Surprise ad for Apple TV begins airing on networks - Page 3

Wait a minute, it's perfect! Offer the iPod version for 4.99 with an option to upgrade to the HD version for just 10 dollars more, within 3 months of purchase or something like that. Then you've got a virtual rental model. It wouldn't cost much more than a new release at Blockbuster, the only downside is the poor image quality, but hey, it's convenient and cheap. I could see that taking off like wildfire.

Interesting how in that particular scene, there are two iMacs in the corner of the shot (of School of Rock). This commercial is a breath of fresh air (kind of), even if i have no use for the product.



Also, why is the Apple official time telling my computer that's it's PM? (haha i just realized it IS Pm. never mind.)

I'm quite disappointed that AppleTV can't do Dolby Digital or DTS, that there's no HD content for purchase to play on it (yeah, yeah, I know that there will be), that the hard drive is a measly 40GB, and that the silly thing can't even play optical media of any kind.

Right now I'd use the AppleTV for two things -- which I can't justify buying it for: Viewing pictures in HD and listening to music on the living room stereo. Right now I can see pictures in HD on my computer monitor and I've got my iPod docked into the living room stereo. AppleTV is useless to me for watching movies because my Sony upscaling DVD player shows my DVDs beautifully.

Exactly, you have a great sony upscaling DVD player, why on earth would you want the ATV to have optical media in it? That makes no sense to me. The other things you mentioned are valid though.

First, the AppleTV CAN DO DOLBY DIGITAL or DTS. Granted, there isn't any content available as such (YET), but it is certainly capable and likely will be included in films from Apple someday.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM...5B4C2B75A.html

Second, unless you are completely disinterested in Podcasts, you have overlooked one of the AppleTV's biggest selling points. I love playing Movies (especially DVD's Ripped to iTunes of my daughter's vast collection of soon to be lost/broken DVD's) and TV shows through my AppleTV. I like having a visual interface for music, and seeing the latest movie/tv/music 'trailers' on my big screen TV.

BUT, the biggest use for my AppleTV so far, and the one that should have every good Video Podcaster take notice, is the way it places DiggNation on equal footing with the latest NBC Dateline etc. I grab my remote and watch Diggnation, and countless other podcasts, just like a TV show; which is great since the death of TechTV.

Sure you can do that with an iPod and cables, but it's just not the same. Video Podcasting has just been elevated to a near-broadcast footing - Just watch what happens from here...

It's amazing to me how many people just don't get it. If you're an audiophile or videophile (all half dozen or so of you) neither the iPod nor the ATV was designed with your "requirements" in mind. The "I won't buy this until..." crowd better be prepared to wait a LONG time. These products are not for you. They are for the vast majority of people who don't need or even want the features being demanded of these products. It's amazing how much was read into the Apple TV that Apple didn't claim or advertise. The crowd that said, "I won't buy an iPod until it supports Ogg Vorbis, supports lossless formats, comes with an FM tuner, et al" ARE STILL WAITING aren't they, five years later! Yet Apple just announced the 100 millionth iPod has been sold. The same with the Apple TV; five years from now the same crowd will STILL BE WAITING for their perfect device.

Who needs preemptive multitasking? Who needs more than 2 hard drives in a Power Mac G5? Who needs 2 optical drives in a Power Mac G5? Intel is evil. Apple will never switch to Intel. Who wants to play music on their computer? Why would anyone want to watch movies on an iPod? 640K is enough for everybody.

The only solution I can see is making the ipod with video like the ipod shuffle where it automatically downconverts for you when you add it to the player, that way wouldn't have to have to use up all the space on big files or own two copies.

Well, yes, that's a good idea because I like it when the computer takes a half hour to "sync" an iPod because it's downconverting an episode to iPod.

The iPod does losssless and there's the optional FM tuner....so the only thing left is Ogg Vorbis...so most of the waiting is already over.

