Things I need to know before buying the new AppleTV

[marcel-v]

Hi all, I just called Apple but was unable to get any definitive answers, therefore I would like to get advice from people that have already purchased the new generation AppleTV.

#1 I would like to know the best way to encode my movies using Handbrake. At the moment I'm using the AppleTV Legacy preset.

#2 I would just like to know if AppleTV supports AC3 Passthru Tracks (5.1) as well as multiple audio tracks such as Director's commentary and can I switch between the two?

#3 Can I use closed captions with the option of turning them on or off?

Whenever I play files encoded in this way neither VLC, QuickTime or iTunes will play audio (only video and subtitles (closed caption softsubs), which cannot be switched off), which is my main concern. My Playstation 3 does however allow me the option of switching between audio tracks, however the subtitles are always there.

Can anyone please offer me some advice?
Thank you, Marcel.

 

[KeithJenner]

1 - I use the Apple TV preset, but I believe that a lot of people are using "High Profile" which I understand is higher quality but will create bigger files.

2 - Yes, it seems to handle the 5.1 passthru very well. I have also been taking additional audio tracks and these can be selected by holing down the centre button on the remote. The only issue at the moment is that it doesn't correctly name the different tracks, but I suspect this will be fixed fairly soon.

3 - Can't help here I'm afraid.

 

[NightStorm]

You can have soft subtitles as long as they are included in the video you are playing. Handbrake can take a text closed caption track from a DVD and turn it into a soft subtitle track that can be enabled/disabled within the AppleTV interface. You'll have to manually configure this for each encode, and I believe this functionality was added after .9.4 (so you'll need to download a nightly build).

I don't remember the specific settings for the AppleTV legacy preset, but I would definitely recommend using the newer AppleTV preset, or even better the High Profile. All things equal, the high profile preset will create a smaller encode than the AppleTV one (but it's also less compatible with other devices).

 

[marcel-v]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Thanks guys, but is there a reason iTunes will play no audio and always display the softsubs?