Apple TV and X264 (MeGUI)

[swindmill]

Quoted from Apple's site:

Video formats supported: H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): 640 by 480, 30 fps, LC version of Baseline Profile; 320 by 240, 30 fps, Baseline profile up to Level 1.3; 1280 by 720, 24 fps, Progressive Main Profile. MPEG-4: 640 by 480, 30 fps, Simple Profile

Does this allow for a decent quality encode to be made under X264?

How limited is the Main profile as opposed to the best X264 can do?

This seems to be one of the few options (almost) currently available for playing/streaming H.264 video to a TV aside from building a PC suited to the task.

[Sharktooth]

Very limited.
:search: to know what limitations apple put on their h.264 encoder/decoder.

[Blue_MiSfit]

This apple tv thing looks like not much more than an iPod Video with slightly higher resolution support.

*yawn*

[smok3]

This apple tv thing looks like not much more than an iPod Video with slightly higher resolution support.

*yawn*

yep, boring, i kinda like the iphone idea thought.

[swindmill]

It would seem that the capabilities of the device don't match the (assumed) hardware.

Having a current Intel would chip would suggest it using the Core architecture (Conroe), whether single or dual core, which should allow it to play H.264 content encoded at higher resolution and with higher quality settings.

It almost seems that apple is artificially limiting the Apple TV's capabilities to what it intends to offer via iTunes.

It saddens me that what could have been a great a device with backing from a great company (Apple) will be turned into only a means for them to sell more video content.

[giandrea]

It would seem that the capabilities of the device don't match the (assumed) hardware.

Having a current Intel would chip would suggest it using the Core architecture (Conroe), whether single or dual core, which should allow it to play H.264 content encoded at higher resolution and with higher quality settings.

It almost seems that apple is artificially limiting the Apple TV's capabilities to what it intends to offer via iTunes.

It saddens me that what could have been a great a device with backing from a great company (Apple) will be turned into only a means for them to sell more video content.

Well, let's not judge this thing before actually having tested it... :o It might be possible that the actual capacities are better than the ones announced.

[Sulimo]

It would seem that the capabilities of the device don't match the (assumed) hardware.

Having a current Intel would chip would suggest it using the Core architecture (Conroe), whether single or dual core, which should allow it to play H.264 content encoded at higher resolution and with higher quality settings.

It almost seems that apple is artificially limiting the Apple TV's capabilities to what it intends to offer via iTunes.


Who says it does though. I imagine it uses a pretty low power chip given the price and specs.

I imagine it lines up with what they use to encode the 720p trailers.

It saddens me that what could have been a great a device with backing from a great company (Apple) will be turned into only a means for them to sell more video content.

That was the whole point of the device from the start. A device that allows you to watch/listen to your itunes bought content in your living room. Nothing more.

It saddens me though...I still have no device to replace my Xbox running XBMC. Its too bad it doesn't have enough grunt to playback h.264 content in HD.

Though perhaps there will be a miracle and someone will port XBMC to PS3 Linux.

[swindmill]

XBMC on Xbox is amazing.

NOTHING on the market can compare.

Why is it that no manufacturer can compete with what an open source development community has created for what is now outdated commodity hardware?

I understand that DRM issues are present here, but as long as a manufacturer is not directly providing access to copyrighted works, how/why could they be held liable?

What's preventing a company from taking XBMC, paying one or more of the developers to port it over to newer, more substantial hardware, and selling it as a bundled software/hardware solution?

Hell, what's preventing a few people from starting a grassroots effort to do the same and relying upon "the community" for funding and research/development? A standardized hardware spec, a website, a cry for funding and some backing by the XBMC developers would suffice.

Does anyone else see a problem with the lack of open devices for playback of the various media content available on the web?

[CruNcher]

swindmill licenses and company monopolistic stuff is the cause for this, also the industry doesn't wan't us to have a player that can play every current established standard (and non standard) as of this would be secure for severaly years (at least before a new standard video codec has been developed wich takes several years before it hit's markets) (wich is rather unlikely with a product evulation cycle this fast as we have today for CE) and so the industry would lose alot of profit from not be able to milk everything they could out of the products lifetime.
You can make such players yourself todays easily that could beat Industry ones by several years but nobody would build them nor finance them being build, so you're on your own and ofcourse it would be much more expensive (for average joe) to build such a unique prototyp then to buy for example a asian manufactured STB/SAP, that's also why the PS3 is so interesting the Power that is in this Machine is for todays CE products unbeliveable and could very well hold some years, but that's also why Sony is restricting the whole thing with a Hypervisor so that it can't be exploited by us for such stuff, restricting technology is nowdays a very normal process to make more profits over the lifetime of a product by introducing new features later on (that are mostly allready developed before the product hit's the market) and released in steps for maximum profit ;)

[Ronin-7]

According to this (http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/1/15/6628) these are the spec's of the AppleTV.

* 1.0GHz Pentium M-based chip ("Crofton") underclocked on a 350MHz bus
* 2MB L2 cache
* nVidia G72M with 64MB DDR2 video memory
* 256MB of 400MHz DDR2 main system memory (reportedly soldered to logic board)
* 40GB, 2.5-inch PATA drive
* 802.11n or 10/100 Ethernet, but cannot function as wireless router on its own
* As we mentioned early last week, the USB 2.0 port is for service purposes only
* A fan for cooling

A Pentium M isn't a bad little chip though the clock speed might be a factor the GPU is also basically a GeForce 7300.