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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shermanikk - Monday, July 30, 2007 - link
You were having trouble with the Front Row remote controlling the MBP in this review, this will actually happen to all Front Row devices visible unless you pair them. It's pretty simple, take a Front Row device (such as the macbook pro) and hold the remote right in front of the IR sensor and holding the "Menu" and "Next" buttons for about five seconds. After that a little chain link icon should show up on the Macbook Pro and now only that remote will control that Macbook Pro. Very handy.vision21 - Wednesday, April 4, 2007 - link
I have read about Galaxy IPTV DMG 3500 - Digital Media Gateway that is available now for $180. Here is a link:http://www.supermediastore.com/galaxy-3500-iptv-dm...">http://www.supermediastore.com/galaxy-3...id=bizra...
Anand should review this product as well as next version of XBox 360 with HDMI to give us some options compared to Apple TV.
heulenwolf - Sunday, April 1, 2007 - link
Wow, its amazing how much whining was generated in response to this article. I'm glad Apple made this device because I think it solves problems I have:My computer is up in my loft, my HDTV is down in my living room, using my PC as a media center sucks, and I want to see and hear my content on the way-too-damned-expensive 720p display I bought.
So it doesn't play DVDs. DVD players are throw-away devices costing ~$30 now. What real value would be added by including that function in a $300 device?
So it doesn't output 1080x. Apple doesn't provide 1080x content. They provide 640x480 which scales fairly nicely up to 720p. If you bought a 1080x display, chances are it has its own, high-quality scaler so why should Apple bother?
Sure it would be nice if it had a few more features but its got the important basics and costs no more than an iPod. Given than it runs some version of OSX, I wouldn't be surprised to see development continue and more features added in the near future. Its a consumer electronics device so its not supposed to support the diy, modding, or pirated content communities. Its supposed to play Apple's content and "just work." According to the review, it does.
I agree with the article's assessment that the iPod's popularity stemmed from its support for the standard mp3 format. The lack of a comparable, unifying video standard hurts the AppleTV's chances. The video codec alphabet soup is maddening to average users. I hope that the market organizes itself better and that Apple supports whatever standard comes about in future updates.
JAS - Friday, March 30, 2007 - link
I've seen the Apple TV in person and liked several things about it -- but the modest video bitrates and lack of wider codec support are enough to turn me away. Perhaps some of the negatives will be addressed by Apple firmware updates. I expect version 2.0 of this product to be a whole lot better.Sunrise089 - Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - link
Nice taste on including the Top Gear shots towards the end of the article. I am curious however, since you aren't in the UK, did you catch the rare (at least in my market) TV rerun of the episode, or do you know of a place to view them online? Youtube doesn't really seem to be able to keep them up for very long at all, which makes it difficult getting friends into the show.ninjit - Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - link
I noticed the top gear clip too - I'm originally from the UK, and it's one of my favourite shows.It was shown on BBC world and then discovery channel for a while, but in a highly edited form, each episode was about 25mins as opposed to the actual 55mins in the UK.
Bittorent is the best place to find episodes of Top Gear (if it is not broadcast where ever you may live)
PokerGuy - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
Anand did a nice job providing an in-depth review of Apple TV and it's functionality, but I think I can provide a one-word review that captures it equally well: "Garbage".This is quite simply an overpriced useless piece of junk that will not appeal to anyone but the hard core apple fanatic and the ill-informed who ask the Best Buy salesperson what they should get. Bottom line, it doesn't do much of anything, offers very little value, has all sorts of restrictions and limitations.
My one question: why the sugarcoating Anand? It's clear from the review that you know this thing is a pile of dog crap. Why sugarcoat it?
Imazalil - Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - link
that's because it isn't, to some people. In my opinion the apple tv is meant to be a nieche (sp?) product. There are people out there that do actually buy tv shows on itunes and don't pirate / rip them. These people need an easy way to view their bought shows on their tv's which usually aren't near their computer. Despite of all the hype that the media put on this thing it is not the next ipod or imac, this just lets you view your tv shows on your tv. It's not a tivo, it's not a xbox (360) or anything else.If you have an xbox, tivo, your own homebuilt media center, hell even an mini mac connected to your tv, this is obviously not for you. Does it cost too much, in my opinion yeah, but then i'm a cheap bastard who downloads his tv shows from, ahem, other sources.
Ignore the media hipe, all apple promised was to get your iProgram files (tunes, photos, tv shows etc) easily onto your tv, they have done this in spades. Yes it costs more the a lot of people are willing to spend, but then if you are paying for tv shows in itunes you have a bit of cash to spare right?
ninjit - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
It just occured to me that for $200 more you get a mac mini, with a faster processor, more hard drive space, more memory, gigabit ethernet portAnd it still has all the features of the Apple TV - apple remote to use with Front row, built-in wifi (and bluetooth, which the Apple TV doesn't have).
And you can get quicktime plugins to let you play ALL media (divx, xvid, avi, etc.)
Hook up the mini to your HDTV through the DVI port, and voila your set (it'll operate just like the Apple TV because of front row)
The apple TV really isn't a good deal at all. It should be priced under $100 to be worth it
ninjit - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
I forgot to mention that it has a DVD drive for playing movies directly as wellSeriously anyone who buys this over the mini is very very misinformed.