Thanks,

James

The way that pictures and movies are upscaled are incredible… even these little CD-covers are looking great.

I was frustrated at first to learn it only had RGB inputs. No biggie but then all of the dvd player manufacturers put out HDMI on their upscan players. This tv supports 720p and 1080i so that left me on a mission to find a cure. It came in the shape of a Samsung dvd player with upscan technology. You could buypass the limitation by a remote hack. Ok I was back in buisness.

The Apple tv works flawlessly. the photos are awesome and any reviews look fantastic. Now depending on how I try to take my dvds and rip them and encode them, ( I am new at this so it will take a bit to find the best settings and programs) some have come out looking great and others so-so. Its all in the settings and the programs used to encode the material. If I send a crappy image to the unit it cannot improve the source material.
I am on crutches so I can’t even get the model number of the tv but hey remember its a TV, DVD player with upscan, 5.1 digital amp and speakers, and then the apple tv.

Or I have read not attempted yet … Hdmi to dvi cable and hook up a widescreen monitor. that and a nice boom box and apple tv and you are set.
Peace
Mark C Chickey

This combination allows me to view 1080i output in all its quality. What I like most is the Ambilight feature (which can be tuned to have a pure white backlight, a backlight that adjusts to the main picture colour (on one or both sides of the screen) and whose “refresh rate” can be adjusted (ambient, action etc).

I turn all my lights off and enjoy my AppleTV content on my TV without my eyes getting strained.

I connected the AppleTV with HDMI and the TV outputs it to my surround system (no Toslink and optical surround input, maybe in a not-so-distant future 🙂 ?)

I lack the ability to purchase video content from iTunes (alas… I am European, you know.. The stone age folks over the Atlantic…).
But I enjoy HD nevertheless thanks to my Sony Handycam HDR-HC3. All in all I have to say I am really happy about the purchase of both systems (I have spent a lot of time choosing a future proof TV set and it is paying off a lot (ask my friends who chose the cheap way)).

I like what the Ambilight does when playing pictures slideshows, the image really “pops out of the screen” in a fully dark room.
I am not an audiofile so iTunes music plays very well for me. The Dolby Surround “virtually” played by AppleTV is also enough for my needs.

At first I thought I purchased the AppleTV in a moment of craziness and was about to regret it. But even if I cannot currently purchase content on the iTunes store (video..) I must say AppleTV is worth all the money it costs. I have taken pleasure in listening to my 3’500 plus catalogue of music in my living room through a proper stereo and I love to show pics on AppleTV as well as my High Def home videos in all their quality. This last option was impossible before the AppleTV as I should have purchased an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray that are really expensive right now.

What do I miss?
1. Storage space (my MacBook is getting crowded really fast, and my legacy (Pentium IV) PC cannot keep up with all of this new tech
2. Video content in Europe. I am ready to wait though, as I hope it will be available immediately in an AppleTV friendly format (HighDef??) at the same time the feature will be available in the US.

AppleTV and Philips are a perfect match (not the only one I see…) and setup was really incredibly easy (that is also one thing I love about Apple products, and maybe the thing my girlfriend loves most (spend more time with her than flicking some crazy menu tree or reading some obscure instruction leaflet trying to do the easiest things)).

I am definitely happy with AppleTV, and I don’t have to listen to “why does it take so long to do such a simple thing as…” from my girlfirend 🙂 With me staring in anger to a device telling myself “I hate when she is right…” and figuring out a technical answer to get away with..

Now I’d like to throw my opinion out there for some people who I think are setting up their apple tv’s with the wrong resolution. Obviously it sounds like the Apple TV is looking great no matter if people are picking 1080i or 720p since it seems to have a good scaler in it. That being said, here’s my thoughts:

The only people who need to choose 1080i for their resolution are people with CRT HDTV’s (Tube or Projection) or people with 1080p HDTV’s.

Here’s why: All the content on your ATV is progressive by choosing an interlaced format you are making the ATV interlace progressive scan content. Now lets say you have a 37inch LCD TV. That TV is not 1080p or even 1080i native, its 720p native. It accepts 1080i signals and deinterlaces them and scales them to 720p, but it will not display a 1080i picture. Now you take your Apple TV, and watch a 640×480 movie. Apple TV iup scales it up to 1080 and then interlaces it and outputs to your TV. Your TV accepts the signal and says hey 1080i, I need to de-interlace this and scale it down to 720p to displace on my LCD. If you can’t notice a difference its really just a testament to the quality of the scalers (Or I guess it could be the quality of your optometrist) but you are essentially making the your Apple TV and Your TV TV do more work than necessary.

All HDTVs support every format, but DLP, LCD, and Plasma, all have only 1 Native format and they are all progressive scan and unless they are 1080p (very few these days) 720p is the native format. I would just as soon not have my video interlaced and deinterlaced again if it is entirely not necessary. Its bad enough that it scaled.

Lets say you have an old school CRT projection or CRT Tube HDTV. Those TV’s much like the old Tube computer monitors can switch resolutions dynamically and have no native resoltion, if you send it a 1080i signal it will display 1080i, but why would you want to? The content is all progressive scan. Why not output the progressive signal since you know the source material will never greater than 720p to show it at 1080i it must be upscaled and interlaced.

The only reason I can see for the ATV to output 1080i is if you are the rare person with an HDTV that Only supports 1080i and has a crappy scaler built in and you’d rather use the AppleTV scaler.

I know 1080 just SOUNDS better than 720 but trust me its really not. You’ll actually see more jaggies and artifacts in high motion HD in 1080 interlaced modes because it displace 540 lines 60 times a second, where as 720p displays 720 lines 30times per second. Progressive scan gives you more of a film look, interlaced gives more of a Video look.

In the end, its all in what you like and it won’t really hurt anything, but why upscale at the ATV only to downscale at the Real TV… Its just a waste. Save a few CPU cycles on your ATV and set it you 720p and forget it. (Just like the showtime rotissery)

Receiver: Pionner 1016
TV: Sanyo 1080i HDTV (CRT) – old school TV in terms of HDTVs

AppleTV is connected to the receiver via component connection and optic cable. The sound is wonderful. People are saying that the AppleTV does not support 5.1, but I have a ripped movie to h.264 mp4 file and it does produce surround sound. Might not be true 5.1 surround. It sounds just like when I play the dvd via dvd player.

The video 1080i or 720p, to my untrained eye, looks the same. And it could just be the CRT TV and not having an LCD screen instead. I have had no real problem with any of the other video settings. I am currently using the appleTV at 1080i to watch that same ripped movie as above, and there is no color distortion compared to the DVD.

iTunes-quality video looks lovely. I rip DVD at a higher resolution for 16:9 content (720 x 400) and a higher bitrate (2500kbps) and the difference is noticeable. Having said this, video podcasts, even those at QVGA resolution, look entirely acceptable. The only video that looked bad was that which was originally very badly encoded or over-compressed.

I have synced my collection of CD cover scans as my “photos”. CRTs tend to be more forgiving with image quality compared to LCD. Thus even 400 x 400, moderately compressed images look very good.

I could keep this TV for at least 2 more years, given its performance.

btw, i don’t recommend Apple TV because it can’t play high quality video (only up to 5Mbps H.264 or 3Mbps MPEG-4) and for some reason audio is plain 2ch stereo instead of Dolby Digital 5.1 which makes it completely useless.

I would love to get an appleTV but, funds being short, I would have to rely on my current tv set. It only has s-video and RCA video/audio inputs.

Any converters out there to get this to work?