Apple TV "Barely Watchable"

lpangelrob writes "Peter Svensson of the Associated Press reviews the Apple TV, and comes away less than impressed.While the Apple TV gets solid marks for "a very iPod-like interface, commendably clear and easy to use", the Apple TV experience falls apart on an HD television. The reviewer notes that "videos from Apple's online iTunes store look horrible on an HDTV set. The movies and TV shows have the same nominal resolution as DVDs, but look much blurrier, approaching the look of standard-definition broadcast TV.'"

Okay, modders

[elrous0 (869638)]

Maybe the modders can fix it. God knows they've been fixing all the many OTHER things that are wrong with it.

Re:Okay, modders

[ZachPruckowski (918562)]

The issue with video quality that they have is that Apple only sells videos in 640x480. There's no mod needed to fix this, all you need to do is get your videos from elsewhere. If you get your 720p videos from the interwebs or from your cable/satellite/OTA or wherever, it'll look just fine on the AppleTV (as long as it's not DRM'd). The issue isn't with the hardware or the software, it's with the videos Apple sells.

Re:Okay, modders

[AdrianZ (29135)]

While they only sell standard def, they give away free high def movie trailers.

So the real test would be downloading one of the HD movie trailers from iTunes and trying it on the AppleTV product.

If they work well, then chances are if/when Apple movies to sell full movies in HD, the device will handle it well and be more "future proof" than suggested here. If on the other hand it chugs along bandwidth problems, we'll know for sure that its a SD-only device.

Re:Okay, modders

[bwalling (195998)]

It's certainly not as crisp as High Def content. It's better than standard def content. It's on par with DVD. I think most people have a TV that's too big for where they sit and this compounds the problem. I have a 50" 1080p set, and I sit 14 feet away from it. I don't really notice how bad the iTMS stuff is. I can tell that it's not high def, but I can't tell that it's awful. I have 20/15 vision, so I can see just fine. Really, I expect them to start cranking out HD content soon. It's a bit goofy that they don't already have it.

Re:Okay, modders

[ZachPruckowski (918562)]

Getting video to drop DRM is going to be very hard. The reason is that while there's already a flood of non-DRM'd music out there (CDs) and will be for the foreseeable future, all DVD/BRD/HDDVD releases have some form of encryption, which (even when broken) allow those industries to tightly control legal digital versions on computers. With TV, the industry has plans to implement the broadcast flag, cutting off digital copying (and fair use) at the knees. In short, the music industry has no hope of creating an environment where all content is DRMed, while the video industry is clinging to that belief desparately.

Technically simple, but usability could be complex

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

Yes, and that's the icing on the cake; 640x480 ought to look similar to a DVD. Same vertical resolution anyway, just less horizontal pixels. They also seem to be compressing the living crap out of them in order to make them small enough for iPod Video sales.

What I think needs to happen, is Apple needs to find a way of letting people download video for a particular device. Unlike with audio, where most people will listen to the same track on their iPod and through their home stereo (which makes me think that a lot of people must be near-deaf, but I digress), people aren't going to do the same thing with video. They want high-def content for their HDTV, which means a different file from the quick-downloading version for their iPod.

Assuming Apple has the source material available, it should be trivial to produce HD versions of the programming that's on the iTMS. What's more difficult is how they're going to let users choose between versions, and how it'll be priced. If you download a TV episode for your iPod, will that be the same price as a HD version for your iTV? And if you get the iTV version, will you automatically get the low-res version as well (because it would be trivial to transcode down if not)? Or will there just be one price that entitles you to all resolutions (fat chance)? Those questions are more complicated than the technical ones -- Apple has more than enough expertise to produce good-looking HD material...look at their own Movie Trailer site if you want examples. Some of those clips are practically reference material for people setting up HD displays, because they're pretty close to broadcast quality.

The technical capability is all there, I just think they haven't quite worked out the business and user-training angle yet.

Re:Technically simple, but usability could be comp

[uradu (10768)]

The "fair thing" to me would be to have a standard base "content price" since you're licensing the same show and IP regardless which resolution you watch it at, and then add a bandwidth surcharge based on the resolution and thus file size you download. Coming back later and downloading a different resolution of the same show should then only cost you the bandwidth surcharge of that resolution. Kind of like allofmp3 was doing it, except with an actual "artist remuneration" base cost built-in. I think this would be the fair thing to do because the industry has always harped on how consumers are just licensing content, not actually purchasing an "ownable" product. Therefore consumers should NEVER have to re-license the same content again and again just to have it available in a different format.

No modding necissarry.

