't think I'm likely to purchase yet another machine to hook up to my TV.
 
^I don't think Apple will be releasing anything in future generations of their hardware with a DVD player as its main optical drive. DVD is EoL right now... Blu-Ray is the next gen.

If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple released a MacBook Air drive with BluRay this year or next. That could potentially be enabled to work with an :apple:TV using its USB port.
 
ipedro said:
^I don't think Apple will be releasing anything in future generations of their hardware with a DVD player as its main optical drive. DVD is EoL right now... Blu-Ray is the next gen.

If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple released a MacBook Air drive with BluRay this year or next. That could potentially be enabled to work with an :apple:TV using its USB port.
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The developer note for Macbook Air is available on developer.apple.com. The USB port on the Macbook Air delivers more than twice the power required by the USB standard (1.1A vs .5A), which explains why the new drive won't work with other Macs or the current AppleTV.
 
Here's my set-up and my quandary.

:apple:tv 40gb (in mail - refurb purchase now that take 2 is available)
Macbook Pro 2.33ghz Core 2 Duo, 250gb hdd, 2gb ram
PC 160gb Sata raid 1, Xp Pro
External HDD 720 gb hooked up to Airport Extreme where I currently store all of my media.

My PC is connected via ethernet to AEBS and my MBP is wireless.

I'm thinking to just use my PC as my iTunes server and perhaps even hook up the External HDD to it for additional storage. My only reservation to doing this is that the PC is hot, noisy and it seems to me that the Windows DVD ripping SW is much clonkier than MactheRipper/Handbrake...

My alternative is to use the MBP as the iTunes server but then I have to have it on constantly and I'm concerned that streaming from 1st the Airdisk then from the MBP is going to cause flakey if not unstable playback.

Anyone care to comment?
 
srexy said:
Here's my set-up and my quandary.

:apple:tv 40gb (in mail - refurb purchase now that take 2 is available)
Macbook Pro 2.33ghz Core 2 Duo, 250gb hdd, 2gb ram
PC 160gb Sata raid 1, Xp Pro
External HDD 720 gb hooked up to Airport Extreme where I currently store all of my media.

My PC is connected via ethernet to AEBS and my MBP is wireless.

I'm thinking to just use my PC as my iTunes server and perhaps even hook up the External HDD to it for additional storage. My only reservation to doing this is that the PC is hot, noisy and it seems to me that the Windows DVD ripping SW is much clonkier than MactheRipper/Handbrake...

My alternative is to use the MBP as the iTunes server but then I have to have it on constantly and I'm concerned that streaming from 1st the Airdisk then from the MBP is going to cause flakey if not unstable playback.

Anyone care to comment?
Click to expand...

I use my first generation Mac Mini as a media hub - I rip all my movies on my MacBook Pro and then transfer the file over to the USB drive that I hook up to my slow Mac Mini - you could do the same with your PC - just rip everything on your MBP.

For me it works best when I have the USB drive connected to the Mini and not the Airport.
 
FreeState said:
I use my first generation Mac Mini as a media hub - I rip all my movies on my MacBook Pro and then transfer the file over to the USB drive that I hook up to my slow Mac Mini - you could do the same with your PC - just rip everything on your MBP.

For me it works best when I have the USB drive connected to the Mini and not the Airport.
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Good stuff - thanks.

Do you use your USB drive for other storage? If so how is your connection set up? - I've used Samba to connect to my ntfs drives on the pc before but am wondering if there's an easier way... My firewire drive is currently formatted w/3 partitions - 2 hfs and 1 Fat32.

Edit:

Scratch that - just realized that your Mini will be able to read the HFS drives no problem...

I'll have to post up in another forum I suspect.
 
I'm now using my Touch as a remote for my ATV. Is the remote communicating with the ATV or my PC? The reason I'm asking is if I'm in the same room at the ATV the response if very fast. If I move to another room it gets slow and I drop the connection but I appear to still be connected to my wifi connection.
 
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