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Apple TV "Barely Watchable"
lpangelrob writes "Peter Svensson of the Associated Press reviews the Apple TV, and comes away less than impressed.While the Apple TV gets solid marks for "a very iPod-like interface, commendably clear and easy to use", the Apple TV experience falls apart on an HD television. The reviewer notes that "videos from Apple's online iTunes store look horrible on an HDTV set. The movies and TV shows have the same nominal resolution as DVDs, but look much blurrier, approaching the look of standard-definition broadcast TV.'"
Does anyone have pictures of this "horrible" video playing on a TV so people can actually make a judgment. When I played with one, the videos from the iTunes store exceeded my expectations (I was not blown away, but it was completely watchable). I assumed it would be like watching analog broadcast television on an old set, or running my LCD monitor in 800x600, but instead it looked like standard-definition (i.e. digital) broadcast. Obviously, iTunes needs to start selling higher quality content, but it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.
If Apple had brought higher-quality videos to market first, there'd be complaints that they didn't have any device capable of pumping it to an HDTV. Since they released the device first, we get to hear about how they're not providing the content.
Moreover, this man's not really an authority on anything. He seems to be under the impression that big, loud, high power consumption equates to "capable of playing HD content better," when this of course is bullshit. He worries that the small, silent machine and its high efficiency will somehow make it incapable of playing HD--but he didn't apparently bother downloading any of the dozens of *HD* trailers available right from Apple's flipping website to test that bogus hypothesis.
The videos are compressed to the point that Apple can actually affordably send them to you over the Internet. They cram 45 minutes of BSG into a 450MB-500MB download. A BSG DVD has what... 3 to 4 episodes on it? You could fit the entirety of Season 1 of BSG from the iTMS onto two DVDs, when the full set of Season one comes with 5 DVDs.
Again, with shortcuts like that, what do you expect? When people are willing to pay the bandwidth costs to be able to just click a button, and have all of the trunk line infrastructure in place to allow them to receive 1.25-1.5GB of data per episode conveniently, things will change.
Firstly, I do not have nor have I seen Apple TV. What I have noticed and what I'm commenting on is the poor quality of videos purchased on iTunes. A good example: Before deploying to the middle-east I ripped all of my DVDs using Handbrake so that I didn't have to haul them with me. Included in those rips are a number of TV shows which have new episodes out since I left the States, so I have since purchased them on iTunes. I am really disappointed with the quality of the video. I rip my DVDs at fairly high quality and the resulting file size is pretty predictable. I was shocked at the file size of the iTunes videos given the (in my opinion) very poor quality. Sorry Apple, I'll buy my music from you, but your videos suck.
Sounds to me like poor compression, not a bad Apple TV. I don't have an Apple TV, so I can't test it with a good stream, but many HD streams are over-compressed yielding very poor results. In particular, the iTunes store probably just hasn't caught up with the idea that people will actually be playing HD content on HD-capable devices.
There are some really crappy DVDs out there, too, but they don't mean that the DVD player is junk.
iTunes uses Quicktime. What did you expect?
-jcr
one less layer of middleware. Others have reported marginally better results using quicktime. My own tests show that it matters more how long the program has been running. Empirically, quiting and restarting quicktime reduces the glitch rate. Thus I think people seeing better results with quicktime are doing so simply because they start quicktime only after itunes has gotten too glitchy.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Its just annoying to see when theres problems with a company product that isnt MS everyone jumps on the "its 1.0, it has bugs dont be harsh" yet they turn around and smack anything MS does right into the ground cause M$ SUX LOLZ.
Maybe think next time and judge everything accordingly. Theres no doubt that vista is drm riddled right now but stop kissing other corporate ass just because its sleek and shiny.
I assume you mean post-1957 Hanna-Barbera, as their Tom & Jerry cartoons for MGM were actually brilliant. The stuff that came after they decided to work for themselves and create cartoons specificially for TV is utterly worthless though, I'll agree.
Who would of thought a compressed movie format would look bad on a high definition tv?
