Apple TV: Thoughts?

[sclitheroe]

Since this is the active AppleTV thread at the moment....


Apple has released ATV 3.0.1 software update. Recommended for all users, as it corrects an issue with syncing content on your AppleTV. It took me about 5-6 minutes to download and install it. No issues/obvious changes to report.

[Russic]

Has anybody installed Boxee on their ATV? A buddy of mine did it and now he's able to watch 720p mkv files.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Russic

Has anybody installed Boxee on their ATV? A buddy of mine did it and now he's able to watch 720p mkv files.

Not interested. I'd far rather get/collect my content into a standard file format like h.264, something that will remain useable and playable on a variety of device in the future as its an industry standard.

I know you can crack open mkv's and extract the h.264 encoded video data, but I don't see the format remaining very popular long term (and I mean long term in the sense of how long people collected physical DVD's - 10+ years). In fact, I'm seeing more and more straight h.264 encodes out "there"

This is strictly my own approach though - I think its great the people have found ways to leverage the platform to fit their own needs/uses

[Russic]

You make a good point. Longevity should be a concern and h.264 is good to have. I've just had such a problem in the past getting HD downloads to work on my apple tv. I think the problem may have been my framerate and bitrate settings in handbrake though. I just found an article on what the apple tv's limits are for those two settings and that may have been my problem.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Russic

You make a good point. Longevity should be a concern and h.264 is good to have. I've just had such a problem in the past getting HD downloads to work on my apple tv. I think the problem may have been my framerate and bitrate settings in handbrake though. I just found an article on what the apple tv's limits are for those two settings and that may have been my problem.

I'm not an encoding expert, but the presets for AppleTV in the current version of Handbrake produce what I would consider to be very acceptable results.

I think the AppleTV can be picky about bitrate because if you are running up around the upper limit of what the ATV can handle (5 megabits), a scene with lots of movement or shift in detail can temporarily cause a spike above your average bitrate, and the ATV with its limited processing power is not going to be able to handle it gracefully.

I don't really see much benefit visually to going above 2500 kilobits, for 720p content. If you need or want better visual acuity than that, you are probably better served with Bluray or a higher performance HTPC setup, I think. (not to mention that streaming, rewinding and fast forwarding, are all pretty painful with high bit rate stuff on ATV)

[cal_guy]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Not interested. I'd far rather get/collect my content into a standard file format like h.264, something that will remain useable and playable on a variety of device in the future as its an industry standard.

I know you can crack open mkv's and extract the h.264 encoded video data, but I don't see the format remaining very popular long term (and I mean long term in the sense of how long people collected physical DVD's - 10+ years). In fact, I'm seeing more and more straight h.264 encodes out "there"

This is strictly my own approach though - I think its great the people have found ways to leverage the platform to fit their own needs/uses

H.264 is a video codec while mkv is a container format, they're completely differently things. What your referring to is the "mp4" container format (or MPEG-4 Part 14 to be precise). Given the explosion of players that support MKV (WDTV, Popcorn Hour, Asus O!player) I definitely see mkv becoming a De Facto standard.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by cal_guy

H.264 is a video codec while mkv is a container format, they're completely differently things. What your referring to is the "mp4" container format (or MPEG-4 Part 14 to be precise). Given the explosion of players that support MKV (WDTV, Popcorn Hour, Asus O!player) I definitely see mkv becoming a De Facto standard.

I know what you mean, and I wasn't very precise in my wording. My point though is that the MP4 containers are a recognized industry standard and contain only MPEG data. MKV's can be a witches brew of content internally - many of them are not MPEG compliant video (which is fine - that's what the MKV file format is for, but there is no guarantee of consistency internally, so you'll end up with XVID and DiVX and other formats inside the MKV)

[Russic]

Ahhh now I remember why I hate mkv files. I just spent an entire day trying to get one into an apple tv format. Didn't work, much frustration.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Russic

Ahhh now I remember why I hate mkv files. I just spent an entire day trying to get one into an apple tv format. Didn't work, much frustration.

What didn't work?

[silentsim]

If your on a mac trying to convert use visualhub, works wonders.

[Russic]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

What didn't work?

Handbrake just doesn't seem to like HD files. Crashes everytime. I will give visualhub a shot.

[Russic]

Just a heads up ... looks like iTunes in the states has upped their available movies in HD. This has been a big annoyance of mine for some time. They blew the horns like crazy when they announced this and then never really updated the library. There are some good flicks in there now (Up, Wall-E, Star Trek), but they don't seem to be available for Canadians just yet. I hope the fact it's USA only is merely a time thing and we'll see it in the coming weeks. If they don't I'll have to head back to Ebay and stock up on American iTunes credit.

[Burninator]

So I am thinking I will be picking up an Apple TV in the near future. I know it has it's limitations, but for the price, easy of use, UI, ability to buy content on it, I think it's the best option out there. But in the mean time I am digitizing all of my DVD's. I am using DVD Shrink to rip them onto my computer and Handbrake to encode them into the Apple TV video format.