[pavon (30274)]

The problem isn't the device, but the low quality of the videos purchased on iTMS. If you were to go through the hassle of ripping from DVD, you wouldn't have this problem. Which really gets down to the issue of why this device is so underwelming - it desperately needs more/better sources of content. There are many ways they could achieve this:

* Add a TV tuner and make it a PVR.
* Improve the format options for people with existing collections.
* Vastly extend amount of content at the iTunes store, increase compression quality
* Extend the iTunes video store to include pay-per-view.
* Allow purchases derictly from the device.

While a lot of people have been calling for the first, I think Apple is smart by staying out of that game. First off, the vast majority of people that want PVR's get them from their cable companies, and everyone else buys a Tivo, which is a very well polished product. Secondly, CableCard support has been a mess, making it a pain for third party PVR's, and limiting the service that they can provide to their customers. Between these two issues I really don't see what Apple could do to make themselves stand-out the way they have in other markets where the competition couldn't provide a good interface to save themselves. Lastly, cable television as we know it is on it's way out. It is going to take a while, but the future is internet distribution, and now is the time for them to get on that bandwagon if they want to be a major player. So jumping into an overcrowded market that will quickly be entering into decline isn't a very good idea.

The fact that you have buy songs on a computer is a major pain, and something they could have fixed today, but in the end whether you allow purchases to be made from the couch or not, you will still need to link it to a computer that has more hard-drive space than the Apple TV. This is one of the reasons that I think that set-top boxes work better for pay-per-view / rental than for purchased media, but apparently that is not something that Apple wants to get into. Whatever they decide, Apple really needs to get the ball with their online video distribution, because their current offering are pathetic.

Re:Okay, modders

[neoform (551705)]

Is this really a "problem"?

Seems like 4 years ago people wouldn't be complaining about the quality of a 640x480 video.. why then is it suddenly "unwatchable"?

I agree technology should move forward and improve it'self.. but this is downloadable content.. does he realistically think apple can host HD content that can be streamed live? Hell, Blu-ray movies are like what.. 40GB?

Imagine the server load that would be required to handle millions of people downloading a few HD movies every week..

It's Been Said Already

[slughead (592713)]

I recently purchased an Apple TV for my parents who have a 46" 1080p LCD TV.

I'd have to say that the associated press conclusion is correct about iTunes video content--barely watchable. They said the picture was "fuzzy", but I think they were really referring to the annoying artifacts present in low quality mpeg streams.

That is not to say that the AppleTV is crap, however. When playing high def content (that you rip yourself from DVD or from HDTV), it's not half bad. The thing can output at 720p at 4000kbit/s (maybe with a software upgrade (VLC)), iTunes just doesn't sell that kind of content.

Still though, with these kind of resolutions on these ginormous TVs, you're going to see artifacts even on some overly-shrunk DVD movies.

I bought the AppleTV so I could jerry rig it into something useful [appletvhacks.net]. If I were buying it simply based on its stated features, it's so useless I'd have a hard time justifying the $300 price tag.

Re:It's Been Said Already

[Jake73 (306340)]

Sounds to me like poor compression, not a bad Apple TV. I don't have an Apple TV, so I can't test it with a good stream, but many HD streams are over-compressed yielding very poor results. In particular, the iTunes store probably just hasn't caught up with the idea that people will actually be playing HD content on HD-capable devices.

There are some really crappy DVDs out there, too, but they don't mean that the DVD player is junk.

Pictures?

[mr_matticus (928346)]

Does anyone have pictures of this "horrible" video playing on a TV so people can actually make a judgment. When I played with one, the videos from the iTunes store exceeded my expectations (I was not blown away, but it was completely watchable). I assumed it would be like watching analog broadcast television on an old set, or running my LCD monitor in 800x600, but instead it looked like standard-definition (i.e. digital) broadcast. Obviously, iTunes needs to start selling higher quality content, but it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.

If Apple had brought higher-quality videos to market first, there'd be complaints that they didn't have any device capable of pumping it to an HDTV. Since they released the device first, we get to hear about how they're not providing the content.

Moreover, this man's not really an authority on anything. He seems to be under the impression that big, loud, high power consumption equates to "capable of playing HD content better," when this of course is bullshit. He worries that the small, silent machine and its high efficiency will somehow make it incapable of playing HD--but he didn't apparently bother downloading any of the dozens of *HD* trailers available right from Apple's flipping website to test that bogus hypothesis.

I get the same thing on DVD's

[greg_barton (5551)]

I have a 42 inch 1080p LCD, and the image quality is "bad" just watching regular DVD's. Granted the iTunes content is a tad worse, but it's in the same ballpark. The only stuff that looks really good is broadcast high def or a blue ray disk.

Duh.

[r3volution11 (1004873)]

Who would of thought a compressed movie format would look bad on a high definition tv?

Shocking titles, misleading review

[Yvan256 (722131)]

Slashdot title: Apple TV "Barely Watchable"
TheLedger title: Apple Appalls Where Xbox Excels

Too bad, then, that where looks really matter - in the quality of the video on the TV screen - the $299 Apple TV comes up very short. It's as if Apple had launched an iPod that sounded like a cassette player.

