I was at an Apple Store (North Michigan Ave, Chicago) today and also noticed the lack of sharpness. More noticeable however was the lack of customers looking at the devices. While the Mac and iPod tables were busy as usual, not a single person besides me was at the row of five Apple TVs on display.
Rob La Gesse
· 2 years ago
Sure - stop by my house in San Antonio. I have a 57 inch Mitsubishi DLP and a $500 video card in a home made PC with Vista Media Center - I'll throw it up against your Apple TV (BTW, they don't actually even include a TV with that darned Apple thing, do they?).
And we'll use your eyes to judge - you'll see the difference ;)
Rob
Jens
· 2 years ago
The ones in the stores aren’t set to the best resolution? Really? OMG, call the FCC! :) The TV's in the Big Box Stores are a) set to some ridiculous contrast, b)showing SD footage in "full" setting (eggheads) c) aren't calibrated properly etc. etc.
Sometimes I wonder why these stores still sell HD Sets, considering how BAD they look.
Podesta
· 2 years ago
The picture looks sharp to me and I've seen a half-dozen different AppleTVs in operation so far. Torres says he is not being toxic to Apple because he has bought some Apple gear on his blog. BUT, I've seen quite a few chronic Apple critics who will buy an Apple product or two as cover. People are supposed to think the person is not biased because of that. T'aint necessarily so. Methinks Torres' heart belongs to Microsoft.
Kevin, considering the rate that the AppleTV is being hacked and the lengthy waiting lists for it at second tier stores, I'll wager that the product will be a success.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Rob: I have a better TV here (Sony 60-inch rear projection). DLP's look unsharp to me, especially during motion.
Rob La Gesse
· 2 years ago
(And if I could edit my prior comment I would have started it, "No, you have a _bigger_ TV".
Rob La Gesse
· 2 years ago
Odd - not all my comments are showing up. Something you changed? Is my prior, prior comment in moderation?
Rob
Ian Muir
· 2 years ago
I'm sure it would look just fine on my 12 year old rear projection monster... I need to get me an HDTV.
I would agree that the lack of sharpness has very little to do with the hardware. I actually really like my iBook, but on the few ocassions I've brought it to the Apple store, the sales people seemed clueless about anything but iPods. I doubt they can figure out how to set up an HDTV setup correctly.
anona
· 2 years ago
"What should we use as the test as to whether it’s sharp or not?"
That's easy: put a MSFT guy in front of it to declare it unsharp; put anybody else to...
Christian (the Canadian)
· 2 years ago
Oh oh! There goes the "I have a bigger, better ... than you" fight!
Robert, yesterday afternoon someone behind the scenes at Rocketboom was wondering if anyone had experienced RB on an AppleTV and wanted to know what the quality was like. I suggested and linked to your previous AppleTV post before seeing this one. Perhaps you could let them know?
Rob: I see you posted #2 and #8. I didn't delete any others, but I've been getting so much spam lately I can't catch false positives. Repost and I'll make sure it gets up. Did it have more than one URL?
Keep in mind that I looked at hundreds of HDTVs at CES last year and this and I just don't like the DLPs. I quickly crossed them off my list (and I saw them inside National Semiconductor's booth where they were properly setup and the lighting was fairly dark).
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Christian: Rocketboom looks great on my Apple TV (the low res one looks blocky, but the high res one rocks).
Mike
· 2 years ago
Is this any surprise? iTunes content is barely SDTV quality so of course it's going to look like crap.
It's bizarre that Apple sells SDTV content for the AppleTV, but the AppleTV will only work with an HDTV?!?
I don't get it. Even if they do eventually offer HD content, why prevent AppleTV from running on SDTVs? What is the point of limiting a consumer's ability to use this product with any old TV?
Mike: Apple TVs run just fine on SDTVs. Not sure where you heard they don't.
Goebbels
· 2 years ago
From your brother probably.
