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Right now I am not. For now I have all my videos encoded in 720p24fps in quicktime with chapters for all my events for my current AppleTV. However I have left all my iMovie projects intact so once I find a proper solution I will just re-encode them. I was hoping the new AppleTV would be it.
 
And I told you, there is ZERO content in Apple's product catalog that is 1080p. If you have 1080p content, you got it somewhere else. They are not interested in YOUR content being displayed, only that this device displays their content without a hiccup.

It makes no sense for a Studio to offer 1080p content for :apple:TV rental in the iTunes store until there are 1080p :apple:TVs in homes to play it. They can't make ANY money that way. Every single video for :apple:TV could be exclusively switched to 1080p content today if the Studios chose to do so, but then sales & rentals would plunge since there no :apple:TV's capable of consuming it.

The hardware must come before the software. It doesn't work the other way.
 
No, Not exactly.

In that case, you are actually watching the video off of your disk, as the file is continually being added to (in the background). I believe that the TV works the same in this regard, when you stream from an iPad or iPhone. That being, you are actually copying (or pushing) the video file over to the TV, it plays from flash memory, and when you are done (or switch videos) the file is flushed from the system.

"a buffer is a region of memory used to temporarily hold data while it is being moved from one place to another. "

Flash memory or system memory, you take a video stream down from the source and store it before it's moved out (in this case pushed to the video output).

Preloading is a form of buffer.
 
Right now I am not. For now I have all my videos encoded in 720p24fps in quicktime with chapters for all my events for my current AppleTV. However I have left all my iMovie projects intact so once I find a proper solution I will just re-encode them. I was hoping the new AppleTV would be it.

That's exactly what I've done too. Now I'm tired of waiting for that link in the chain to be filled in. If you are about there too and find a great solution for "our" problem, please PM me. I think I'll wait out:
  • Boxee box
  • Google TV
  • Apple announcing an update that this one CAN handle 1080p (at which point I expect all these people finding such fault with our want to then bash the crap out of that advancement as useless overkill, "you can't see the difference", "the bandwidth... the bandwidth...", the "chart", the file sizes, etc, etc. But why do I think they'll just go with the Apple flow and cheerlead the new, even better video capabilities as passionately as they've argued "720p is good enough"?)

I'd really like to stay all-Apple in this. I love the old :apple:TVs, and they have lots of advantages outside of this ONE fault. So I'll hope for the third one, but I'm open to something else since I'm tired of waiting. It appears that newagemac has some definitive claim that supports #3... and that would be FANTASTIC if true.

If you find something close in the many other great benefits of :apple:TV- that can also cover this one extra base- I'd love to hear about it. And I'd be happy to do the same for you if you like.
 
It makes no sense for a Studio to offer 1080p content for :apple:TV rental in the iTunes store until there are 1080p :apple:TVs in homes to play it. They can't make ANY money that way. Every single video for :apple:TV could be exclusively switched to 1080p content today if the Studios chose to do so, but then sales & rentals would plunge since there no :apple:TV's capable of consuming it.

The hardware must come before the software. It doesn't work the other way.

Incorrect assessment. The same can be said that it makes little sense for Apple to provide 1080p content until the infrastructure can support it.

The tech crowd is a SMALL market compared to the consumer market that buys these devices. Apple does not care about you and your 1080p content. They care about selling a device that sells an optimal experience and right now 720p is about the best that the average consumer can handle in bandwidth. Cabled bandwith is increasing, but consumers are moving to wireless and lets face it, consumer wifi and cell carrier data rates aren't close to supporting 720p well yet either.

For the home movies you create, 720p is what you can record with Apple video recording devices (your iPod and iPhone4). Youtube and Netflix aren't close to 1080p yet for the same reason's Apple doesn't care for 1080p and neither will support it until the broadband infrastructure plays catchup.

1080p is driven by the Blu-ray and pirate crowds. Those consumers in that crowd are not Apple's target audience.
 
"a buffer is a region of memory used to temporarily hold data while it is being moved from one place to another. "

Flash memory or system memory, you take a video stream down from the source and store it before it's moved out (in this case pushed to the video output).

Preloading is a form of buffer.

I understand that.

I was saying 'not exactly', because the point of my post was not to explain streaming, it was to bring up that I doubt the :apple:TV is playing streaming content unbuffered, as some on here (previous threads) assumed.

