Apple TV - Part 2: Apple Enters the Digital Home
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 26, 2007 1:22 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Movies: Not Pirate Friendly, yet
If you download all of your movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store, then Apple TV is perfect for you. You can set Apple TV to sync unwatched movies/TV shows, certain ones or simply the most recent ones. If you purchased them from the iTunes Store, they are already in the required .m4v format (QuickTime's H.264 wrapper) and Apple TV can sync/stream and play them with no additional steps.
The problem is that as popular as the iTunes Store may be, there's a far larger group of users who have content that wasn't procured from it. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it: Apple TV will not play content that's not in its requisite .m4v format. There is already work being done on solutions to this limitation but they aren't quite automated enough yet for mainstream use in our opinion.
Not only is Apple TV picky about the file format and codec of videos, there are bit rate and resolution limitations. According to Apple, H.264 video is supported only at bit rates up to 5Mbps. For H.264 content, the maximum supported resolution is 1280 x 720 at 24 fps or 960 x 540 at 30 fps. The bit rate limitations explain how Apple is able to get away with playback on a 1GHz Pentium M (even with the help of the GeForce 7300). Keep in mind that H.264 content on Blu-ray and HD-DVD is much higher resolution (1080p) and often has scenes with more than 4 times the bitrate of the maximum that Apple TV can handle.
Apple does provide some support for playing other file formats on Apple TV, through transcoding of course. The latest version of QuickTime Pro will let you export any video you can play in it to the exact format Apple TV needs. There are no settings for quality or resolution, there's just one option: Export to Apple TV. The export option simply transcodes your movie file from whatever format it's in to an Apple TV supported H.264 format. The problem is that even on a fast system, this is a time intensive process.
To put it into perspective, we transcoded a 702.1MB Xvid video (640 x 352) to the Apple TV format on a 3.0GHz Mac Pro. The entire process took 55 minutes at a rate of about 0.213MB/s. H.264 encoding performance, especially under QuickTime, isn't particularly fast even with four very fast cores at your disposal. To make matters worse, even if you happen to have the fastest Mac available today, QuickTime doesn't appear to take advantage of more than two cores.
In short, it takes a lot of time to transcode your content into something that's Apple TV friendly. If you decide that you want to watch an episode of House that you didn't buy from the iTunes Store on your TV you'll have to come back in about an hour before you can actually start watching it. We understand why Apple didn't offer support for alternative codecs (e.g. DivX) out of the box, but it doesn't change the fact that it makes the device less attractive to users.
How does Apple TV make watching movies and TV shows? For the most part it's as good of an experience as you'd expect. Once again we have a complaint about the way the interface deals with navigating up the menu tree while you're playing content. If you're playing a video and hit the menu button, perhaps to see what else you have available to watch, video playback stops completely. We'd prefer a Media Center-esque solution where we get a menu overlay on top of the video, or simply a smaller video window while we navigate through the menu. Again it's an argument of simplicity vs. functionality, and we know which side of the fence Apple is on. It may be better this way for the vast majority of the public; we just know how we'd rather have it.
Fast forwarding through video content is done very well: simply tap the forward button on the remote to skip ahead by a fixed interval and the player jumps ahead. There's very little lag before resuming playback and we didn't have any audio sync issues when going back and forth in a video.
The only other complaint we had was that there's no volume control on the Apple TV itself, so you'll unfortunately need to keep another remote around for that purpose.
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ninjit - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
I'm a little surprised at your comment about the apple remote and the Macbook pro - it doesn't sound like you've used them together much.There's an option under the Security section of System preferences, that lets you select whether to disable the remote access or not.
The other (and much more reasonable) option, is to pair the remote that came with your Macbook to the computer - this is really what everyone should do.
Once paired, only that remote will work with your macbook, and you won't run into the issue you are having with the Apple TV
tuteja1986 - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
This device is good if you buy alot of itune stuff. It lacks in feature from being a true Home MCE box. Dual TV tunner , Xvid , DVIX , Ogg , MKV and other stuff that can have in a MCE box.Awax - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
How much is a MCE ?A MacMini can also play all this.
I think you missed the point : this is basically a iPod with no screen, no battery, HD ouput and Wifi+Ethernet.
feraltoad - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
I might have two video files on my PC I could extend with this. How can this be considered anything but crippled in regards to video? I think extenders would catch on but for the fact that all of them don't "Just Work" with your "digital home". Maybe Apple sees a "digital niche" for iTunes junkies? I certainly don't think they should use the word "TV" in it. TV=Mindless/EasyThis looks like a trial run to me. Apple must be throwing this out there to get some ideas for their AppleTV 2 that will have decent file support and support HD.
I don't think it could be put better than another poster in the AppleTV preview "Wow, Apple created a 2 yr old ultra mobile laptop."
shady28 - Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - link
I have both an XBox 360 and the iTV, and I'm a heavy iTunes user. The reality here is that the XBox 360 is nowhere near the ease of use and handiness of the iTV.In fact, I've put most of my DVD collection into iTunes at this point. Lots of programs are out there that can do this - I use Jodix Free Ipod video converter among others.
This makes the iTV able to select any movie or show from my collection and play it in my living room. That's an incredibly convenient feature. Other 'generic' DVR type devices are limited by their drive capacities, whereas my collection can grow on my PC with no effect on my iTV.
I'm not talking about pirated content here - I know a lot of people with large DVD collections that are messy and hard to manage. This makes it all a snap for the videos, plus I can listen to my iTunes music without having to hook up my ipod to my stereo - yes not a major problem, but one less thing to clutter up the living room.
For me at least, this was one of my better purchases as far as home entertainment goes.
yyrkoon - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
How about: 'Yay, Apple created another heaping pile, of overpriced s**t' ? If it wasnt the same person, then it was another poster who also said something along the lines of: 'This is nothing you could not do for yourself using MiniITX hardware', etc. With which I whole -heartedly agree.
Now that, that has been said, wake me when something truely innovative comes along ;)
rjmasotta - Saturday, August 11, 2012 - link
Question. I am looking to buy the Apple TV G3. I'm trying to solve an issue. I have a 1080p CEILING mounted projector (providing video only, no audio) which is currently wired with component video cables coming from a high-end receiver. The sound is produced from optical out of the reeiver to speakers. Current video inputs are from cable box and DVD. I have an iPad 2 and want to stream video from it( Hulu, Crackel, HBO) to the projector. I don't want to remove the 35' of component cables and replace with HDMI) What I'm thinking is to use the HDMI output from the Apple TV into a HDMI to Component converter device, then take the component output produced and push it through the component video cables which run up, into, and over the ceiling to the projector. I would also use the optical output from the Apple TV to the second optical port on the receiver for sound.Does this sound like it will work?
elestein - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
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