TheLedger title: Apple Appalls Where Xbox ExcelsSo he puts the AppleTV down its "video quality"...But then say it's got a great-looking interface on a high-definition TV...And THEN complains about the real problem, which is the iTunes Store content itself, not the AppleTV. The movies and TV shows will look even worst on your computer LCD display, which are even better than a crappy HDTV that will most probably rescale your image before displaying it. But no, he has to make it sound like it's a problem with the AppleTV.What does he mean by "doesn't actually seem that well suited to it"? The hard drive is more than enough for H.264 content (requires less space than regular MPEG-4), low power consumption means nothing with dedicated solutions (if the MPEG-4 and H.264 decoding is done by the GPU, you don't need a Quad-Core 3GHz processor).
And what the hell does SD content looking bad has to do with HD content? That's like saying my 1280x1024 LCD will probably look shitty with a 1280x1024 wallpaper because it looks shitty when it has a 320x256 wallpaper on it. No correlation at all, this guy is an idiot.
So, the guy knows the real problem (varying video quality from the iTunes Store, but that's the content providers fault, not Apple) but still puts down the AppleTV for fake flaws.
In short, I call Microsoft shill on this guy.
It's a pretty easy fix.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
"Apple" is first and foremost a brand that suggests "cutting edge, stylish and user friendly" to most consumers. Apple earned this reputation with their iPod and to a lesser extent, with their proprietary computer OS on proprietary computer hardware. Apple reaps big profits from this reputation by charging premium prices to the consumers to mentally apply Apple's reputation to other Apple products. If the Apple TV damages Apple's reputation by being junk (even if it is "version 1.0"), it hurts other Apple products too. In other words, Apple can't really afford "1.0" stumbles if it wants to hang on to its current reputation.
oh, for crissakes.. can't you see that nothing is as good as direct media on a HDTV? just look at satellite.. all of that mpeg crap is easily visible as distortions on a decent LCD. to expect an, albeit cute, apple TV to record as clean as straight uncompressed video is insane. If you want perfectly clean tv recordings, then get a $2500 pro quality dvr.
Hi.
The problem with your "perfectly clean tv recordings"
is that if you have a cable feed, chances are that the cable co is doing
quite a bit of their own compression. Usually it is quite noticible
to the naked eye (blockiness, jaggies on round shapes, etc).
This is why the DVD rips look better than HD caps.
music lover since 1969
Actuallly I do, but it was the only statement I could think of that was more sanctimonious than an Apple Fanboy.
In all seriousness, people need to look at the best tool for the job and not be so tied up in brands.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Is this really a "problem"?
Seems like 4 years ago people wouldn't be complaining about the quality of a 640x480 video.. why then is it suddenly "unwatchable"?
I agree technology should move forward and improve it'self.. but this is downloadable content.. does he realistically think apple can host HD content that can be streamed live? Hell, Blu-ray movies are like what.. 40GB?
Imagine the server load that would be required to handle millions of people downloading a few HD movies every week..
MABASPLOOM!
Yea but good luck getting DRM'd iTMS files to play in that.
Getting video to drop DRM is going to be very hard. The reason is that while there's already a flood of non-DRM'd music out there (CDs) and will be for the foreseeable future, all DVD/BRD/HDDVD releases have some form of encryption, which (even when broken) allow those industries to tightly control legal digital versions on computers. With TV, the industry has plans to implement the broadcast flag, cutting off digital copying (and fair use) at the knees. In short, the music industry has no hope of creating an environment where all content is DRMed, while the video industry is clinging to that belief desparately.
While they only sell standard def, they give away free high def movie trailers.
So the real test would be downloading one of the HD movie trailers from iTunes and trying it on the AppleTV product.
If they work well, then chances are if/when Apple movies to sell full movies in HD, the device will handle it well and be more "future proof" than suggested here. If on the other hand it chugs along bandwidth problems, we'll know for sure that its a SD-only device.
Exactly.
Why would I want to blow $1000+ on a TV so I can watch commercials interrupted with bad acting most of the time? Until an HD TV can actually improve the CONTENT of the shows, I'm not going to buy one.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
It's certainly not as crisp as High Def content. It's better than standard def content. It's on par with DVD. I think most people have a TV that's too big for where they sit and this compounds the problem. I have a 50" 1080p set, and I sit 14 feet away from it. I don't really notice how bad the iTMS stuff is. I can tell that it's not high def, but I can't tell that it's awful. I have 20/15 vision, so I can see just fine. Really, I expect them to start cranking out HD content soon. It's a bit goofy that they don't already have it.
