Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.