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Apple TV and HD quality: It's not the hardware
engadgethd.com — We quickly realized that the Apple TV wasn't going to be a HD powerhouse and our tests have indicated as much -- we have also discovered that the problem is not the hardware. We opened up our Apple TV and added a few codecs and we were very surprised at the results...
MrBabyMan- 907 diggs
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- allaboutdatiki, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18I'm never keen on buying 1.0 versions of anything ... but if this is all software upgradeable ...
- meshman, on 10/12/2007, -11/+27"The real question is why: why would Apple not support DD 5.1, other codecs and most of all, why wouldn't they support higher bitrate video than 5Mbps when the Apple TV can play them so well?"
Because Apple wants you to shop at the iTunes store. I wouldn't expect it to do anything to known standards since Apple creates its own so you'll be stuck with them. That (ahem) 'DVD' you downloaded? You're not playing that on anything else because it's been encoded to Apple's standards. You can import music into an iPod but not out. The solution? Buy an iPod or AppleTV. How convenient.- zybch, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2In addition to the lock-in, they're going to use this 1st release as a test before they let loose the 'real' apple TV which will have all the stuff in it that people have been complaining the current release lacks! People who buy 1st gen/revision apple products are known for their stupidity.
Hell, if I'm going to be a beta tester for apple, I want to get paid thank you very much! - ThatsUnpossible, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Yeah Apple would never support known standards, like AAC and H.264.
- WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9They limited it to 5Mbits/sec for the officially-supported formats so that you can stream the content over an 802.11g network just as easily as you can play it locally from the internal hard drive... If you install more codecs and load the videos locally, you can go beyond that bitrate, but you wouldn't be able to stream reliably over wireless. I guess Apple just tried to make things seem more straightforward to people who wouldn't have enough knowledge to troubleshoot wireless network performance issues...
- zybch, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2In addition to the lock-in, they're going to use this 1st release as a test before they let loose the 'real' apple TV which will have all the stuff in it that people have been complaining the current release lacks! People who buy 1st gen/revision apple products are known for their stupidity.
- zeffy5, on 10/12/2007, -5/+25Some good points here.... But I think this article is forgetting that TV is not aimed at the power-user. It fulfills its purpose and that's about it. If you want more, hack it, get something else, or wait for a later generation that has what you're looking for.
As transfer speeds & video encoding get faster, hard drives get bigger, and codecs get better, video quality problems will fade.
Think of HD on TV as an added bonus. Its meant more for iTunes store content, podcasts, pictures, and music, all of which it plays wonderfully. When downloadable HD is more established, TV will evolve to deal with those better. But for now, let it be what it is.- Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3Why are you quibbling about this. Apple comes out with a TV set-top box, and because it isn't great people start making excuses about it. Why even bother adding HD capabilities to AppleTV if it can't do it well out of the box. Apple is soon to venture into offering HD content through iTunes, so they fully intend AppleTV to be an HD content provider. It doesn't need to be a "powerhouse" for the power user, my up-converting DVD player I got for $80 supports HD well, turning standard def DVD's and DIVX content into very acceptable output on an HD television. For the small amount of time I spend to burn a RW DVD with content makes up for the over $200 I saved by not buying an Apple TV.
Also, from many of the reviews I have read, even standard def playback is lousy.
Face it, every once in a while, Apple releases a crap product. Don't defend it by saying it was never intended to be a decent device in the first place. Apple spent a lot of time developing the AppleTV, for it to offer lousy performance and quality out of the box without 3rd party hacks is lame, period. - jferrari, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6wooo didn't know I had an apple character key, that will come in so useful on digg. does it show up as two fingers to pc users?
- MauMan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@Topher06
It's not a crap product IMHO.
I can personally vouch for the fact that AppleTV can stream video with good quality. I have one upstairs in my house and my ripped DVD collection has the same visual quality being streamed wirelessly as they do downstairs with the machine connected to the downstairs TV. I'd be a bit suspect of some of the reviews as I've seen obvious errors like claims that Apple TV cannot stream video at all which is clearly wrong. It can.
*warning speculation*
However, I think I understand what people are seeing. I think when there are connection issues the AppleTV tries to drop quality while attempting to keep a constant framerate (like iChat does). To test this I started large file copies on my two wireless computers and fired up the microwave. I did notice a bit of a quality loss, esp. in scenes with lots of movement that disappeared when I stopped the copies and microwave.