I won't buy it because I have better things to do then reencode all my DVD's for a device that can't make use of all their features. I won't buy it because the thing only adds yet another remote to the confusion of controlling a home theater (the remote that came with my receiver can pretty much control every component except the Tivo). I'd be tempted to buy it if it included a DVD player because it would be one less component I'd have to futz with. I wouldn't be tempted to buy it if it included a DVD player but only came with the Apple Remote. I'd be tempted to buy it if Apple would officially open it up and allow plug-ins for the device such as the RSS feed reader and other codecs. I won't ever be tempted to buy it if Apple continues trying to force iTunes crap video content as the only easily accessible video.

Nor do I consider myself an audiophile or videophile except as much to say that I like my audio and video to sound and look as possible on the budget I have. Neither of which Apple seems to want to provide with the AppleTV.

Are there any tools that will make Quicktime video carry a DD bitstream? Even if AppleTV can spit out the bitstream, there is no other infrastructure available that I've heard about. It's kind of like owning a computer without having access to electricity. I don't remember seeing a PCM option in encoding H.264, so DTS is out as well, though that's kind of a hack. While one can encode DTS data into WAV (or maybe AIFF), that doesn't necessarily make it acceptable. In DVD, DTS is supposed to be marked by its own special track type so that a DTS-unaware player knows to not to try to play it as PCM and potentially cause problems.


It's clearly not the same, but with a standard Apple IR remote dock, you can control your iPod through an Apple remote. It will also work with pretty much any TV as well.

Hmmm. I didn't think that far.
Well in my opinion if the two file way is the way to go, the second file should be FREE. I'd be pissed if I bought an itunes movie but couldn't watch it on my ipod.

Like the commercial shows, it's supposed to free up your media to be used anywhere, not buy multiple versions.

According to the link quoted by Sport73, AppleTV does DTS, but not DD. jeffdm's point is, until you can rip a DVD to some format with 5.1 sound that the AppleTV will play back in 5.1, it's all academic. (If it is possible, without hacks, please correct me.)

http://www.thismuchiknow.co.uk/?p=34

I know DTS has been using CDs and PCM streams to transport its data, but for modern files, it's kind of a hack. It's kind of stupid too, given how DTS is 765 kbps or 1.5Mbps for just audio, it's just not realistic for downloaded files. Apple sells TV shows that are encoded at 1.5Mbps for the combined video and audio streams.

Right now, there is no option in Quicktime to encode PCM or DTS into a H.264 stream, which is why I said that there's little to no infrastructure for it, there's no content that's like that and no apparent way to make that content. As that Roughly Drafted site said, there is AAC 5.1, but I don't remember seeing any receivers that will decode that. AppleTV can't output decoded AAC 5.1 either.

My Mac Pro's a 2.66 GHz. My estimate was rough and off the top of my head, it may have been more like 50 minutes (but I do it in the background so I don't really notice). My main issue is why the hell Quicktime seems to only use two of the cores to do it. I can have nothing else running and it maxes out at about 180% CPU usage. Yet, I can encode two movies at the same time and get the same performance on both of them (i.e., each one of them uses 180% CPU for a total of 360% usage). A lot of the time I feel like my second processor is just twiddling its thumbs. Apple really needs to improve the multithreading if they're going to sell 4 (and now 8) core computers.

How do you get two simultaneous quicktime encodes?

Thanks Jeff, makes perfect sense.

Cool thanks Ireland..! ...Yeah josa92, but at least when playback at 1280 wide on my MacBook, the "oversampled" video file means pretty much flawless quality when viewing on MacBook.

Is there a way to save it so i can put it like, in my iPod or just try and see all of it? (i don't have Quicktime Pro).

Okay, i did it. (I've been answering a lot of my own questions lately...).
Anyway, the link in Ireland's post--right (secondary, excuse me) click on it and click "save linked file". then it downloads. that's pretty darn cool instead of buying a pro thing just to do that.

Import into iTunes. Then right click and Covnert Selection to iPod.

Personally, I have no idea why Apple simply cannot advertise the Mac correctly (in my opinion)... Most people coming into my workplace [reseller store] simply gloss over the Get a Mac ads (well the US versions need to be subtitled anyway, I think, for where I am at the moment). A young lady was looking at them intently though, the minority that are a bit more tech- and humour-savvy spend a bit more time looking at it and "getting it".

