Apple TV owners' thread. - Page 14

Well, I'm officially mad at Apple. I am a happy current user of the iPhone 3G. I've been waiting until something truly awesome to upgrade my phone....say, like a Verizon version. I've resisted getting the iPhone 4 and another 2 year contract and then be unable to jump ship to Verizon in January.

Well, it seems that the AirPlay functionality of iOS 4.2 was intentionally deleted (even though it was tested and confirmed to work) at the last minute by Apple. So, all 3G and 3GS users cannot use AirPlay.

This is obviously Apple using all stick and no carrot in an effort to make 3G/3GS users upgrade.

It seems shady and wrong.

Backward compatibility is a very difficult thing to keep up if you want any progress. It's one reason why Windows had such a hard time escaping DOS and OSX had to deal with System 7 and Carbon apps.

On the 3GS you get AirPlay for photos, music, slideshows. I assume it won't handle 720p video which the iPhone 4 handles with ease (even high high profile). The ability to move things easily to 720p is pretty neat. The only gripe I have with Apple is the omission of AirPlay for recorded video by an iPhone 4. It's very strange. It can't be technical but might have to do with privacy issues. I guess we will see.

I am very pleased with AirPlay, though not blown away yet.

I have an Airport Base and people keep mentioning Airplay to Airport. Do they mean Airport Express?

It would have been nice to be able to send audio to 1st generation ATV's. That is also a bit strange.

I think Apple has taken as its bottom line for video the processor found in the iPhone 4 and iPad. It handles 720p with ease. The 3GS does 480p I think which may have been pushing it.



philip

Well you have a good point. Does AirPlay send audio to AirTunes via the Airport Express?

Philip

Yes and it works fine. I can even play a video on the phone and the audio will got to the airport express. At first I thought only newer N airports were working but that was because of the display issue. (I have 8 zones and its not clear there are zones not displayed when you bring up the display). But both my old new airport expresses are working. My gen1 appleTv should work this way too as it looks like airtunes speakers to itunes but who knows.

One limitation that does exist is there is no support to stream to multiple zones as there is in iTunes and aTv. overall cool feature. now why I have to connect via USB to iTunes still irks me to no end. maybe by iphone5.

I am just starting with the audio side of things and never quite got what AirTunes was! I now have a couple of ATV's 2G and one ATV 1G and AirPlay allowed me to send audio to the rooms with the 2G ATV's. That really got me interested and I have been wondering about my 1G ATV. I have a fairly new Airport Base with USB, gigabit, etc... Does that facilitate AirTunes like an Airport Express?

Philip

The airport express unlike the airport extreme has a combo analog/to slink output that can be hooked to receiver or powered speakers via RCA or to slink. The airport extreme base station does not have this feature. These airport expresses and even the gen1 ATv show up as music zones in iTunes or on the ATv. The gen1 tav is different in how in handles storage but basically all we use it for is AirTunes. Then apple evolved this with the remote app. So in our house airplay is good for guests but we have iTunes , 8 zones, at 5 iOS devices for remotes plus the mac mini lives in the living room with a 28" LCD so often that is the preferred way to get something selected.

I just tried and airplay does indeed not allow to stream to a gen tav as speakers. Although iTunes certainly will. Weird choice on apples part.

So i guess the point is if you haven,t tried using iTunes for multi room audio. You should. You have all the gear

I will. Thanks. I am off my media player kick and back to my new Mini ( with Remote Buddy and connected to our main TV) with a new-found respect for it.

philip

I have been looking forward to AirPlay for my 3GS. I updated today and am happy with the way it works--for music. I don't really have a need to stream video currently, but I do like to have options for audio. With AirPlay, I don't have to wake my iMac in order to listen to Pandora or Slacker--or of course iPod music. Just open the app, select where you want to send it, and that's it. Of course you have to have someplace to send it and in my case I have an Airport Express connected to my stereo system in my living room. Works as advertised for me.

Someone on the Apple forum has reported success in playing iPhone-shot videos from the camera roll via airplay to Apple TV. It involves using an app called "iFile." You make a folder in iFile, import your videos into that folder, then Airplay can play them from that folder. (The videos then have the airplay icon on them, and play successfully). iFile does compress the video but not sure by how much and how visible the compression is. Anyone here going to try it? If so, let us know.

