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However, “the reality is that higher resolution doesn’t necessarily mean better image quality,” Moskovciak writes. “The fact that the Apple TV doesn’t support 1080p video doesn’t matter.”
Moskovciak writes, “When it comes to streaming video, bit rate is much more important than resolution. Video bit rate basically states how much information is being used to create the video, and in general, the more information the better… The difference between 720p and 1080p content just isn’t that noticeable on a standard-sized HDTV (50 inches or less) at a regular seating distance… We won’t be able to tell how good the Apple TV’s streaming video quality is until we do a hands-on review, but nobody should shy away from the new Apple TV because it’s ‘just’ 720p.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This much we know: The current Apple TV’s streaming HD movies and TV shows are gorgeous. We would expect the new Apple TV to be at least as high quality.
However, lowbit-rate 720p issues might be noticeable on 58-inch or larger, 1080p Panasonic plasma displays. I’m getting a new AppleTV to see, and will hope for the best.
The new Samsung iPad copy also outputs at 720p. That has got to PO the droid fans who had to be wanting bluray quality.
Make excuses for Apple. If Microsoft said this, MDN would be all over it.
BluRay is still miles ahead of AppleTV. The LOTR BRD is amazing (though I feel ripped off that it’s not the extended edition). The sound and picture quality far exceed the pathetic offerings of AppleTV.
BUT, I realize some people don’t care about quality media. That’s why they rip their music at 128 kbps. I’m sure Apple will make a ton of money providing crap product. As much of a fanboy that I am of Apple products, this isn’t one that will ever be on my shelf.
i’ve seen blu ray’s in the store and the picture looks amazing. rented Cars on Blu Ray from Netflix and I think that blu ray is too good. it brought out too many limitations of the technology used to make the movie. it is a lot better than the regular HD picture from my HD cable box
apple can concentrate on streaming, but the reality is that the Blu ray installed base is in the tens of millions and a lot of new blu ray’s are coming with a DVD and a digital copy you can load on your iphone.
Also, 1080p video files are nearly twice the size of the equivalent 720p files. That means Apple needs to send almost double the data to show you the same video, and the delay from rental purchase to start of play would be annoying.
If you were staring at a STILL picture on a typical HDTV screen at five feet, maybe you could notice a different between 720p and 1080p. But when the content has motion (AKA “videos”), the improvement is negligible. Even videos at 480p look pretty good.
720p is the current “sweet spot” for HD streaming, and that won’t change until there is a major overhaul in data “pipes.”
Who hires these fucking idiots? What a crock.
Of course higher resolution images look better and matter. This is merely a weak variation on the same lame-ass argument that iTunes Music Store lovers cry out about low-bit rate music samples vs. Apple Lossless samples.
Unless you’re blind, deaf, in deep self-denial, too cheap to buy decent playback equipment or just plan stupid, higher resolution images (and sound) DO matter!
LeftCoastDude
It has more to do with the reality of bandwidth.
My current AppleTV looks great on my old 42″ Pioneer plasma.
It is ‘only’ 720p, but even if it weren’t, it is still a faster, smaller stream.
If I were buying a movie like LOTR, 2001, Blade Runner or Showgirls for a 60″ LED LCD, then I might want the higher resolution. But for TV shows and most movies, the difference is not noticeable…except in the download time.
Moskovciak is correct that bitrate matters, especially for active video like sports.
But the old false argument that 1080p doesn’t look SIGNIFICANTLY better than 720p is bogus.
Blu Ray is still the only way to enjoy a decent library of movies at full HD 1080p resolution in your home. AppleTV will not displace BR for serious film buffs.
The primary factors that drive media sales (in particular TV shows and movies) are Content and Convenience. A store needs, first and foremost, have the shows people want to see. Then it needs to make it easy to get and play.