The iPod ads have always just been engaging, cool, and broad-appeal. The AppleTV, looks to be off to a good start. The ad was subtle-ly funny (Jack Black and kids), very understandable in terms of the tech, and stylish, simple, cool.

I would have liked to have the "it's on your iPod" to have showed the guy coming "into the house", emphasizing the indoor-outdoor-car-wherever "portability" aspect while still maintaining the popular "multi-room-panning" cinematography.

Yeah, Ireland was pretty smart to get a good link where we can do this. Normally it is hard to trawl through websites, etc, to find a direct link to the .mov final file.

It works now, you open whatever files, then encode them... It adds the encode to a queue that runs simultaneously. I got 3 going at the same time now for my Core[1]Duo MacBook. Mmm... full 200% load...

This is a bit of a quagmire, intellectually.

I'll give it a shot. I woke up at 5.30am this morning thinking about this stuff, it's 7.30am and my neighbour is frying up what smells like mmm... bacon... Dammit! I need more sleep so I'll try and be brief. \

1. I think a lot of you have made valid points that the highest quality surround we can get at this stage is DTS and AC3.

2. DTS and AC3 bitstreams are unnecessarily big for the modern Intarweb standards, etc.

3. I tend to agree more with RoughlyDrafted link than ThisMuchIKnow.

4. DolbyDigital I and II decoding of the stereo-matrix AppleTV output of AAC 2-channel or 5.1-channel .mp4, .m4v, .mov files is very acceptable for a lot of consumers and the mainstream with these 5.1 or 7.1 amp and speaker setups.

5. I strongly believe AAC 5.1 in a MP4, M4V container is the way to go for the future. Rev B or C of AppleTV, if and when we get iTunes Store 720p HDTV material, I agree, would be good to have AAC 5.1-encoded files, with AppleTV outputting AC3 (not DTS*) to 5.1 and 7.1 amp/speaker setups.

6. DVD and other sources of AC3 and DTS when played back from Macs are not an issue with digital optical out into your digital optical in of your AC3 and DTS capable 5.1/ 7.1 amp/speaker setups. Otherwise the messier sound card - to - speaker (no discrete amp) setup.

7. If you are ripping DVDs, you will want to do a MP4 container with H.264 video and AAC 5.1 audio [Besweet and NeroAudio as main tools]. Doom9.org has all you need to know... It is predominantly PC-based but it is more important since we are talking about iTunes and Quicktime and iPod and AppleTV, which is, predominantly PC-user-base. I feel this enthusiast PC-user-base audience is the most likely users of AppleTV that will want quality DVD-rips with 5.1 surround "maintained" to some level, with the convenience of not having to physically carry around or slot in discs, etc. (That's why they're ripping DVDs, they're encoding geeks, like digital assets on their computers, DVD-enthusiasts that want to preserve their "master prints" of movies in the original pristine quality, plus some want to pirate out their encodes)... As one of the Doom9 forum members have in their signature, "I encode therefore I am". I pulled a nice rip of Matrix-LobbyScene and Matrix-Morpheus.vs.Neo into mp4-h.264-aac(stereo) rips that's playable and streamable off iTunes/Quicktime, there's a real sense of satisfaction...Heh... Did it in Windows via Parallels. Hella complex, I can't repeat it now unless I have like 10 browser tabs open for all the tools and techniques. For Mac, Handbrake or FFMPEGx, should soon, if not already, have AAC 5.1 encoded audio for DVD-rips. If what RoughlyDrafted is saying, this is a good intermediate step for AppleTV surround sound on our current convergence journey.

*AC3 is Dolby Digital which is the more common standard with the very famous "Dolby" name. While I personally *love* DTS on DVDs (and believe it is superior to AC3), globally, AC3 (Dolby Digital) is very much more mainstream and "good enough" for AAC 5.1 - encoded, AC3-output-transcoded - setup for AppleTV rev B or C with 720p HDTV H.264 content.

Apple posted the ad on its website. Here is the link: http://www.apple.com/appletv/ads/

So in your lab you have Sony, LG, Panasonic, Sharp, etc, all set up with equal signals, a video spectrometer and a focus groups to unbiasedly evaluate each system?