Goebbels
· 2 years ago
Decent test: use your TV and someone else's. To test all combinations (MCE w/yours, MCE w/ theirs, ATV w/yours, etc..)
Test Apple-purchased content and an equivalent file on both.
Test a standard video podcast. Test a hi-rez podcast.
Test movie trailers (for internet/streamed content)
Test streamed content, not just synced content.
Also view photos and album art.
Judge several criteria: dithering, frame rate, glitches, sharpness, etc.. independently
Then provide an overall judgment.
Don MacAskill
· 2 years ago
So I have a 1080p DLP projector on a 123" screen.
I watched Season One of Prison Break on my TiVo Series 3 via Unbox at Amazon. I watched Season Two of Prison Break on my AppleTV purchased from iTunes.
The Unbox videos are dramatically sharper. The Unbox stuff was in the league of a DVD (not quite, but reasonably close). The AppleTV stuff is much much softer. Now, some people like a soft, film-like look. If that's you - no worries. But for those of who like sharp video, there's a difference.
I did try switching from 720p to 1080i per your suggestion in Palo Alto last week, but didn't see a noticeable difference. (My projector has an awesome scaler that converts everything to 1080p anyway).
The Unbox video did have some artifacts in a few scenes here and there, though. Distracting, but not for most of the show.
Don MacAskill
· 2 years ago
Oh, and I forgot to mention, you and Maryam are welcome at our place any time, of course, if you wanna check it out. Just email/IM/Twitter or even call (if you must). :)
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Don: hmmm, we'll be over for sure!!!
The problem is that content sold on iTunes is usually 640x480 or lower. I don't see any HD content available on iTunes itself. Except for video podcasts, and even then you gotta know to subscribe to the HD feed (Rocket boom, for instance, has a separate HD feed -- if you subscribed for your iPod, you probably are on the low-res feed).
So, if you compare content, it definitely will be less sharp, but that doesn't mean the hardware sucks, just that Apple needs to get us an HD version.
One thing I really wish is that Apple would make a deal with ABCTV. http://dynamic.abc.go.com/ has a new player (Windows only, sorry) which is AWESOME quality. All for those Lost fans.
Nigel
· 2 years ago
Oh it's sharp :), but you have to be playing HD movies, the standard movie trailers / music videos are soft due to resolution. But photo's and HD movies come out really nice, the HD movies are good enough on my 60" Sony RearPro ( model before yours 720p native ), that I'm hanging out for a HD movie player now, or HD movie downloads from iTunes. For an HD movie try "Warren Millers Higher Ground" 3 minute promo :).
Rob La Gesse
· 2 years ago
Robert - the problem with looking at TV's as you describe it is that you have no comparative data - you are at a show, where everyone is using different sources and lighting.
I took my XBOX 360 and HD-DVD with me when shopping - I saw the same Spiderman II scenes on about 20 TVs. You like your tech, I like mine. But I still bet my Xbox 360 through my generic PC looks a hell of a lot better on my TV (or yours) than AppleTV does.
Rob
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Rob: many of my friends have DLPs. I see the same blurring on all of them when there's movement. They even have a name for this blurring "rainbow." Not everyone can perceive it, though. It's one of the main reasons I didn't go with a DLP set, even though DLPs cost about half as much as my set did.
Master William
· 2 years ago
Mike was being an ass as usual and talking about iTunes content.
Either run a HD podcast or a trailer from the Quicktime site. The picture is superb. You cant fault the hardwar for Apples inability to get 720p content on the iTunes store. One has to think it cant be long before iTunes does go to 720p though
Don MacAskill
· 2 years ago
@Robert:
Yes, but Unbox is also standard-def. So theoretically Unbox and AppleTV should be equally sharp - but it's just not the case. AppleTV is much softer.
I haven't seen any compression artifacts to speak of, though, so it doesn't seem like it's an issue with the bitrate per se, but possible more of a resolution or encoding issue. It's entirely possible the folks at Apple intentionally encode it softer for some reason.
