AppleTV 2 worse video quality than AppleTV 1?

e1618978e1618978
Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
I am getting a lot more pixelization and worse video quality from my new appleTV than my old one. Anyone else getting this?



It might be specific to my setup - there does not seem to be a way to set the output resolution on the new appletv box, and I run my video through a video scaler (DVDO VP30) and from there to a 65" plasma.



I don't know how it ends up setting an output resolution for the appleTV, probably some kind of auto detect of the display. In my case it would be the video scaler that it auto detects. My scaler works best with 480i for non-hdtv content, as it is bound to do a much better job than the appletv box at up-resing the video, and it could be that my bad image quality is due to the video being up-resed in two places.



Any suggestions appreciated.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    kingofsomewherehotkingofsomewherehot Posts: 4,180member
    Have you tried it withOUT the video scaler in the middle?
  • Reply 2 of 7
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Yeah, I wouldn't be so sure about the DVDO "bound" to be doing a better scaling job-- that's relatively old tech and the consolidation and miniaturization of processing/scaling algorithms moves very quickly. How old is the plasma? You might be better off using the onboard scaler there.



    Not sure if the Apple TV has any dedicated scaling silicon or if it's relying on SW/GPU (I would guess the latter) but even there this technology moves awfully quickly, and the DVDO is what, maybe a 5 year old design? You wouldn't assume a 5 year old GPU that was fairly pricey at the time would automatically be better than a cheap one that you got today.



    You may actually be getting scaling/deinterlacing happening in three places-- the Apple TV, the DVDO and the plasma, so I would certainly try taking the DVDO out of the signal path just to see what's up.
  • Reply 3 of 7
    e1618978e1618978 Posts: 6,075member
    sure - I'll try that, thanks! The plasma is two years old.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    e1618978e1618978 Posts: 6,075member
    I tried it:



    worst: appleTV 2 straight to TV

    slightly better: appleTV 2 through scaler

    better still: appleTV 1 through scaler



    I think that the problem is the inability of the appleTV 2 to manually set the output to 480p and let the scaler bring it up to full res.



    Other things I noticed about the two devices:



    1. Vast improvement in the fast forward on the appleTV 2 vs appleTV 1. Apple TV 1 fast forward was not apple's best effort.



    2. When you pause video on aTV2, and then press play again you lose two seconds or so of audio, which didn't happen on the appleTV1



    3. for some reason, you can't buy some shows on the appleTV 2 - like "Community". I had to go back to iTunes on my computer to buy them.
  • Reply 5 of 7
    e1618978e1618978 Posts: 6,075member
    If any apple designer is reading this -



    - set TV shows to only show unwatched, then watch the first one in the list, looks like it reboots the box once the show is done.



    - it fails to mark things as watched most of the time, it requires manual intervention to force the watched flag to clear
  • Reply 6 of 7
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by e1618978 View Post


    If any apple designer is reading this -



    - set TV shows to only show unwatched, then watch the first one in the list, looks like it reboots the box once the show is done.



    - it fails to mark things as watched most of the time, it requires manual intervention to force the watched flag to clear



    We're not Apple. Don't bother.



    Report it here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html
  • Reply 7 of 7
    e1618978e1618978 Posts: 6,075member
    Bought a Roku box, way better image quality on netflix with my setup than the AppleTV (possibly due to my video scaler), and also it seems to rebuffer netflix shows a lot less. I still have two AppleTV v1 boxes, I'm going to ditch the appletv2 and go back to AppleTV 1 for iTunes, and watch netflix on Roku.



    The Roku interface is not as good as the appletv, and I hate the little cloth tab on the remote though.



    EDIT: But the Roku has a horrible flaw, occasionally when you switch hdmi inputs it gets confused, and you get a green screen. You have to plug and unplug the cable a few times to get it to work again.
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