Apple TV: Thoughts? - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

FanIn80 · 07-19-2008, 11:42 PM

So I I've been kinda keeping an eye on this whole Apple TV thing for a while now. Apparently the new ones are pretty nice. The only concern I have is that it is very difficult to get unbiased advice (either for or against) when it comes to Apple products.

So what are some of your guys' thoughts? Is the new hardware worth it? Is the iTunes movie service worth it? What about sound/picture quality with non-HD rentals on an HD TV?

Russic · 07-20-2008, 10:33 AM

lol, asking for unbiased apple advice is a little difficult isn't it? I've never tried it but I have started to ponder a purchase. I remember when it first came out I couldn't even think of a use for it, but now I'm beginning to see benifits. I enjoy photography and often load my pictures onto my ps3 for showing. Would be a lot easier if I could just send them from the computer straight to my tv.

MacFlame · 07-20-2008, 11:47 AM

The movie selection is pretty good...although you can't change the aspect ratio at all....if you would want to do that. Most titles will come out the same time as video stores.

The tv show selection sucks the big one....why is Canada so far behind? If you like corner gas and south park....you'll love it....

It's great for music...you can either sync all music with your computer....or you can stream directly from your computer. It works very well.

The picture features are good....but I can't seem to view them without having to watch them in slide show form. In other words, if you select an album you would like to view, Apple T.V produces its own slideshow with the album you have chosen. I'm not sure if this can be changed...I really haven't played around with this feature much.

The YouTube feature is neat, although the image quality from that site is typically poor quality, so watching it on the big screen is not the most eye-appealing.

Overall, I am happy with the purchase, especially for the music and movies. I am really hoping the T.V show selection will get better over time. If they actually made available better programming, I would seriously consider getting rid of my satellite.

sclitheroe · 07-20-2008, 02:28 PM

Have had an AppleTV since 1.0, and here's my thoughts:

- movie rentals are a great feature, I definitely watch more movies now that I don't have to drive to Blockbuster to get them anymore. (how sad is that)

- The HD movies look really good, in my opinion. The SD stuff looks very close to DVD quality. I would say that unless you are a blueray convert already, the rentals are probably fine either way. You have 48 hours to finish rented movies in Canada, which I find is enough. The 24 hours that the US suffers with would not be doable in my household. You have 30 days to start a rental, so you can queue up material in advance if you want.

- SD Rentals really do start almost immediately. Like maybe 15-20 seconds from rent to flick on a Telus 6mbps connection. HD movies, I've had to wait up to about 20 minutes before enough had come down that I could start streaming and downloading in the background. The upside is that when AppleTV says a movie is ready to go, it doesn't lie - you will get through the entire movie without running out of buffer. I think the wait depends much more on the performance of the iTunes store than your broadband connection.

- pictures, I thought, were a meh feature, but its one of the things we use the most. Like most guys, I'd never sit down with the wife and/or family and look at photos, but I quite enjoy seeing them on the big screen.

- the synchronization with iTunes is really, really great. I only have a 40 gig Apple TV, but it shuffles movies back and forth for me as needed. Streaming has been pretty good on everything except for blueray rips I've encoded at close to the upper limit of what the ATV can handle - then, the 54mbps link just can't keep up reliably.

- if you have kids, the thing is a &@#^$% GODSEND. I have lots of vids ripped from rentals at Blockbuster, and say what you want about kids, TV, instant gratification, and everything else, but being able to put on what they'd like to see, as soon as they want to see it, can provide some much needed temporary respite.

- video podcasts play on the ATV. I actually prefer watching The Hour this way, because I can pick and choose the guests I want to watch.

- TV selection is awful, as others have noted. I'm luke warm on the idea of per-episode pricing of TV shows anyways, so its not a deal breaker for me regardless.

I find the unit pretty stable in general, I've had to reboot it probably 3-4 times since I've owned it, and I think mostly that's been issues I had with my network, not neccessarily the Apple TV itself.

I think the best thing about it is it just sits there and does its job. I don't get excited about it anymore, but I'd sure notice if I didn't have it sitting underneath the TV.

greerb · 07-20-2008, 04:12 PM

I love mine.

The movies look great, and there is quite a good selection. I would rather spend $5 to rent from Apple than $7.50 at our local video store (Small Town=High Price). It's great if you like music videos, as well. As far as the TV programs go, if you or you know of someone that goes to the USA quite often just get them to buy you gift cards from down there, then you can open up a US account as well.

Russic · 07-20-2008, 04:14 PM

hmm, you people are really beginning to peak my interest. Probably not a purchase for right away but down the road for sure.