The more likely, though, is resolution. Quicktime reports these video files as being 640x360. NTSC (aka SDTV in the US) is 720x480. If Unbox is 720x480 and AppleTV is 640x360, that would certainly explain the softness - 230K px vs 345K px (50% more!) is nothing to sneeze at. As the AppleTV up-rezzes the image, the image either has to get softer or blockier. Since blocky is bad, I'm sure they err on soft.
Give it a shot yourself - try up-rezzing a 640x360 image in Photoshop to 720x480, or even better, one of the HD resolutions like you're running your AppleTV at: 1280x720 or 1920x1080. See how soft it gets.
Matthew Rechs
· 2 years ago
Scoble: iTunes did make a deal with ABCTV -- Lost and everything else, it's up there on iTunes! I switch between watching the iTunes and ABC.com versions of Lost. I download iTunes when I'm traveling, and I watch the streaming version on ABC.com when I'm at wor^H^H^H home.
Our company Schematic designed the interface for the ABC player along with a lot of other neat broadband, PC, ITV and Consumer Electronics products. Send an email if you'd like to get together at Mix07 (we're a sponsor) for some demos.
--Matthew
Jim Glidewell
· 2 years ago
What I suspect is going on is that the Apple stores are deliberately leaving 720P materials off of the Apple TV demo units, so that the existing iTunes Store materials don't look bad in comparison. This is likely to change shortly.
I've got an AppleTV hooked up to a 720P DLP projector with a 92 inch screen. Within 24 hours of getting my AppleTV, I had downloaded a number of 720P demos and trailers from Apple's Quicktime HD Gallery and other places. Looking at the BBC Motion Gallery:Japan demo in 720P, or the Spiderman 3 trailer - the image is amazing. This is a trivial test for anyone who actually has an AppleTV in their home, versus a "review" based on an encounter in a showroom.
One needs to keep in mind that most of the existing iTunes Store video materials were targeted primarily at the iPod, so it isn't all that surprising that they don't look great on a big screen. Anybody who thinks that this situation won't change rather radically in the next 6 to 12 months, now that Apple has a product that ties nicely to an HD-TV, isn't really thinking all that deeply.
Todd Dailey
· 2 years ago
I've looked at a lot of content on the Apple TV, and while some of it (320x240 video podcasts and such) can look blocky at 1080i, it's nowhere near Mike's "tequila shot" analogy. iTunes-purchased movies and music videos, hand-ripped dvd's, episodes of BSG (both old resolution and new), and The Merlin Show all look great on my set (an old 36" CRT VEGA set to 1080i) and on a 40" Bravia set to 720P.
Making blanket extreme statements without backing them up with facts is just linkbaiting and trolling, in my opinion. If Mike's so sure of his poor quality statements he can grab a digital camera and post comparison shots. Where are the facts?
Jeff Kirk
· 2 years ago
Whether the picture is soft or not depends on many, many factors:
(1) The resolution of the original source material. TV from the iTunes Store is intrinsically not as sharp as a 720p QuickTime movie.
(2) The resolution selected on the television.
(3) The scaler in the television. Low-res originals scaled up to 1080p on a TV with a lousy scaler will look terrible.
(4) The settings on the TV. You can easily make a great TV look terrible with bad (or factory default) settings for contrast, brightness, and color.
(5) The person viewing the image. Some people have crummy eyes. Some people prefer the exaggerated edge sharpness introduced by high contrast settings and aren't used to a smoother, more film-like image.
My Apple TV's video looks pretty good to my eyes with my 34" CRT HDTV viewed from about twelve feet away. When I get my 60" Sony SXRD RPTV this weekend, I'm sure the video will look much worse by comparison even though of course it's still the same video.
But don't despair! I'm sure Apple will be introducing 720p video content as well as some simple way of recording TV from HD sources. You can already do this with third party software (MediaFork, anyone) and EyeTV or Miglia's HDTV tuner. It's early days yet. Apple will undoubtedly solve the content problem.