No suprise here. If people actually thought that content streaming from an iPad or iPhone was unbuffered, I think they just got a wakeup call. I would be curious to see how streaming from iPad and iPhone work exactly. My assumption is that it is similar to how it works when you start a download from iTunes Music Store, and start playing the video while the download is still occuring in the background.

In that case, you are actually watching the video off of your disk, as the file is continually being added to (in the background). I believe that the :apple:TV works the same in this regard, when you stream from an iPad or iPhone. That being, you are actually copying (or pushing) the video file over to the :apple:TV, it plays from flash memory, and when you are done (or switch videos) the file is flushed from the system.

I am also curious to see if it is copying the entire M4V over to the :apple:TV while playing back, or just small portions of the file.

Either way, yes it is streaming, and I wasn't debating that one bit. ;)
 
I understand that.

I was saying 'not exactly', because the point of my post was not to explain streaming, it was to bring up that I doubt the :apple:TV is playing streaming content unbuffered, as some on here (previous threads) assumed.

Then I stand corrected. You're right, it's ludicrous to assume AppleTV doesn't do some kind of stream buffering to prevent stuttery content playback, even during AirPlay playback.
 
Incorrect assessment. The same can be said that it makes little sense for Apple to provide 1080p content until the infrastructure can support it.

The tech crowd is a SMALL market compared to the consumer market that buys these devices. Apple does not care about you and your 1080p content. They care about selling a device that sells an optimal experience and right now 720p is about the best that the average consumer can handle in bandwidth. Cabled bandwith is increasing, but consumers are moving to wireless and lets face it, consumer wifi and cell carrier data rates aren't close to supporting 720p well yet either.

For the home movies you create, 720p what you can record with Apple video recording devices (your iPod and iPhone4). Youtube and Netflix aren't close to 1080p yet for the same reason's Apple doesn't care for 1080p and neither will support it until the broadband infrastructure plays catchup.

1080p is driven by the Blu-ray and pirate crowds. Those consumers in that crowd are not Apple's target audience.

You live in whatever illusions you want. Apple most wants to sell as many hardware units as possible. That is the primary driver: sell lots of hardware. They don't maximize volume by NOT selling hardware to those that want something like this particular thing.

Revenues Apple makes on iTunes media is secondary. Sure, they want us to rent & buy media like crazy, but mostly because that further hooks us into iTunes DRM, which motivates more hardware purchases in the future.

Why give us iMovie with 1080p editing & rendering? Why give us iTunes with 1080 video storage & playback? Why give us Quicktime with 1080 playback? Why have FC Express & FC Pro heavily oriented toward HD and better qualities?

I appreciate your stance, and even some of your reasoning. You obviously can't appreciate mine because you can only see this exactly as it best fits what you think Apple has delivered in this $99 box. So, if https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1023131/ leads to the revelation that this new :apple:TV CAN playback 1080p, I expect you to flip flop and post a bunch of passionate arguments against Apple's "dumb" decision to build hardware overkill into this little box... in spite of the threat to bandwidth, in spite of no 1080p content in the iTunes store, in spite of the potential need for bigger hard drives for local storage, and so on.

Else, if you quickly flip to the "rah, rah, we also have 1080p" side, it will show how committed you are to your beliefs... and how fast your passions change coinciding with what Apple chooses to deliver.

You lose nothing if it has 1080p hardware. It will affect you in NO WAY. You can still choose 720p rentals, download them within the very same bandwidth, and they will play back exactly the same on better hardware. It doesn't cost you more, nor impact you AT ALL. If "720p is good enough" for you, you got it. Congratulations. Why find such fault with those of us that don't feel exactly the same as you do?
 
And I told you, there is ZERO content in Apple's product catalog that is 1080p. If you have 1080p content, you got it somewhere else. They are not interested in YOUR content being displayed,

Then why even enable the feature ? You're not making sense. If they didn't want your content to be displayed, they would not allow you to stream pictures, home movies, or audio purchased outside of Apple.

This has got to be the worst argument I've heard in this whole debate.

They care about selling a device that sells an optimal experience and right now 720p is about the best that the average consumer can handle in bandwidth.

And this is why I said dense. You come back with this argument again. The hardware outputting at 1080p does not affect this "optimal experience of 720p streaming" you are talking about. This has been repeated ad nauseum, the horse is now dead and the beating, it continues...

My goodness people. Did you not see my post earlier?

THE NEW APPLE TV DOES HANDLE 1080P CONTENT.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1023131/

Did you not see the first reply in that thread :

Its not displaying 1080p, its downscaling the picture like when you change a video's window size on your computer. Opposite of the gimmick used on DVD players.
 