FanIn80 · 07-20-2008, 08:11 PM

Nice! This is the kind of feedback I've been looking for. Especially the bit about syncing rips. I've been slowly ripping my dvd collection... very nice to hear indeed.

And the new 160GB one is only 349...

Hmmm...

SebC · 07-20-2008, 08:53 PM

I've never understood what the Apple TV can do that you can't do with an S-vid or DVI/HDMI cable.

MacFlame · 07-20-2008, 09:21 PM

That would be a lot of HDMI cable....makes more sense to just buy the box no?

Russic · 07-20-2008, 09:37 PM

ya I'd probably rather not buy a 100 foot hdmi cable and run it across my living room floor.

HotHotHeat · 07-20-2008, 10:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Russic

ya I'd probably rather not buy a 100 foot hdmi cable and run it across my living room floor.

Not to mention the quality of picture at that length would be terrible.

underGRADFlame · 07-20-2008, 10:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HotHotHeat

Not to mention the quality of picture at that length would be terrible.

Max length of HDMI or DVI is 5m

sclitheroe · 07-21-2008, 09:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Nice! This is the kind of feedback I've been looking for. Especially the bit about syncing rips. I've been slowly ripping my dvd collection... very nice to hear indeed.

And the new 160GB one is only 349...

Hmmm...

For DVD rips, I think you need to get them into h.264 format. There's lots of utils that will help you with that, I use VisualHub on the Mac and it works well. If you've already ripped a substantial portion of your library to some other video format, I haven't really noticed that big a loss in quality transcoding (eg. going from DIVX to h.264) as long as the source material was ripped at a decent bit rate.

2500 kbps rips look fine on the AppleTV, you can go up to a theoretical 5000 kbps, but I don't notice any improvement visually, and the file sizes of course balloon way up.

FanIn80 · 07-21-2008, 12:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

For DVD rips, I think you need to get them into h.264 format. There's lots of utils that will help you with that, I use VisualHub on the Mac and it works well. If you've already ripped a substantial portion of your library to some other video format, I haven't really noticed that big a loss in quality transcoding (eg. going from DIVX to h.264) as long as the source material was ripped at a decent bit rate.

2500 kbps rips look fine on the AppleTV, you can go up to a theoretical 5000 kbps, but I don't notice any improvement visually, and the file sizes of course balloon way up.

Good to know, thanks.

Do you find the movies look darker than they should after you rip them? On my TV, whenever I rip to .mp4, they are almost too dark to even watch.

Vulcan · 07-21-2008, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by underGRADFlame

Max length of HDMI or DVI is 5m

Not true

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...=2#description

FanIn80 · 07-21-2008, 04:08 PM

I'm assuming you guys are talking about running an HDMI cable from your desktop PC to your TV?

If you're going from the video card, you realize that it will only transfer video right? You'll need to also run a 100 foot audio cable if you want to hear what you're watching.

(I know HDMI is natively video + audio, but not when you run it straight from a PC video card it isn't.)

Vulcan · 07-21-2008, 06:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FanIn80

I'm assuming you guys are talking about running an HDMI cable from your desktop PC to your TV?

If you're going from the video card, you realize that it will only transfer video right? You'll need to also run a 100 foot audio cable if you want to hear what you're watching.

(I know HDMI is natively video + audio, but not when you run it straight from a PC video card it isn't.)

Not true either. Most of the later video cards from ATI have a DVI to HDMI connector that will send audio. I now see the same thing from NVidia. If you look hard you can find video cards with an HDMI out, no adaptor needed.

Heres one with an adapter
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...acture=Diamond

sclitheroe · 07-21-2008, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Good to know, thanks.

Do you find the movies look darker than they should after you rip them? On my TV, whenever I rip to .mp4, they are almost too dark to even watch.

I don't have that problem, not sure what would be causing that.

FanIn80 · 07-21-2008, 08:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vulcan

Not true either. Most of the later video cards from ATI have a DVI to HDMI connector that will send audio. I now see the same thing from NVidia. If you look hard you can find video cards with an HDMI out, no adaptor needed.

Heres one with an adapter
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...acture=Diamond

Oh ok... I guess some of the newest, most recent video cards with an HDMI port will also send audio through the single cable.

Previous ones only sent video through the HDMI port.

McG · 07-21-2008, 10:12 PM

One of my good buddies has the apple tv...and maybe he didn't have enough time to demo it for me...but i didn't see anything that i can't do with my pc and my xbox 360.

respectfully, i am not an apple fan and neither was my buddy...but he is a fan of this technology if that means anything.

i also have 2 other buddies who are entirely on the wintel platform but they are getting imacs because of the ability to manage their movie collections...but i am not sure whether or not they would be better served with apple tv.

just sharing!