Do you Apple TV users have any tips or hints to setting up your media for the Apple TV? What is a good resolution for the album art? For both movies and music. My album art looks good on my iPhone, but I am sure it will look different on my big screen. I've tried searching for the resolution that Apple TV uses for it's art, but I can't find anything. Anything else I should do ahead to time to make everything look and work seamlessly?

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Burninator

So I am thinking I will be picking up an Apple TV in the near future. I know it has it's limitations, but for the price, easy of use, UI, ability to buy content on it, I think it's the best option out there. But in the mean time I am digitizing all of my DVD's. I am using DVD Shrink to rip them onto my computer and Handbrake to encode them into the Apple TV video format.

Do you Apple TV users have any tips or hints to setting up your media for the Apple TV? What is a good resolution for the album art? For both movies and music. My album art looks good on my iPhone, but I am sure it will look different on my big screen. I've tried searching for the resolution that Apple TV uses for it's art, but I can't find anything. Anything else I should do ahead to time to make everything look and work seamlessly?

If the limitations get to you, there is a product called aTV Flash that'll let you view movies straight off of a rip, in addition to other file formats. It will also let you read media off of an external HD. I stayed away from it just because I like having all my media in a format that is readable by my wife's iPod Touch, my iPhone and my future iPad. If it interests you though it might be worth a look.

As for album art I have found Get Video Artwork to be invaluable. Most movies have several versions (including itunes versions). Anytime I can't find it there I find it at cdcovers.cc. cdcovers is pretty extensive. They'll have every dvd cover you can think of ... sometimes 10 versions from different regions around the world. The only problem is they are all hi res and they include the back page of the dvd, so I often used took screen grabs.

I find on my big screen an image around 500 pixels in height or width tends to look quite nice. You don't need it to be a huge file at all, but a little thumbnail will display poorly.

I'm extra excited that I have all my media properly labeled with covers after seeing the iPad display screen this morning:

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by Russic

If the limitations get to you, there is a product called aTV Flash that'll let you view movies straight off of a rip, in addition to other file formats. It will also let you read media off of an external HD. I stayed away from it just because I like having all my media in a format that is readable by my wife's iPod Touch, my iPhone and my future iPad. If it interests you though it might be worth a look.

I'll take a look at that. I am not too worried about other file formats as I am basically starting from scratch so I will be able to convert everything from that format. But some of those other features might be handy. I think the Apple TV core function should be enough for me, but it's good to know there is other options out there.

As for album art I have found Get Video Artwork to be invaluable. Most movies have several versions (including itunes versions). Anytime I can't find it there I find it at cdcovers.cc. cdcovers is pretty extensive. They'll have every dvd cover you can think of ... sometimes 10 versions from different regions around the world. The only problem is they are all hi res and they include the back page of the dvd, so I often used took screen grabs.

I find on my big screen an image around 500 pixels in height or width tends to look quite nice. You don't need it to be a huge file at all, but a little thumbnail will display poorly.

Thanks for the links. I have just been google image searching and it's a little inconsistent in terms of size and quality. I really like the Get Video Artwork site. I like how they remove all that extra text and accompanies the DVD cover. Looks much cleaner. Is there an aspect ratio that you need when it comes to the album art for movies? Or does the Apple TV stretch it accordingly?

[Burninator]

Another question. Does iTunes need to be running on the host computer for Apple TV to work? If so, will the Apple TV start up iTunes or will I have to do that manually if it's not open. I'm using Windows if that matters.

[Russic]

1. I believe iTunes will just display the image you give it. I'm sure there is a limit but I've never pushed it.

2. Whether or not you stream your media will determine if iTunes needs to be on. My preference is to stream the media (as I have 1TB of stuff in my library), but that has the obvious drawback of needing itunes to be on. You could sync media to the atv if you wanted, but then you're at the mercy of the hard drive size on the box.

[OilKiller]

I went out a few days ago and picked up Apple TV. Not sure how much I will use it for TV, but might rent the odd HD movie, although what I am loving the most is the Internet radio. Most stations have fantastic sound. I like it so much I cancelled my satellite radio. Why pay for something like this when I can get it for free through Apple TV? The sound quality for most stations is 20x better than satellite radio.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by OilKiller

I went out a few days ago and picked up Apple TV. Not sure how much I will use it for TV, but might rent the odd HD movie, although what I am loving the most is the Internet radio. Most stations have fantastic sound. I like it so much I cancelled my satellite radio. Why pay for something like this when I can get it for free through Apple TV? The sound quality for most stations is 20x better than satellite radio.

Very under-rated feature. The one thing it needs though is a way to add streams yourself. iTunes allows you to have links to streams in your library, but as far as I can tell (although I didn’t look that closely), they don’t sync with the AppleTV.

[Igottago]

Forgive my ignorance but couldn't you just attach a small computer to your tv (like a mac mini) and have even more features you could use, such as web browsing etc? AppleTV seems more like itunes attached to your tv.