There is something very..... not good about Apple posting an HD ad that shows School of Rock looking way, way better than it actually looks if you where to download it and watch it on the set-up they show it being shown on.

I mean, when the representation of a movie in an advertisement as it looks being shown on a television in the larger shot looks vastly better than the movie which is actually being sold, all is not well.

Let me rephrase that: I downloaded the 640x496 "medium" res version and played it full screen, School of Rock still looks much, much better than what actually happens on Apple TV.

My opinion on the Sony Bravias is just my opinion, and something I strongly recommend people have a look at. People may have different opinions. Such tests as you describe above are for audiophile/videophile magazines to carry out.

I'm don't think your comment was very useful, at least, not in the way you wrote it.

Great, thanks.

Sony does offer a Lupe type tool that is used to magnify the actual pixels which can bring into focus some of the differences between their technology and that of competitors. All HD is a little disappointing if you are expecting absolute realism. What system would you recommend?

I think I am somewhat emotional about this because I do expect a lot from Sony and love a lot of their stuff including SonyEricsson. Didn't mean to come on too strong with this.

Somehow though, the Bravia and latest HD Handycams are like "hyper-realism", I want a pleasant image, pixels are secondary. A pleasant 720p is fine for me. The thing that annoyed me is also that Sony in my region has marked their stuff as "full HD 1080" but they do not put a p or i next to it, they used to put an i next to it, and I suspect the Bravias are 1080 *interlaced* still. I could be wrong.

From my browsing so far, I would say Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Panasonic, LG, Phillips do offer some interesting models which display more pleasing yet clearly high definition images. And a quality Pioneer (expensive though) plasma seems to upscale DVD well and handle HDTV alright too.

It's just that Sony came out guns blazing with this new Bravia stuff, and "full 1080" but it's not what I expected, and it is unfortunate that (I suspect) all the Apple stores in the US, iPod Video, iTunes Store, AppleTV, are going to "suffer" from a negative impression. Not that it is all Sony's faults, of course.

Going off the strength of the brand and the convenience of iTunes music, tv, movies, I think AppleTV and iTunes Store will do fine. As will the Bravias in general... for the average consumer.

Their LCD sets are progressive, like pretty much all LCDs. There may be issues with how it converts interlaced to progressive, but LCD is pretty much a progressive-only technology.

Wow, I must say for 1-pass encoding to 640x360pixels or so (iPod video), http://handbrake.m0k.org/ (Mediafork/Handbrake) is fast and good. I haven't tried out the latest Handbrake/Mediafork until now. Exceptional handling of shadow areas which I complained about earlier w.r.t. h.264...

They mention the next official beta will do downmix of AC3 5.1 into DolbyProLogic 1 ---matrixed into stereo--- AAC

So you want Apple TV to transcode from AAC to AC3, i.e. from one lossy codec to another, thus automatically deteriorating quality whenever the video is played back? At the very least, that should be a setting; i.e., users should be able to assert that their HiFi can indeed handle AAC, so they can turn this conversion off.

Ahhh, I guess it's all subjective. Well anyways, HDTVs aside, the iTunes Store movies are going to be limited as long as they allow for playback on iPod. That is, there's a lot more sexier stuff and higher bitrates that can do 640x360, say, at 2500 kbit/sec, with great quality. But that is beyond the AFAIK "baseline" profile and max bitrate that iPod Video can playback.

You do not need a HDTV, you just need one that can support wide screen.

I bought this Apple tv and i must say, on My Plasma, the videos look like you would watch them on a standard tv.

I don't remember anywhere that apple said it would be in HD, or DVD....Hell it looks the same as if i play them back on my iMac in iTunes.

1) Welcome to the AI forums.

2) You don't need widescreen either. AppleTV supports SD sets (480p), but Apple only supports HD sets because the lowest video output on the AppleTV is component.

3) He already purchased a DVI to HDMI adapter to resolve the issue.

This is really off topic but I this deal is just too good not to pas on...

6ft HDMI cable for $3.00 (96% off)

I just opened up two quicktime windows with each file and then chose file...export on each one. Seems to work fine.