I ordered an Apple TV when Apple announced that they were for sale and finally received my first batch this week. For the past two years, I've been using Mac Mini's as a type of custom home theater PC to access content I store on a central server. While this works quite well for me, guests and my wife find the process of getting to the content overly complicated (and I find the same thing when problems arise). So, it appears that the Apple TV will fit in well and bridge the gap between what we are already using and what we are missing.
I started transcoding a bunch of HD programs I had recorded into h.264 files. I set the resolution at 1280x720 and tried different bit-rates. I ended up finding that 2500 kbps and above worked pretty well. While 1500 kbps worked, it lacked the color composition that seemed to come out of a higher bit-rate. In reading the Apple TV documentation, I found that the Apple TV is capable of reading 1280x720 h.264 content at 24 fps. Now I'm wondering if that last piece means that I had to transcode at 24 fps or that it was simply capable of reading 24 fps regardless of the encoded framerate. Tonight I was able to finally test a number of recordings and was thoroughly disappointed. At 24 fps, the picture is choppy, especially if the scene has any movement or detail with movement. My tests in transcoding are far from scientific and I realize that I may have made a mistake in other settings choices, but I see the same issue when playing the content back on the Mac Minis, PowerMacs or MacBooks. In those cases, though, I usually don't bother in transcoding because they are capable of handling the raw HD content.
So, tonight, I am re-transcoding a bunch of episodes of CSI to compare to what I saw this evening. This time, I'm leaving the frame-rate at automatic and am going to see if the Apple TV can at least read the file. Even on a PowerMac (dual G5), transcoding to h.264 is very slow going - about 3 hrs per 1 hr of HD content, without multi-pass enabled (which further degrades the quality of the output video - usually I use multi-pass). We'll see... For now, though, I do not recommend the 24 fps setting on EyeTV 2, it is unlikely you will be satisfied with the picture.
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