So I suspect this is part of the reason why some people are saying it has bad quality when others say it's good when playing from a high-quality source.
- Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3Why are you quibbling about this. Apple comes out with a TV set-top box, and because it isn't great people start making excuses about it. Why even bother adding HD capabilities to AppleTV if it can't do it well out of the box. Apple is soon to venture into offering HD content through iTunes, so they fully intend AppleTV to be an HD content provider. It doesn't need to be a "powerhouse" for the power user, my up-converting DVD player I got for $80 supports HD well, turning standard def DVD's and DIVX content into very acceptable output on an HD television. For the small amount of time I spend to burn a RW DVD with content makes up for the over $200 I saved by not buying an Apple TV.
- Sirckus, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2"You can import music into an iPod but not out."
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Not entirely sure of the accuracy of this statement... I've pulled songs off of iPods numerous times... friend is over my house, has a decent song, I grab it from'em. Don't know where the problem is... - onTheJDAR, on 10/12/2007, -10/+6iPod is to MP3 player as Apple TV is to a VGA cable. More convenient, expensive, pretty, but ruined by Apple's DRM.
- BrK1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17There has been a ton of rumor, innuendo and speculation about the AppleTV since the very minute it was announced.
To me, I think it's pretty clear that the product is far from "done", what exists today is NOT all that groundbreaking, and I personally think it is kind of a trojan horse into the living room for Apple. They also know that they have a pretty dedicated user base that would buy a fair bit of almost anything they released, even an "iRack". I'm one of those people, the $299 for the AppleTV isn't even a rounding error to me, I don't care if you don't agree with me, or you can't afford it, or can name 50 products that can stream audio/video for 1/2 the price. I'm a mac user for home and work, and my wife has a mac at home and a PC at work. We have a boatload of content in iTunes, so for me, the AppleTV had immediate value. It took me less than 15 minutes to install and setup, and when I was done, it "just worked", these features are hallmark's of Apple's product lines.
Personally, I'm 99% confident that the AppleTV of next year will look almost nothing like the AppleTV of today. More content will be more readily available for both music and movies. TV shows or movies or shorts will be available [first | readily | exclusively ] to AppleTV owners. The lack of PVR features will be less of an issue as more entertainment content becomes available ready for download/streaming.
Apple has shown consistent good judgment in the entertainment and usability arenas. Sure, their approach and philosophy is not for everyone, but knowing what they are/were up against in trying to negotiate with the content producers, I think they have done a stellar job overall. Yes, DRM sucks, but I don't really notice the DRM all that much, it's never the first (or second) thing I think of when using iTunes/iPod/AppleTV (and trust me, I'm sensitive to the issue).
Meanwhile, I'm sure engadget and all the other tech blogs will keep plenty of writers busy armchair-quarterbacking the product line, and telling us how they could have done so much better. Soon, their podcasts of AppleTV's demise will probably be available for streaming from my AppleTV as well. - Flyinace2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The more hacks the more i want one.
- 87ex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've been feeling the same way.
When I first read what the TV could do, I thought, "Oh, that's cool..." but I didn't feel like spending all that money on something I PERSONALLY wouldn't use that much, in it's current form (v1.0).
However, the more hacks that keep coming out for the TV, the more I am wanting to get my hands on one.
Appealing, but not quite ground-breaking enough yet.
- 87ex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've been feeling the same way.
- theWaterboy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I agree with brk1. This TV is a method for apple to get into the family room and establish a small, but important place in that room. It is sort of a test-bed to figure out what exactly it is supposed to do.
As people use it and provide feedback (ie. complain or ask for other features), it will become clear where this product needs to go as far as what consumers want; then Apple will deliver it.
In a sense, the current owners of these Apple TV's are guinea pigs, but this is just the beginning, and it is here to stay. The fact is, Apple is the best company to deal with combining computers and multimedia entertainment. They have stepped up to the plate where no other company dared- and thank god for that!
Just imagine if it was Microsoft who attempted to do this first.... that TV would be poorly designed, poorly manufactured, scary, slow, bug riddled, and completely devoid of any concern as to what the end user would want.
In short, I wouldn't buy one until it's been around for a few years, but sooner or later we will all end up with something like this in our homes, and Apple is paving the way. - EvolvedAnt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Why can AppleTV with it's arcane system specs play HD content with simple hacks, but when I look up the requirements for HD playback on my personal computer, the minimum requirements for processor alone starts at 3.0 ghz with dual core? Further, I can't use my old ATI 9600, no.. they recommend a total upgrade to atleast an nVidia 7900 GT. I know I can play HD content perfectly fine in Quicktime on my weak machine, because I watch 1080p trailers in quicktime all the time. Why do I need to spend 1000$ on upgrades before I can even consider buying a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drives for my PC, yet AppleTV with it's $300 price tag can process HD just fine?