David
· 2 years ago
Using an ATV in UK, attached to 36" EDTV 576p Toshiba CRT, looks as good as I would expect for SD widescreen TV, although some Podcasts including The Scoble Show, get clipped at the edges, not sure why they don't scale correctly.
Mike Torres
· 2 years ago
Master William - thanks for calling me an ass :)
"Either run a HD podcast or a trailer from the Quicktime site."
Normal people don't watch podcasts - they want TV shows, movies, music videos - and they don't get excited about spending $300 to watch movie trailers in high-def. Come on.
Apple will up the quality of the shows on iTunes - it's a matter of time. The point is that current state of the world is weak at best.
Quick: you missed your favorite show last week and didn't record it. What do you do? Until it's obvious, there's a problem. It's not specific to Apple - it's the industry's problem.
ABC is taking some major steps though.
magia3e
· 2 years ago
Apple TV uses an Intel integrated graphics chipset that is also used on Windows laptops.
The word from Vista users with these laptops is that it is capable of the nice Aero glass look, but has to work hard. HD is slow and not worth while.
With this in mind, I decided Apple TV just wasn't worth looking at. The price point is good, and yes, you can probably hack it to do DIVX/XVID/etc, but I could do without the headache. Give me native true HD support and not Apple's mpeg-4 pretend HD.
M
Joel Toe
· 2 years ago
I am using Sony and I am quite happy with the result.
Jeremy Wright
· 2 years ago
I never got why I'd want to spend more money to get less features with less choice. My 360 + bittorrent + media center + zune + slingbox pro is more than enough for a truly connected, HD, high fidelity experience.
I watch what I want, where I want, in whatever format I want (and ditto with audio). Next step for me is a Home Server so all my data can live in my personal "cloud" instead of being sync'd all over the place (and equipping the rest of my gear with 802.11n so I can stream HD in real-time).
TheFirm
· 2 years ago
I never got why I'd want to spend so much money to watch these things on TV when you see so much more in person. When I attended one of the NCAA games at Rupp Arena a few weeks ago, the resolution beat everything else to snot.
I can buy tickets to go where I want, when I want, and get full range audio and video. My next step is to use my disposable income to smugly make everyone else on the planet feel bad about their choices (and therefore demonstrate how smart I am), instead of just being happy with what I have. I may even buy a Zune, effectively doubling the installed base.
Podesta
· 2 years ago
LOL @ The Firm! This thread really did turn into 'Mine is bigger than yours.'
Notice that Torres has tried to retreat from the idiotic entry on his blog about the Apple TV. Better late than never, I guess.
Mike Torres
· 2 years ago
There's no "retreat" here. I wouldn't recommend an Apple TV to a single human being on the planet :)
Erik
· 2 years ago
I suspect the reason that ITMS doesn't sell HD content (particularly movies) is that they are huge files (10-20 Gig) that take forever to download.
IP distribution of feature length HD content to a mainstream audience is still a ways away.
Se7en
· 2 years ago
Well if a Microsoftie claims it so, it must be true :p Even that Zunester guy claimed you needed a Mac to use .aac files, even though his own Zune supports the format. I think MS must be having their guys out in full force running the FUD machine lately.
All Comments
And we'll use your eyes to judge - you'll see the difference ;)
Rob
Sometimes I wonder why these stores still sell HD Sets, considering how BAD they look.
Kevin, considering the rate that the AppleTV is being hacked and the lengthy waiting lists for it at second tier stores, I'll wager that the product will be a success.
Rob
I would agree that the lack of sharpness has very little to do with the hardware. I actually really like my iBook, but on the few ocassions I've brought it to the Apple store, the sales people seemed clueless about anything but iPods. I doubt they can figure out how to set up an HDTV setup correctly.
That's easy: put a MSFT guy in front of it to declare it unsharp; put anybody else to...