Price and Quality are secondary factors, which are only important when they are grossly out of whack. 99c and $99 are good price points for the Apple TV, not too high, to keep them secondary factors. And 720p is well then enough to keep good enough picture quality, but has low enough files sizes to keep the experience of getting and watching CONVENIENT, which trumps Price and Quality any time.
Most “over-the-air” HDTV signals, which have a slightly better picture quality than cable HDTV (or so I’m told) broadcast in 720p, with a small number of channels choosing 1080i. I believe 720p is preferred for sports broadcasts as well, due to a lessened amount of “motion blur” than 1080i for displaying fast-moving objects or persons.
I believe the only way to currently get a full 1080p picture in the U.S. on a home TV is with a blu-ray disc. 720p produces a pretty great picture, so the absence of 1080p on the Apple TV is pretty much a non-issue for all but the most ridiculously fastidious videophile.
720p looks great on my 50” Pioneer Elite Plasma. 1080p looks even better. If you have a problem with 720p, get a better TV.
@LeftCoastDude:
Of course BluRay is better. BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT APPLE TV IS COMPETING WITH.
Apple TV and iTunes TV rentals is for impulse buys. Sitting at home in your pajamas at 10 pm and being in the mood for a certain show. No need to get dressed, drive out to the store, or wait a few days to get a shipment of BluRay disk for a show that you may only want to watch ONCE.
What Apple TV is competing with are illegal downloads. Which are free, but less convenient (a lot for non-techies and geeks like us).
@ken1w
You’re spot on about the data pipeline issue. It’ll be years before the US does any kind of serious network infrastructure upgrade.
Asserting that 720p vs. 1080p video is negligible really smacks of ignorance.
When I got my 1080p HDTV, I tried a bunch of different videos in different formats. I had an old DVD player with analogue outputs, a Faroudja circuit upsampling DVD player with HDMI and a Sony VCR. Later, when I got a Blu-ray player I tested again between the upsampling DVD and BRD. I have several movies in different formats, so I swapped around. (Just watch the open credits of “From Russia with Love” in Blu-Ray!)
I can tell you the upsampling DVD handily beat the standard def DVD. The Blu-Ray blew all the others out of the room… whether sitting at 5 feet or 15 feet away, also dispoving the idiotic myth that 1080p is worthless on a TV smaller than 50-inches, or is now at the non-existent 58″ size. (Mine’s a 40″ Sony Bravia).
Who makes this crap up anyway?
@mike
Wherever did you get the idea that ATV is a replacement for Blu-Ray?
Honestly, who gives a shit what any of you prefer, in terms of video quality?
You all cluck your tongues whenever the subject of ATV comes up, like you’re some kind of frickin video experts, who begin whining, But I don’t want an Apple TV.
As if anyone is forcing it on you. You like 1080p, we get it, but no one is trying to take it way from you.
@mr reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Where on earth does your hostility come from?
Please don’t say authors like this one, because they say there’s no noticeable difference btwn 720 and 1080.
720p will not disuade me.
However, there I can tell some difference on my 50″ LCD between blu ray and standard DVD. True, it is a tiny fraction of the difference between standard def and 720p, but I can notice it.
For comparison of the quality of the current video “streaming” services, this is a basic, but useful, overview:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_howto_watchtv/7/
Mr. Reeee
I am sure you are aware that upconversion is dependent on the manufacturer, not the format. A good 720p TV can make a DVD look better than a bad 1080p TV, same with the DVD player itself. Some just can’t handle blacks for shit.
But then again, some people are never satisfied….that’s what drives new technology-
http://www.rhapsody.com/steve-martin/comedy-is-not-pretty–1979/googlephonics
A highly compressed 1080P file is not going to look better than a 720P file with a better compressor. Kinda like how a phone with more megapixels than an iPhone can look a lot worse, if the optics and software compression are crap.
“When it comes to streaming video, bit rate is much more important than resolution”
Where’d they find this dipstick. He must think YouTube video is just like “The Best!”
