Forcing native resolution?

the appletv doesn't stretch anything to fit the screen, it always plays it in it's native resolution.

ie if the video is 4:3 (ie not widescreen) then it plays it 4:3 with black bars left and right.

 

further .. it is controlled by your tv. pick a ratio that uses the source ratio in your tv's settings. You will probably see black pillarboxes etc but it would be the native res.

 

Guys, he's talking about scaling, not aspect ratios.

Answer is no. ATV will scale the video to whatever resolution you're outputting to the TV.

EDIT: To answer potential questions, what I believe the OP is asking is to be able to play the video at its native *resolution*. If his music video is, say, 640x360 16:9. He'd like it to play back at that resolution resulting in major black bars surrounding the video on a FullHD TV. Scaling of any sorts is never ideal especially if the source video resolution is not a multiple of destination resolution. This particular example video would scale well as 640x3=1920 and 360x3=1080. But scaling a low resolution video on a FullHD telly is never pretty. Nothing you can do about it. I mean, looking at a postcard size picture on a huge TV is not ideal either. This whole rant is assuming I understood the OP correctly.

 

True, but not entirely. If the AppleTV plays back 4:3 material, it adds the black bars to the sides and outputs a 16:9 picture to the TV. The TV plays back the video with the black bars added by AppleTV and it's up to the user to make sure the TV is set to 16:9 or Widescreen or whatever it's called in that particular TV.

So yes, while the TV ultimately controls what aspect ratio is displayed, in the case of the AppleTV it's a matter of setting it and forgetting it at 16:9 and the AppleTV takes care of the aspect ratios.

Furthermore, how could the resulting picture be the native res just because it's displayed in the proper aspect ratio? A 640x480 video displayed at its native resolution on a FullHD (or HD Ready) TV would result in black bars all around. Apple TV *always* scales to whatever resolution it's set to. If it scales 4:3 material, the black bars get added in the process.