Robert, yesterday afternoon someone behind the scenes at Rocketboom was wondering if anyone had experienced RB on an AppleTV and wanted to know what the quality was like. I suggested and linked to your previous AppleTV post before seeing this one. Perhaps you could let them know?
It's about 1/3 of the way down in pink background
It's all a public service & I'm happy to do it ;)
Keep in mind that I looked at hundreds of HDTVs at CES last year and this and I just don't like the DLPs. I quickly crossed them off my list (and I saw them inside National Semiconductor's booth where they were properly setup and the lighting was fairly dark).
It's bizarre that Apple sells SDTV content for the AppleTV, but the AppleTV will only work with an HDTV?!?
I don't get it. Even if they do eventually offer HD content, why prevent AppleTV from running on SDTVs? What is the point of limiting a consumer's ability to use this product with any old TV?
Test Apple-purchased content and an equivalent file on both.
Test a standard video podcast. Test a hi-rez podcast.
Test movie trailers (for internet/streamed content)
Test streamed content, not just synced content.
Also view photos and album art.
Judge several criteria: dithering, frame rate, glitches, sharpness, etc.. independently
Then provide an overall judgment.
I watched Season One of Prison Break on my TiVo Series 3 via Unbox at Amazon. I watched Season Two of Prison Break on my AppleTV purchased from iTunes.
The Unbox videos are dramatically sharper. The Unbox stuff was in the league of a DVD (not quite, but reasonably close). The AppleTV stuff is much much softer. Now, some people like a soft, film-like look. If that's you - no worries. But for those of who like sharp video, there's a difference.
I did try switching from 720p to 1080i per your suggestion in Palo Alto last week, but didn't see a noticeable difference. (My projector has an awesome scaler that converts everything to 1080p anyway).
The Unbox video did have some artifacts in a few scenes here and there, though. Distracting, but not for most of the show.
The problem is that content sold on iTunes is usually 640x480 or lower. I don't see any HD content available on iTunes itself. Except for video podcasts, and even then you gotta know to subscribe to the HD feed (Rocket boom, for instance, has a separate HD feed -- if you subscribed for your iPod, you probably are on the low-res feed).
So, if you compare content, it definitely will be less sharp, but that doesn't mean the hardware sucks, just that Apple needs to get us an HD version.
One thing I really wish is that Apple would make a deal with ABCTV. http://dynamic.abc.go.com/ has a new player (Windows only, sorry) which is AWESOME quality. All for those Lost fans.
For an HD movie try "Warren Millers Higher Ground" 3 minute promo :).
I took my XBOX 360 and HD-DVD with me when shopping - I saw the same Spiderman II scenes on about 20 TVs. You like your tech, I like mine. But I still bet my Xbox 360 through my generic PC looks a hell of a lot better on my TV (or yours) than AppleTV does.
Rob
Either run a HD podcast or a trailer from the Quicktime site. The picture is superb. You cant fault the hardwar for Apples inability to get 720p content on the iTunes store. One has to think it cant be long before iTunes does go to 720p though
Yes, but Unbox is also standard-def. So theoretically Unbox and AppleTV should be equally sharp - but it's just not the case. AppleTV is much softer.
I haven't seen any compression artifacts to speak of, though, so it doesn't seem like it's an issue with the bitrate per se, but possible more of a resolution or encoding issue. It's entirely possible the folks at Apple intentionally encode it softer for some reason.
The more likely, though, is resolution. Quicktime reports these video files as being 640x360. NTSC (aka SDTV in the US) is 720x480. If Unbox is 720x480 and AppleTV is 640x360, that would certainly explain the softness - 230K px vs 345K px (50% more!) is nothing to sneeze at. As the AppleTV up-rezzes the image, the image either has to get softer or blockier. Since blocky is bad, I'm sure they err on soft.
Give it a shot yourself - try up-rezzing a 640x360 image in Photoshop to 720x480, or even better, one of the HD resolutions like you're running your AppleTV at: 1280x720 or 1920x1080. See how soft it gets.