So he puts the AppleTV down its "video quality"...

On the TV screen, the Apple TV projects a very iPod-like interface, commendably clear and easy to use. It also looks great, especially on a high-definition TV. It uses your own pictures as an animated screensaver.

But then say it's got a great-looking interface on a high-definition TV...

It's surprising, then, that videos from Apple's online iTunes store look horrible on an HDTV set. The movies and TV shows have the same nominal resolution as DVDs, but look much blurrier, approaching the look of standard-definition broadcast TV.

And THEN complains about the real problem, which is the iTunes Store content itself, not the AppleTV. The movies and TV shows will look even worst on your computer LCD display, which are even better than a crappy HDTV that will most probably rescale your image before displaying it. But no, he has to make it sound like it's a problem with the AppleTV.

According to the company's specifications, the Apple TV can play HD video with a resolution of 1,280 by 720 pixels, but it doesn't actually seem that well suited to it. The hard drive is small, and the low power consumption speaks of weak processors inside. And since Apple's standard-definition video looks so bad, I'm not confident the HD video will look good either.

What does he mean by "doesn't actually seem that well suited to it"? The hard drive is more than enough for H.264 content (requires less space than regular MPEG-4), low power consumption means nothing with dedicated solutions (if the MPEG-4 and H.264 decoding is done by the GPU, you don't need a Quad-Core 3GHz processor).

And what the hell does SD content looking bad has to do with HD content? That's like saying my 1280x1024 LCD will probably look shitty with a 1280x1024 wallpaper because it looks shitty when it has a 320x256 wallpaper on it. No correlation at all, this guy is an idiot.

So, the guy knows the real problem (varying video quality from the iTunes Store, but that's the content providers fault, not Apple) but still puts down the AppleTV for fake flaws.

In short, I call Microsoft shill on this guy.

H.264 rocks, TV studios suck

[schmidt349 (690948)]

People have been complaining of low bitrate on iTMS video. The thing is that H.264 includes a lot of really neat kit that MPEG-2 can only dream of:

• Quarter-pixel motion compensation (computationally expensive, but it dramatically improves picture quality and reduces macroblocking)
• Multiple bidirectional frames (up to 32 as opposed to the previous 2)
• better quantization
• And much, much more!

Getting the picture yet? Yuk yuk. The bottom line is that you get radically better performance out of H.264 than MPEG-2 at similar bitrates. So a ~45 minute TV episode weighing in at 400MB for a total combined audio/video bitrate of around 1250 kbps gets nearly identical quality to a 2500 kbps MPEG-2 bitstream. Of course on DVD you get goodies like the 5.1 surround audio track, so it's still a better deal, but Apple's done a lot to close the gap.

The REAL problem with iTMS video has absolutely nothing to do with bitrate. No, it's the shitty masters that the TV producers are provisioning Apple with. The people who do Monk, for instance, don't even bother supplying the 16:9 master -- instead they give Apple a crappy 4:3 version. The BSG people have more than once given Apple 480i broadcast masters instead of the HD masters or at least a 480p source, and you get deinterlace artifacting on some episodes as a result. Garbage in, garbage out.

Start an email campaign to the TV execs demanding that they give Apple the same stuff they give to the HD networks and you'll see an improvement in quality. Until then, you'll get the same old crap.

Apple maybe getting it's own due?

[Churla (936633)]

Apple has long strived to merge the concept of the device and the service into one. It's what made the iPod/iTunes combo such a devastatingly effective one. Is this a case where that same mantra is biting them in the posterior? In this case the lacking of higher definition content on service (iTunes) is magnified by the product.

Don't knock the hardware for it. It's a nice little hardware platform, place the blame on the shoulders of an iTunes service which just doesn't have enough HD content.

It's like my wife blaming Windows Media Center for choppy video performance watching a video when it was really a flaky wireless router dropping packets.

some learning curve involved ...

[constantnormal (512494)]

I have a Hitachi 42" plasma HDTV, supporting 1080i and 720p formats, downscaled to the 1000x1000 physical pixel layout of the device. Yeah, it's not your typical uber-video 1080p whiz-bang HDTV, but it still blows me away.

For the several years I've been using an el gato http://www.elgato.com/ [elgato.com]eyeTV HTDV gizmo to record over-the-air HD content to disk, and then (lacking any means of directly driving the Hitachi HDTV from the server) burning the programs to DVD for playback on the better screen via the set-top DVD player. Packing HD content onto a standard DVD is a learning experience in itself, as it's all to easy to put more bandwidth into the DVD than the player will handle, with subsequent artifacts and other nonsense.