Of course bitrate is paramount to streaming, but that doesn’t mean 480P is better because it streams faster or more reliably. 480P streams better because the quality is poorer, less information = less bandwidth needed. Same follows with 780P. It streams better than 1080P because there’s less information and less picture quality.
Apple is guilty of lying when they term 780P “HD”. It’s not. HD is 1080P, nothing less. And like a poster before me said, if MicroSoft tried to obfuscate the issues this way, this site (MDN) would be ripping them to shreds.
As usual Apple fanboys are defending 720p. With a 1080p video projector beaming onto a 3 meter wide screen you *CAN* distinctly tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. And if you have a PROPER internet connection (like a 25Mbit VDSL line, like we have in Switzerland), bit rate is *NOT* an issue.
And since I’ll be getting a lot of insults from the fanboys, how about defending the fact that “Apple forgets to put anti-spam measures in Ping” (http://www.techeye.net/security/apple-forgets-to-put-anti-spam-measures-in-ping)?
Here come the insults from the fanboys…
@ DRMSSDB
DVD resolution is at best equivalent to 480p, so you SHOULD be able to tell that 1080p is better. It also depends on the source material; some stuff was never meant to be “upscaled” beyond a DVD’s 480p (or even standard def).
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Resolution DOESN’T always matter, especially dependent on the person viewing it. People who will be angry over a commercial movie ONLY streaming at 720p, will go to a wedding or sweet 16 with a point and shoot with 12 megapixels, and think they’ve done a tremendous job. They haven’t in the least. I’m a photographer with a 12mp Nikon D700, and Nikon pro glass and I easily win every single time. The resolutions are different, but I have a ‘full frame’ camera with an immensely bigger sensor, so the output quality, and dynamic range isnt the same (think data rates). I’m also a videographer, and we all know, bigger sensors, and higher data rates = quality, not simply frame size. A 1080p pocket cam for $200 doesnt equal a $12,000 Sony XDcam. It’s the same for output, in Apple DVD Studio Pro, you can have different data rates, and even 2-passes, to create optimal quality DVDs, encoding isn’t all the same. Apple is known for quality, so, they undoubtedly use NC to do 2-pass high bit rate encodes in H.264 that are extremely good in comparison to full 1080p. I’ve heard of Bluray rips online, and that the quality is also high, this means, Apple isn’t inventing a way to bluff people, it’s already being done by savvy technologist. If you know video, you know compression technique is mainly what matters. At one time 640×480 Realmedia, and Windows media sucked – now, Real media is much better. Hell, I got into video during the 120×80 days of postage stamp sized clips, stop your whining. 720p is a fair tradeoff that will still look exceptional to most non-anal people.
BTW, most of the whiners who complain arent the people with $10,000 stereo sets, and $10,000 TV setups who will notice this stuff. They’re (i wont say schmucks) but people who buy the best they can afford at ‘Best Buy’ and think they rule media. Yes, If you own $2000 reference headphones because you CAN detect a difference, fine, and can spot one dead pixel on your 72″ TV from 15 feet away, fine too. But 99.9% of the people who contribute to this forum arent, so use some common sense – Apple TV is $99 AND gives you exceptional quality HD streams – in that perspective – it does its job well.
I’s okay to brag about a 960 by 640 resolution for a 3.5″ screen, but Apple can’t be bothered to give us 1080p on a 50″+ screen? I don’t have satellite anymore due to my distaste of highly compressed HD channels with terrible motion artifacts and macro blocking. I watch BRDs on a large set and I always play the audio through my multi-channel receiver, so buying a little box that can’t handle a format I’ve been enjoying for years is a bit absurd.
hey, 1080p is nice if you have 16-25 Gbps to push through the system.
720p is really enough for crappy network television.
As far as I know, there are no true 1080p signals sent over the Broadcasters’ HDTV offerings. The upconvert is done at the set top box levels to 1080p by the comcasts, U-verse, etc.. Blue ray delivers true 1080p.