Apple TV - continued

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  • Dave2002
    Full Member
    • Dec 2010
    • 18034

    Apple TV - continued

    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.
  • Stunsworth
    Full Member
    • Nov 2010
    • 1553

    #2
    Dave, can't say I've noticed that. 720p and 1080p streamed from iTunes looks fine here - as good as the download/buffered services such as Netflix and purchases from the iTunes Store. No artifacts in the image, block insets, loss of definition etc.
    Steve

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    • Dave2002
      Full Member
      • Dec 2010
      • 18034

      #3
      Originally posted by Stunsworth View Post
      Dave, can't say I've noticed that. 720p and 1080p streamed from iTunes looks fine here - as good as the download/buffered services such as Netflix and purchases from the iTunes Store. No artifacts in the image, block insets, loss of definition etc.
      Were you streaming using wireless, or via broadband with a wired Internet connection?

      I'd love to be wrong, as wireless would be good, but I could only get good video performance using a wired ethernet connection, and if I'm going to have to tether a computer with a wired connection, then HDMI cable is cheaper. You have given me an idea re software though - which I need to check out, so the problems I noted and checked may be specific to some software players and downloaded media. Maybe buffering settings, if they can be tweaked, would eliminate the difficulties I saw.

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      • Stunsworth
        Full Member
        • Nov 2010
        • 1553

        #4
        The broadband is via cable provider Virgin. The streaming is wireless using an Apple Airport Express.
        Steve

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        • Dave2002
          Full Member
          • Dec 2010
          • 18034

          #5
          Steve

          I've checked further, and indeed I can run without a cable connection to the Apple TV from the computer for some videos.
          If this works this is most convenient, but if not, then either the cables have to be got out, or perhaps a software file conversion needs to be performed. If the videos are mp4, and put into iTunes, then they'll most probably work OK via the wireless link. I'm not sure that the quality is always as good as with a wired connection, but it does seem mostly similar, with few, if any, glitches.

          We had one HD video rented from the Apple store which worked quite well, apart from a lip sync problem. On reflection that was also done via a wireless connection. I think the lip sync problems may have been due to the video file itself. It would have been good to adjust the lip sync somehow - which other hardware we have does seem capable of.

          Where things don't always work so well with the ATV is if the videos are shown via desktop sharing, and using players such as VLC. I had one .mkv file which worked on my MBP usig VLC, but when viewed on the TV using ATV there were significant problems. The problems went away with a wired connection, either HDMI to the TV or ethernet to the ATV. I subsequently checked that that video file would work wirelessly if it is converted to .mp4 - which I did using Handbrake, and then put into iTunes. Performance was then similar to other .mp4 videos. The conversion using Handbrake is moderately time consuming.

          I don't know the exact details of how the ATV works. It probably uses some form of digital compression in the communications links, so maybe it's optimised for formats such as mp4, which presumably gets fed to it in a compatible from from iTunes via the wireless Airplay link. Perhaps the desktop sharing route with VLC requires on the fly conversions between formats, which can cause the problems I noticed.

          Although the download model for video has been useful in the past - since it allowed the showing of videos in higher resolution than streaming, I am now wondering whether if in fact at our current stage of technology that streaming is better. If the comms links are fast enough, streaming from a remote server (e.g BBC iPlayer), if reliable enough, can be good, whereas downloads seem always to incur a significant time penalty for getting the files downloaded for local playback, and this can be considerable with some large HD files. As I recall, even with an optic fibre broadband link, the setup time for a downloaded file can be significant enough, and with a slower broadband connection it can easily be over an hour for some downloaded files.

          However, in some areas of the UK, broadband is still not fast enough to allow good performance, and the only way to see videos may in fact be to use a very slow download process hours before the video file is to be played back. We noted this on a recent trip to Scotland.

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