Then I stand corrected. You're right, it's ludicrous to assume AppleTV doesn't do some kind of stream buffering to prevent stuttery content playback, even during AirPlay playback.

Oh no worries. I wasn't clear on the point of my post, then I rambled on about an assumption I had about how it would go about streaming.
 
Did you not see the first reply in that thread :

KnightWRX, read on down in that thread. Someone is claiming to have taken a 1080p video and pushed it through this new :apple:TV to his HDTV. He shows the file details. It is a heavily-compressed file- but something is better than nothing compared to "it can't do 1080p at all".

It's not clear if the first reply still plays out (which would mean that it might be able to process a 1080p file but only output it as 720p). But there are calls for other tests to try to gauge this a bit more. One guy called for a higher Mbps test.

I read this to at least give us some hope again. Some testing should quickly get to a definitive answer. I've just gone from hopeless for this feature to actually having some renewed hope. I'm keeping an eye on that thread... and looking for more info elsewhere. It sure would be a nice bonus surprise.

And, if so, I expect all these guys who have been bashing it like crazy to then bash Apple for wasting resources for building what they should call "hardware overkill" into this box. But why do I expect that NOT to happen.
 
KnightWRX, read on down in that thread. Someone is claiming to have taken a 1080p video and pushed it through this new :apple:TV to his HDTV. He shows the file details. It is a heavily-compressed file- but something is better than nothing compared to "it can't do 1080p at all".

Actually, just read through the thread right now and I see only indication that 1080p files playback, not that they are displayed at 1080p at all. The first post is probably still right, that content is downscaled to 720p or 1080i to display on screen.

It remains to be seen if 1080p output is possible.
 
Actually, just read through the thread right now and I see only indication that 1080p files playback, not that they are displayed at 1080p at all. The first post is probably still right, that content is downscaled to 720p or 1080i to display on screen.

It remains to be seen if 1080p output is possible.

That's right. We don't know yet. I just posted the easy way to find out, so hopefully that guy will try that. It's also interesting to go on the Handbrake thread referenced there. They too have 1080p apparently working through :apple:TV, but those involved haven't addressed whether it's getting pushed out of the :apple:TV box at 1080p or 720p yet.

Compared to the old one, the big news is that it will at least include 1080p content in iTunes. The old one wouldn't "see" anything over a certain spec... as if it wasn't there at all. And, unless now multiple people are goofing up (or playing a joke), apparently the new box CAN DECODE 1080p, which is the bulk of the task (pushing the frames to the HDTV is relatively easy compared to the decoding task). Both of those are at least a little encouraging.

Boy, where'd all the "1080p is dumb" crowd go?
 
First of all KnightWRX, that poster was just guessing that it downconverts. Secondly, the hard part is decoding the 1080p file which the new Apple TV does. Displaying it at that resolution is trivial in comparison technically.

I can tell HobeSoundDarryl just wants a solution for his situation. It sounds like he would be happy if he could play his 1080p home movies on the new Apple TV. You on the other hand sound like you'd be pissed if the Apple TV was more capable than you thought and people were happy about that and buying even more of them.... which would make you no more than an Apple hater on an Apple focused site.

But hey I could be wrong and you could just be a really good actor!
 
That's pretty interesting. Can you say a little more about the tech behind this? Would you estimate the wifi speeds of the new model as lower than the old model?
Until someone finds a way to test the WiFi performance on the new Apple TV they'll be no way to know whether it has faster 802.11n performance than the old model. However, I know that 802.11n performance on the iPad isn't very good -- most users (including myself) have found that the link rates and transfer speeds over 5GHz N are no better on the iPad than what you'll get over standard G (but your results will vary depending upon you network/WiFi setup and hardware).

In any case, you'll probably be much better off using wired Ethernet rather than wireless although the data rates needed for Apple's 720p content are so low that either should work just fine. Besides, most people's internet connections are slower than even 802.11g so it should make little difference.
 
8GB will be fine for most people. Some of us however might need 16GB soon. I since like two weeks already (hello apps) :D

Yup. It's all like I said two weeks ago: There's only one memory chip in it, and it comes with 256MB RAM. There should be another iTunes update soon, and the next update of iOS update will be ready... when it is ready for download.