The "fair thing" to me would be to have a standard base "content price" since you're licensing the same show and IP regardless which resolution you watch it at, and then add a bandwidth surcharge based on the resolution and thus file size you download. Coming back later and downloading a different resolution of the same show should then only cost you the bandwidth surcharge of that resolution. Kind of like allofmp3 was doing it, except with an actual "artist remuneration" base cost built-in. I think this would be the fair thing to do because the industry has always harped on how consumers are just licensing content, not actually purchasing an "ownable" product. Therefore consumers should NEVER have to re-license the same content again and again just to have it available in a different format.
4 years ago people would have been hooking up their Apple TV to a SD set and 640x480 would have looked just fine. I can second the motion that iTunes video looks awful on an HDTV.
I have a 32" LCD 720P HDTV that I use as a monitor. A few weeks ago I bought an episode of Desperate Housewives off iTunes (don't judge me!), watched it on the HDTV, and was severely disappointed. The quality was quite bad. I later downloaded the same episode off Bittorrent to compare the quality. The file sizes were similar, and the version I stole off Bittorrent encoded with XVID looked much better. I'm not sure why video on the iTunes store can't be encoded to look as good as video encoded by a 13 year old 1337 Haxor. Perhaps it has something to do with being able to play on an iPod.
As to the bandwidth issue, why not use P2P distribution? If I could get better quality video from the iTunes store by agreeing to share my bandwidth, I'd be happy to do it. If people can share HD content for free on BT, why can't Apple figure it out with their millions?
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Heavily compressed doesn't mean poor quality though. Look at the H264 codec. Very clean and sharp looking, but takes up less space.
iTunes videos are h.264. You've drunk the kool-aid Apple's been pouring for you - h.264 by itself is not some picture quality panacea. At a certain point, data loss is data loss. And h.264 is lossy compression just like divx or wmv or any other codec. (All of these are based around mpeg4, btw - h.264 is just a somewhat more advanced version, but it is still mpeg4.)
h.264 compression is always a series of compromises, just like any other compression. The end result may be a slightly smaller file with the same quality or a slightly better file at the same file size vs. other codecs, but just because you encode something with h.264 doesn't mean it's going to be crystal clear and artifact-free. h.264 videos can easily look just as bad as any other videos. Apple obviously had not originally planned on their iTunes videos being watched on large screens, so they never took the care to encode for this type of viewing.
Although DRM is annoying in principle, in practice I don't much care about DRM on video unless it gets in my way. I might listen to the same song repeatedly for years, on multiple devices. There is not much on video that I want to watch more than once, and almost nothing that I'd want to watch more than 2 or 3 times. The only real issue is convenience and quality. I am annoyed that I have to buy a box to watch an iTunes video on my TV, when I have a perfectly good DVD burner on my computer. At least with a standard definition TiVo, it is possible to burn videos to DVD. And the XBox 360 videos aren't portable, but the box does a bit more than enable me to do something that I would have been able to do anyway if not for DRM, and the videos are HD.
So if Apple wants to sell me one of these gadgets, I'm going to want something more than SD.
I regularly download 720p movie trailers from apple's website and play it on my 46" HDTV via MCE2005 PC connected using the DVI-HDMI cable. All the trailers look stunning (just recently watched trailer of 300 spartans). So, I don't think that there is anything wrong with the HD-trailer encoding or bit-rate. Maybe the graphics card used in apple TV is not that good. I use a cheapo Geforce6200 with nvidia purevideo codecs and OTA HD broadcast and apple's HD movie trailers look great.
Video quality is an issue, but I have a 1.5mbps DSL connection at home, and a full-length movie takes three hours to download (at least) from the iTMS. Until we get faster connections / download speeds I don't see a major place for higher resolution content.
Another issue to contend with is file size. One hour of iTMS video is currently about half a gig. Do I really want to double that? Do I really want an entire season of 24 to take up 24GB on my HD? On my 42" plasma iTMS video looks better than standard cable, but not as quite good as DVD (mine upconverts) and not as good as HD cable.
One issue in its favor, however, is the lack of commercials. Between watching iTMS shows and season box-sets on DVD, even fast-forwarding over commercials on DVR recorded shows is becoming painful. And heaven forbid I have to watch a show in real time.
Like it or not, we're still firmly in the land of trade-offs, and as such there's always going to be someone who's unhappy with them.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.