Maximum bitrate for 1024x576 H.264 videos?

[Viper2005]

If I am using 1024 x 576 resolution H.264, what is the maximum bitrate that the iPad will accept before it rejects the video? I encoded a video with handbrake using 1024x576 2500kbps bitrate and I see so much macro-blocking in dark scenes and loss of detail.. (the source was a 720p MKV music video in H264 format)
I'm looking to make the video as crisp as the ones downloaded from itunes in HD. Any suggestions?

 

[mciarlo]

I'm not sure what the difference is - I'm sure someone can chime in here - but the Bit Rate of an HD movie from iTunes (shown by the info pane) is 157 kbps. Total bit rate is shown as 4669 kbps.
Video dimensions: 1280 x 720

 

[Wolfpup]

I'm wondering the exact same thing-both for my iPod touch, and the iPad I may soon get (or for that matter if I get an iPhone 4 instead).

I convert video from my Tivo using the built in preset in Handbrake on Windows, except I bump the audio from 128Kb/s to 160, since that seems to work, and why not?

But fast action even on my 480x320 iPod isn't flawless-it's good, but it could be better, and I'm sure will look much worse on an iPhone 4, let alone on an almost 10" iPad.

So what the heck are iOS' bit rate and video limits? This seems like something Apple would just tell us-and maybe they do, but I don't know where. I hate trial and error where I spend an hour encoding a show only to have it not run. (Heck, ideally I wish they could just support the MPEG2 ATSC broadcasts directly from my Tivo...save the trouble of transcoding, and they'd be super high quality.)

EDIT: Heck, I don't even know what RESOLUTION iOS can handle. I mean it SEEMS like you ought to be able to do at least the iPad's native resolution on any of them at a high bit rate. Although it's silly, I could actually see myself finishing up a show on my iPad at night before I got to sleep, assuming the internal speaker is loud/good enough (the iPad one is kind of quiet/lowish quality).

 

[Consultant]

Just use the Apple TV preset