Want to know the name of the company who brings you the first AppleTV app? Guess what :D
 
First of all KnightWRX, that poster was just guessing that it downconverts. Secondly, the hard part is decoding the 1080p file which the new Apple TV does. Displaying it at that resolution is trivial in comparison technically.

Yes, because if the output module doesn't support 1080p, it's so trivial to go in and solder one that does. :rolleyes:

HobeSoundDarryl also wants the quality, if you read all of his posts over the last month about the subject, he already downscales his videos to 720p to watch on his current AppleTV. He prefers the quality of his camcorder that outputs at 1080p.

If AppleTV downscales 1080p to 720p, that doesn't help him. If AppleTV can decode 1080p content with any problems, it just makes it even more baffling why in 2010, Apple decided not to make the darn thing output at 1080p too.
 
Don't forget that iPad apps are generally larger in size than iPhone / iPod Touch apps.

The larger screen real estate is going to generate some big apps.
 
Yes, because if the output module doesn't support 1080p, it's so trivial to go in and solder one that does. :rolleyes:

HobeSoundDarryl also wants the quality, if you read all of his posts over the last month about the subject, he already downscales his videos to 720p to watch on his current AppleTV. He prefers the quality of his camcorder that outputs at 1080p.

If AppleTV downscales 1080p to 720p, that doesn't help him. If AppleTV can decode 1080p content with any problems, it just makes it even more baffling why in 2010, Apple decided not to make the darn thing output at 1080p too.

For me the argument is mute: I have a 720p TV. Don't have a video camera. Don't own a blu-ray player. The Apple TV seems to be almost the perfect product for our setup.
BTW, one of the other issues that Apple may be dealing with is having the content providers allowing 1080p to be sold thru iTunes. As everybody knows, there is a lot of money in blu-ray rental and sales.
 
For me the argument is mute: I have a 720p TV. Don't have a video camera. Don't own a blu-ray player. The Apple TV seems to be almost the perfect product for our setup.

Then "as is", it's perfect for you and your own situation. Congratulations.

BTW, one of the other issues that Apple may be dealing with is having the content providers allowing 1080p to be sold thru iTunes. As everybody knows, there is a lot of money in blu-ray rental and sales.

As mentioned above many times, the availability of 1080p playback hardware doesn’t have to be accompanied by 1080p software in the iTunes store. They can be entirely mutually exclusive. Just like high resolution graphics cards in your Mac will still play lower resolution games that can't fully max out the highest resolution capability of the card, so too could this graphics hardware roll out a step or two ahead of the current software capabilities available in the iTunes store. My iPod- even a pretty old one- has the hardware to play bigger lossless audio files. But there's no lossless files for sale/rent in the iTunes store. No problem. I'm still glad it has the hardware capability. If this one did have 1080p playback hardware inside, it would still work perfectly with your setup, as better hardware can always play lessor software to it's fullest quality. It would still be perfect for your own situation.

The content owners just want to make as much money as they can... just like Apple... and just like whatever company you work for. As is, they can't make a dollar by putting 1080p content for :apple:TV in the iTunes store, even if they wanted to do so TODAY. Why? Because no :apple:TVs can play it (though the new one is showing some encouraging capabilities above the published spec: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=11152931&posted=1#post11152931).

The 1080p hardware must go into the homes in volume. Then, when the numbers are big enough, some Studio's greed will motivate them to approach Apple wanting to test market 1080p content in the iTunes store. It can't possibly work the other way. This scenario would also turn the tables from having to imagine Apple begging & pleading for 1080p content for the iTunes store, to the Studio's greed motivating them to beg Apple to get their content into the store. That's the best way for Apple to win the battle vs. the "bag of hurt".

As an analogy, how well would DVD or BD have done had the software (the discs) been readily available for sale, but no players available on which to play them? This is exactly the same. The hardware capability must lead. When enough people own that hardware to make it interesting, the software will quickly follow... in volume. In the meantime, that very same (1080p) hardware would play that 720p and SD iTunes store content to it's fullest possible quality, just like our lossless-capable iPods can play various versions of compressed AAC or MP3 to their fullest possible quality.
 
iPad > Apple TV > iPhone > iPod Touch

instead of

iPod Touch = Apple TV = iPad < iPhone

Apple has not Spec'd the RAM to go with the functionality of these devices..... :confused:

I think the reason iPhone > * is because it's a phone. there is very little tolerance for lagging.
 
The iPhone costs $499. Of course it is going to be more capable than the other devices. The base model is not really $200. It's subsidized by the carrier.
 
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