Following on an earlier thread - http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...%C2%A384-today - I have now done some checks with a 2012 Apple TV.
It's a decent enough device, but may in fact be unnecessary for some systems, though this depends a bit on the proposed application. As an easy way of driving a TV as a monitor from a laptop occasionally it is fine, when either driven by some form of wired connection, or by a wireless configuration. It probably works OK with source material derived directly from the Internet, subject to having a good enough broadband connection. It fails, however, if the intention is to watch a lot of video material using wireless only connections using a local computer as a source, as it starts to stutter and the picture quality drops within minutes of starting to watch.
On the other hand, the video quality is good if a wired connection from (say) a laptop, such as a Macbook Pro is used. I used a 720p HD video for my tests, and the quality suffers even with just one wireless link in the route to the TV. Note that there are two possible links involved - one from the source computer to the router, and one from the router to the Apple TV. I found that if either of these is a wireless link, then poor video performance follows.
You might ask why this makes the device potentially redundant. The reason is fairly simple. If it is necessary to use a wired connection in order to achieve good quality, then an alternative wired connection which will work with most modern TVs is an HDMI cable, which can be connected directly to some laptops, though the HDMI cable ends might be rather chunky. OTOH, if one's laptop does not have an HDMI output, then the Apple TV is a reasonable solution for machines which have an ethernet port. I tried connecting via a thunderbolt->ethernet adapter and ethernet adapter direct to my ATV and also via HDMI to our TV via an HDMI switch, and the results were similar in each case.
Wireless communications links might be good enough for an audio only connection via the ATV, but for HD video I found that they weren't good enough. So far I haven't tested the audio capabilities.
Possibly my test was too challenging, as I used HD source material. The ATV might be fine for lower resolution videos, such as YouTube video, and work well enough with new iPads via wireless connections. Some users may be happy enough to use ATVs in that way.
It's a decent enough device, but may in fact be unnecessary for some systems, though this depends a bit on the proposed application. As an easy way of driving a TV as a monitor from a laptop occasionally it is fine, when either driven by some form of wired connection, or by a wireless configuration. It probably works OK with source material derived directly from the Internet, subject to having a good enough broadband connection. It fails, however, if the intention is to watch a lot of video material using wireless only connections using a local computer as a source, as it starts to stutter and the picture quality drops within minutes of starting to watch.
On the other hand, the video quality is good if a wired connection from (say) a laptop, such as a Macbook Pro is used. I used a 720p HD video for my tests, and the quality suffers even with just one wireless link in the route to the TV. Note that there are two possible links involved - one from the source computer to the router, and one from the router to the Apple TV. I found that if either of these is a wireless link, then poor video performance follows.
You might ask why this makes the device potentially redundant. The reason is fairly simple. If it is necessary to use a wired connection in order to achieve good quality, then an alternative wired connection which will work with most modern TVs is an HDMI cable, which can be connected directly to some laptops, though the HDMI cable ends might be rather chunky. OTOH, if one's laptop does not have an HDMI output, then the Apple TV is a reasonable solution for machines which have an ethernet port. I tried connecting via a thunderbolt->ethernet adapter and ethernet adapter direct to my ATV and also via HDMI to our TV via an HDMI switch, and the results were similar in each case.
Wireless communications links might be good enough for an audio only connection via the ATV, but for HD video I found that they weren't good enough. So far I haven't tested the audio capabilities.
Possibly my test was too challenging, as I used HD source material. The ATV might be fine for lower resolution videos, such as YouTube video, and work well enough with new iPads via wireless connections. Some users may be happy enough to use ATVs in that way.
Comment