Thursday
Nov042010
Nov 4 AppleTV: A Swedish Listener's Thoughts
Hi guys
I´ve been a long time listener and love the show.
For a couple of years I've been jumping from media center/streamer solution one by one, Windows MCE, Apple TV (old), Plex on Mac Mini, XBMC on a Linux box and now lately I decided to give the new Apple TV a try. I've been converting and optimizing my own media for some years through handbrake and working in the business I dare to say that I feel what's good looking and not.
So the new ATV. The box itself is outstanding, small and discrete but at the same time good build quality. Thee remote works as it should and the setup was a breeze, just enter your iTunes account and country and your ready. I'm using a US iTunes account to watch movies and TV shows on the Apple TV (since no content is available in Sweden).
The video quality is pretty good on HD rentals, both movies and TV shows. Locally stored content both SD and HD looks god as well. But........ no matter what you do there seems to be a problem with video stutter. There are lengthy threads over at both macrumors as well as the official apple forum. Some people experience it with specific rentals, some see it at all rentals and some people (including me) experience it with everything I try to watch. The problem is seen especially on horizontal pans, it looks like some 3:2 pulldown problem or some issue with frame rate. I've tried different cables, different HDMI inputs all with the problem appearing. Hopefully this gets addressed in a firmware upgrade ASAP.
Another issue is that soft subtitles that worked great on the old Apple TV doesn't work anymore. Wait, it works on some files but then the font is so small you cant even see it. Perhaps no biggie for the most of us, but even as I speak and understand English fluently it sometimes helps to have English subs when you watch a movie early morning or late at night and have to have the volume as low as possible.
If you have a large library of TV shows you are gonna have some scrolling to do. The new Apple TV sorts TV shows the same way Front Row does. If you have 7 seasons of 24 for example, its gonna give 7 specific entries in the first layer of the TV menu:
24, Season 1
24, Season 2
24, Season 3 and so on...
on the old Apple TV you would first get a menu with all shows and nothing else, in the next level you would then be able to choose your specific season. This is another thing I'd like to see a change to.
The Netflix interface is otherwise outstanding, I haven't tried it as of today, still waiting for my specific VPN router (living in Sweden requires some additional toys).
For the time being I'll probably return to my XBMC Live setup (running on Acer Revo 3610) in three rooms. Outstanding picture quality on locally stored media and more and more on-line content is beginning to show up. But hey, as a Apple Fanboy I´d like to be able to go the Apple TV way again someday :)
Loooove the show....
Niklas Karlsson
Karlstad, Sweden
I´ve been a long time listener and love the show.
For a couple of years I've been jumping from media center/streamer solution one by one, Windows MCE, Apple TV (old), Plex on Mac Mini, XBMC on a Linux box and now lately I decided to give the new Apple TV a try. I've been converting and optimizing my own media for some years through handbrake and working in the business I dare to say that I feel what's good looking and not.So the new ATV. The box itself is outstanding, small and discrete but at the same time good build quality. Thee remote works as it should and the setup was a breeze, just enter your iTunes account and country and your ready. I'm using a US iTunes account to watch movies and TV shows on the Apple TV (since no content is available in Sweden).
The video quality is pretty good on HD rentals, both movies and TV shows. Locally stored content both SD and HD looks god as well. But........ no matter what you do there seems to be a problem with video stutter. There are lengthy threads over at both macrumors as well as the official apple forum. Some people experience it with specific rentals, some see it at all rentals and some people (including me) experience it with everything I try to watch. The problem is seen especially on horizontal pans, it looks like some 3:2 pulldown problem or some issue with frame rate. I've tried different cables, different HDMI inputs all with the problem appearing. Hopefully this gets addressed in a firmware upgrade ASAP.
Another issue is that soft subtitles that worked great on the old Apple TV doesn't work anymore. Wait, it works on some files but then the font is so small you cant even see it. Perhaps no biggie for the most of us, but even as I speak and understand English fluently it sometimes helps to have English subs when you watch a movie early morning or late at night and have to have the volume as low as possible.
If you have a large library of TV shows you are gonna have some scrolling to do. The new Apple TV sorts TV shows the same way Front Row does. If you have 7 seasons of 24 for example, its gonna give 7 specific entries in the first layer of the TV menu:
24, Season 1
24, Season 2
24, Season 3 and so on...
on the old Apple TV you would first get a menu with all shows and nothing else, in the next level you would then be able to choose your specific season. This is another thing I'd like to see a change to.
The Netflix interface is otherwise outstanding, I haven't tried it as of today, still waiting for my specific VPN router (living in Sweden requires some additional toys).
For the time being I'll probably return to my XBMC Live setup (running on Acer Revo 3610) in three rooms. Outstanding picture quality on locally stored media and more and more on-line content is beginning to show up. But hey, as a Apple Fanboy I´d like to be able to go the Apple TV way again someday :)
Loooove the show....
Niklas Karlsson
Karlstad, Sweden
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