I am not sure what you are referring to. I am just using the hdmi connector on the Mini with no adapters. I haven't tried the Displayport yet. There are several colour profiles that you can choose from but I just chose the one for my HDTV and did not bother to calibrate anything as the picture is great.

What clipping are you talking about with the ATV-2g?

philip

I see. My Mini does not have anything similar to the ATV-1G settings for hdmi. Interesting. Neither does the ATV-2g. I'll have to play around with the setting on the ATV-1g and see if there's a significant difference. The TV itself also has settings which seem to be similar to Apple's Display Profile.

philip

Anyone know what the fastest method is for recording HDTV TV shows and getting them into an AppleTV-friendly format? I have a TiVo HD and I believe that there are options (haven't yet tried them) which will pull the content from the TiVo over the network to a PC then convert the TiVo format to an AppleTV-ready format, but that takes time (and the time to simply transfer the files over the network is apparently fairly slow).

I've also heard people (pcmd, I think) talk about the eyeTV software for the Mac. I don't currently have a Mac, but I've looked into this a bit, and if I'm reading things correctly it sounds like even this approach does not allow for natively recording the HDTV shows in an mp4/m4v AppleTV-capable format, but rather requires a 2nd step to convert the recorded shows.

The perfect world would involve having a server recording shows into mp4/m4v files *and* allow for the AppleTV to start playing back those files even while the show is still recording, but I'm pretty sure that's a non-option right now.

FWIW, I might even be willing to forego high-def HDTV support if there were options out there that provided more immediate support of viewing a show that just finished showing on TV.

Is there a "go to" site that you can point us to that discusses Apple colorspace issues in more detail? How about a general colorspace discussion not specific to Apple products? I'm not asking you to use Google on my behalf, I'm hoping that you already know what the "best" sites are. Thanks.

EyeTV HD will record HD over component. You specify the resolution or the target device. So I do most of my recording for the iPad which allows me to view things on it and all my ATV's. I can also specify a higher resolution such as 1080i or p. While it is recording the HD version you can also tell it to record simultaneously an iPhone version (that's a setting one can keep on).

Once recoding is done that is it. You can have it added to iTunes automatically. There is no further converting unless you want to lower the resolution.

If you are recording TV then you might want to use comskip to cut out commercials. You have the option of editing the file after recording is done to make sure that comskip has not missed anything. At that point you can just send it to the target device ( you are exporting it). No transcoding is going on.

In short the recordings are already in mp4. It really is pretty neat. Of course this is all using analogue ( component) so you aren't recording via hdmi. In the US can't you in fact record via hdmi using a cable card? That would obviously be even better, but then you would need a different type of recorder.

The EyeTV HD is actually very nice. The sw is nice, the unit is small and looks good. There is a similar device made by Hauppauge which will work for both PC's and Mac's. It is considerably bigger. I used it for a while but it just had too many wires and whatever. Works the same way though. I am not sure if that device produces h.264 in an mp4 container. If it did then you could go that route.

The ATV2 will play video at a much higher spec than the published specs although I don't know where it starts breaking down. I stream my EyeTV HD recordings wirelessly around the place and it's great.

That is the only way I know of recording HD. The whole recording thing is a bit of a mystery. The recordings on my PVR are encrypted I think. I have no idea how the HD recordings that are living on the internet come to be. Obviously there is a way of doing it. I just don't know it. I just assumed it was the cable card thing.

philip

I have some ripped TV shows in my iTunes on my media server (Mac Mini) and that library is shared out (All playlists).

However on my MacBook I can see the Movies and Music but not the TV Shows of my Mini.

Any ideas? Home Sharing is turned on and logged in to the same users.

Has anyone else noticed HD movies showing up from Netflix on the AppleTV? The Star Trek films for instance now have the familiar Apple "HD" icon. Only 2.0 sound as far as I can tell, but definitely a nice surprise.

Yes, even up here in Canada I have noticed that. Very nice. As far as audio goes I have yet to move beyond my Bose Cinemate system which is 2.0 and bass/woofer. The whole HD audio thing seems non-trivial. All I know is the movies on Netflix are better this week than a couple of weeks ago.

Philip

Netflix uses Dolby Digital Plus. Can the Apple TV handle that?