I just feel like all these companys are shaking hands behind the scenes using high definition as a way to force everyone to upgrade unnesessarily for huge profits and full HDCP lockdown throughout the system.- bjdraw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The Apple TV just like other CE devices does the heavy lifting in hardware not software. You need a fast CPU to decode HD in software, but a little chip can do it very easily.
In the example of the ATV it can easily play 720P HD encoded with H.264, but can't smoothly playback 720p encoded with MPEG-2, something almost any computer released in the past 3 years can do. The GPU on the Apple TV does the work.
Also interesting is that I copied the H.264 QT component from my ATV to my MacBook Pro and saw a 10% reduction in CPU utilzation when compared to the native MBP H.254 QT component. Obviously Apple tweaked this to offload decoding to the GPU rather than the CPU. - nixfu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You only need a 3ghz if you don't have a MPEG hardware card...just like MythTV. If you get a hardware decoder card then the CPU requirements go way down.
And we also know from rumors that Apple is planning on putting H264 hardware chips in all their products soon, this makes encode/decode if H264 nearly CPU free.
- bjdraw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The Apple TV just like other CE devices does the heavy lifting in hardware not software. You need a fast CPU to decode HD in software, but a little chip can do it very easily.
- MauMan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I was just happy to see that it plays regular DVD quality stuff without problems. I had ripped all of my DVDs to MPEG-4. I was really impressed that it was able to stream them wirelessly from downstairs to upstairs without problems and without having to hack it.
It's really nice because now I have all of my video in a single format that plays on my mac, windows pc, linux pc, and now my apple TV.
Also impressive is the fact that it starts playing in ~3 seconds over a wireless network. About a year ago I bought (and later returned) a similar product. It took several minutes to start a movie and it was plugged (wired) into the network. Even with that the playback was choppy. - RyGonWan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The Apple TV (and iPhone) is running a slightly smaller version of OS X but it is still OS X. OS X is going to have a major new release, probably within the next two months. So I think it is safe to assume that these consumer devices will see regular software upgrades and new features at the same time the computers do.
- coder_cotton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1not now :) http://www.tuaw.com/2007/04/12/apple-announces-leopard-delays-due-to-the-iphone/
- hadak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Interesting. Honestly, I'd still prefer a cheap homebrew system (see www.linuxmce.com)
- topnotchnet, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0slingcatcher
- teethman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hopefully they add DVR function in a later version.
- darkten, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wow.
Just...wow.
I don't know what they are doing at engadgethd, but umm, the 720p stuff *I* encode (by hand...not using the quicktime export to TV option) from 1080p sources looks *fantastic* on my 40" Bravia...*and* its streams without error over our 802.11g.
5000kbps H.264 video encoded *correctly* looks fantastic, and is "conservatively" equivalent in visual appearance to about a 13000kbps MPEG2 stream. Some say more.
Its quite a good deal as far as space/quality is concerned and I'm sure will look even better from sources better than I have (which are high bitrate MPEG2 streams...so it like compressed compressed video, i know...but you get the idea.) - TheRealDeal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Right on the money darkten!
- gibson424, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1just a thought..
apple never does anything until they can get it PERFECT. They're known for waiting a ridiculous amount of time to implement simple technology just because they want to make sure that it's of the highest quality.
That said, current technology is not ready for streaming HD content on a large scale. For Apple to immediately implement playback of such video, they would risk giving people a sub-par experience. They're not going to allow people to play HD video until they know for sure that it'll be awesome. They won't add DVR support until they've nailed it down (or because they want people to buy from iTunes....)
Of course, they're pissing off those of us who want the newest, best technology now, but they're ensuring that their customers who don't necessarily care get an awesome experience. If I didn't care about HD, I'd have an Apple TV right now and I'd be loving it, and I guarantee you there are tons of those people out there.
Give it a year. Streaming will be faster, large hard drives will be cheaper, iTunes will offer HD content, and we'll all have Apple TVs in our living rooms. Think of this Apple TV as the beta test.
*I read Zeffy's comment after writing this. I guess I'm not the only one that thinks this way :)
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