{"id":4443,"date":"2012-03-08T23:39:17","date_gmt":"2012-03-09T04:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=4443"},"modified":"2014-07-12T12:49:27","modified_gmt":"2014-07-12T16:49:27","slug":"apple-tv-3-and-itunes-1080p","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/08\/apple-tv-3-and-itunes-1080p\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple TV 3 and iTunes 1080p"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iljitsch van Beijnum<\/a>:<\/p>\r\n

The reason that the 1080p versions of the iTunes Store videos can<\/em> be a good deal better without doubling the file size—or worse—can be found in the tech specs of the new AppleTV<\/a> and the new iPad<\/a>. The AppleTV now supports H.264 compression<\/a> for 1920x1080 resolution video at 30 frames per second using High or Main Profile up to level 4.0, the iPad and the iPhone 4S the same up to level 4.1. The profile indicates what kind of decompression algorithms the H.264 decoder has on board—the \"High\" profile obviously has some tricks up its sleeve that the \"Main\" or \"Baseline\" profiles known to previous devices don’t support. The level value indicates how many blocks or bits per second a device can handle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\r\n

In my experience, the old iTunes “HD” videos were heavily compressed and looked only slightly better than DVD-quality. The new 1080p videos are a welcome improvement, but it seems that they don’t compare favorably with cable\/satellite, much less Blu-ray.<\/p>\r\n

I’m still not really sold on Apple TV. On the one hand, the selection is getting better. Apple no longer requires you to store and back up your own purchases. With three versions of each video, at increasingly higher resolutions, that was not very practical. Now you can just re-download from iCloud as needed.<\/p>\r\n

On the other hand, TV shows are no longer rentable<\/a>. If I’m going to buy,<\/em> why lock myself into lower quality and DRM. It would make sense if I wanted to watch on iOS devices, but I don’t. And iTunes is still not very nice for browsing or searching; it has the wonderful column browser but actively tries to prevent you from using it.<\/p>\r\n

It would be interesting if it could be an alternative to cable, but forces outside Apple’s control block that. Basic cable is almost free for me, in the sense that Comcast would raise my Internet rate by a corresponding amount if I were to unsubscribe from video. I pretty much only get a higher cable package to see NBA games. Apple TV now offers NBA league pass<\/a>, but during the trial period I found that it was unreliable, the video quality was awful, and blackouts meant that nearly all the games I wanted to see were unavailable.<\/p>\r\n

In short, Apple TV keeps getting better, but I don’t think it’s broken out of hobby<\/a> status.<\/p>\r\n

Update (2012-03-14): A follow-up article<\/a>:<\/p>\r\n

I was surprised to see how close the iTunes 1080p download comes to Blu-ray, considering that it’s only a fraction of the file size. And let’s be honest: there are lots of Blu-ray titles that look much worse than this iTunes download. But despite an impressive effort by Apple, Blu-ray still reigns king when it comes to image quality. And unlike iTunes titles, BRDs can have uncompressed multi-channel audio, multiple audio language options, and special features. Am I being greedy in wanting both good-looking downloads for convenience, as well as buy-once-play-anywhere Blu-ray discs of my all-time favorite movies?<\/p><\/blockquote>\r\n

The test screen was only 23 inches, and of course the photos don’t capture what movement looks like.<\/p>\r\n

Update (2012-03-20): John Siracusa<\/a> reviews the Apple TV 3. He doesn’t like the remote, either.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iljitsch van Beijnum: The reason that the 1080p versions of the iTunes Store videos can be a good deal better without doubling the file size—or worse—can be found in the tech specs of the new AppleTV and the new iPad. The AppleTV now supports H.264 compression for 1920x1080 resolution video at 30 frames per second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[615,224,189],"class_list":["post-4443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple-tv","tag-itunes","tag-itunesstore"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4443"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9125,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443\/revisions\/9125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}