Our company Schematic designed the interface for the ABC player along with a lot of other neat broadband, PC, ITV and Consumer Electronics products. Send an email if you'd like to get together at Mix07 (we're a sponsor) for some demos.
--Matthew
I've got an AppleTV hooked up to a 720P DLP projector with a 92 inch screen. Within 24 hours of getting my AppleTV, I had downloaded a number of 720P demos and trailers from Apple's Quicktime HD Gallery and other places. Looking at the BBC Motion Gallery:Japan demo in 720P, or the Spiderman 3 trailer - the image is amazing. This is a trivial test for anyone who actually has an AppleTV in their home, versus a "review" based on an encounter in a showroom.
One needs to keep in mind that most of the existing iTunes Store video materials were targeted primarily at the iPod, so it isn't all that surprising that they don't look great on a big screen. Anybody who thinks that this situation won't change rather radically in the next 6 to 12 months, now that Apple has a product that ties nicely to an HD-TV, isn't really thinking all that deeply.
Making blanket extreme statements without backing them up with facts is just linkbaiting and trolling, in my opinion. If Mike's so sure of his poor quality statements he can grab a digital camera and post comparison shots. Where are the facts?
(1) The resolution of the original source material. TV from the iTunes Store is intrinsically not as sharp as a 720p QuickTime movie.
(2) The resolution selected on the television.
(3) The scaler in the television. Low-res originals scaled up to 1080p on a TV with a lousy scaler will look terrible.
(4) The settings on the TV. You can easily make a great TV look terrible with bad (or factory default) settings for contrast, brightness, and color.
(5) The person viewing the image. Some people have crummy eyes. Some people prefer the exaggerated edge sharpness introduced by high contrast settings and aren't used to a smoother, more film-like image.
My Apple TV's video looks pretty good to my eyes with my 34" CRT HDTV viewed from about twelve feet away. When I get my 60" Sony SXRD RPTV this weekend, I'm sure the video will look much worse by comparison even though of course it's still the same video.
But don't despair! I'm sure Apple will be introducing 720p video content as well as some simple way of recording TV from HD sources. You can already do this with third party software (MediaFork, anyone) and EyeTV or Miglia's HDTV tuner. It's early days yet. Apple will undoubtedly solve the content problem.
"Either run a HD podcast or a trailer from the Quicktime site."
Normal people don't watch podcasts - they want TV shows, movies, music videos - and they don't get excited about spending $300 to watch movie trailers in high-def. Come on.
Apple will up the quality of the shows on iTunes - it's a matter of time. The point is that current state of the world is weak at best.
Quick: you missed your favorite show last week and didn't record it. What do you do? Until it's obvious, there's a problem. It's not specific to Apple - it's the industry's problem.
ABC is taking some major steps though.
The word from Vista users with these laptops is that it is capable of the nice Aero glass look, but has to work hard. HD is slow and not worth while.
With this in mind, I decided Apple TV just wasn't worth looking at. The price point is good, and yes, you can probably hack it to do DIVX/XVID/etc, but I could do without the headache. Give me native true HD support and not Apple's mpeg-4 pretend HD.
M
I watch what I want, where I want, in whatever format I want (and ditto with audio). Next step for me is a Home Server so all my data can live in my personal "cloud" instead of being sync'd all over the place (and equipping the rest of my gear with 802.11n so I can stream HD in real-time).
I can buy tickets to go where I want, when I want, and get full range audio and video. My next step is to use my disposable income to smugly make everyone else on the planet feel bad about their choices (and therefore demonstrate how smart I am), instead of just being happy with what I have. I may even buy a Zune, effectively doubling the installed base.
Notice that Torres has tried to retreat from the idiotic entry on his blog about the Apple TV. Better late than never, I guess.
IP distribution of feature length HD content to a mainstream audience is still a ways away.
Even that Zunester guy claimed you needed a Mac to use .aac files, even though his own Zune supports the format. I think MS must be having their guys out in full force running the FUD machine lately.