So when the AppleTV was announced, I leaped at it, and have been getting accustomed to the device over the past few weeks. My goal has been (and is) to use the server in the next room as a media server, streaming content to the Apple TV for playback on the Hitachi plasma HDTV. In this, my intent has been to put DVDs and recorded broadcast content on the server, taking advantage of the rapid decline in cost of hard drives.

I've had most success using Handbrake to rip DVDs to bits-on-a-disk in MP4 form, then using VisualHub to fine-tune the conversion to AppleTV format, transcoding to H.264 and 1280x720, 24 fps for DVDs. For broadcast content, I go directly from eyeTV to an AppleTV-compatible format (960x540, 29.97 fps, single-pass H.264). The AppleTV-formatted content is then added to iTunes and streamed to the AppleTV via 802.11n wifi. I find that streaming gives me better results than syncing, especially if the content has longer playback times. In all cases, I maintain the max playback bandwidth at close to 5 Mbps, the published limits of the AppleTV.

The reason I go for the 960x540 format for broadcast content is that it's gonna end up that way anyhow, due to the content provider's (that would be the studio, not Apple) inclusion of the ICT http://broadcastengineering.com/mag/broadcasting_c pr_redefined/ [broadcastengineering.com](Image Constraint Tag) in the video stream, so that higher-resolution video thusly tagged gets knocked back to 960x540. If you just let QuickTime do the conversion via their AppleTV menu choice in QuickTime Pro, you also get the bandwidth throttled back to 4 Mbps.

The end result is that the viewing experience is very close to set-top DVD playback, but less than over-the-air HDTV. All in all, a "good enough" experience, especially for only $320 (including the HDMI-to-HDMI cabling).

In my initial testing of the device, I predicted that there would be a chasm between two groups of users -- those who love the AppleTV, and see it as a significant advance in bringing computer-controlled TVs into the living room, vs those who see it as an abject failure. The difference between these two camps is largely one born out of expectations. The people who hate it wanted effortless 1080p quality video, a built-in DVD player and HD receiver, and were shocked to discover that it actually was a little less than Steve Jobs pitched it to be, instead of a lot more. Maybe a second- or third-generation model will come closer to their dreams, but if so, it will be because the studios have loosened up in what they will permit such a device to do, and because the internet providers have boosted the available bandwidth to permit downloading of multi-gigabyte files in a reasonable time (hint: an hour of HD MPEG2 video takes around 5 GB to store on the hard drive).

Today's limitations on what can be done with connecting the internet to HDTV are constrained mostly by the available bandwidth and the studios' restrictions on how much fidelity they allow in downloaded content. When the Xbox HD content-via-the-web becomes available, I expect that it will be similarly hobbled.

So long as you don't have over-the-top expectations, y

Re:My spin

[FuzzyDaddy (584528)]

"approaching the look of standard-definition broadcast TV" and "barely watchable"?

Growing up, my best friend's stepfather used to say that he used to be into high end stereo equipment, but gave it up and settled for a relatively crappy one. As he put it, "I found I was listening to the noise instead of the music".

Re:My spin

[elrous0 (869638)]

Hey buddy, I was a kid during the Hanna-Barbera cartoon era. I *KNOW* unwatchable television! Compared to watching that crap over a poor antenna signal, this is a golden age.

Re:My spin

[cei (107343)]

So you're saying AppleTV uses the same background picture during all chase scenes? That IS unwatchable!

Re:Glitching and poor resolution

[TMonks (866428)]

But could they not at least admit they don't play on 800Mhz computers?

They do admit that, look under "Additional Video Requirements" on the iTunes Download Page [apple.com].
It specifically states, '1 GHz G4 Processor or Better'.

Re:Glitching and poor resolution

[ObsessiveMathsFreak (773371)]

SUre my computer is 5 years old. But could they not at least admit they don't play on 800Mhz computers?

It'll play. You just need the right tool for the job. [mplayerhq.hu]

Re:What did people expect?

[Yvan256 (722131)]

They cram 45 minutes of BSG into a 450MB-500MB download. A BSG DVD has what... 3 to 4 episodes on it? You could fit the entirety of Season 1 of BSG from the iTMS onto two DVDs, when the full set of Season one comes with 5 DVDs.

iTunes Store content = H.264, DVDs = MPEG-2. Please get out and give back your nerd card at the door.

Re:What did people expect?

[CastrTroy (595695)]

Changes in the compression format can only go so far. MPEG-2 has "pretty good" compression. H.264 has better compression, but it's not a magical codec that allows you to compress stuff down to nothing without losing any quality. 45 Minutes in 500 MB won't give you DVD quality, no matter which codec you use. Even 45 Minutes of 128 kb mp3/aac will take up about 45 MB, you can't expect to fit the video part of that feed into the remaining 450 MB while still maintaining DVD quality.