Apple TV

Just got the new Apple TV w/ 1080.

My question. The remote also controls my laptop which bothers me. How do I turn that off and just have the remote connect with the unit?

 

There are instructions in the manual, Page 23:

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/AppleTV_SetupGuide.pdf

 

Thanks but that doesn't work - I've already tried. All that does is make sure only one remote works with the unit. It still runs my laptop.

 

You'd probably have to change the IR codes the laptop looks to receive, so you'd need something like this:

http://www.iospirit.com/labs/candelair/

I don't have experience with this product, so I can't confirm it will do exactly what you want, but it should get you going in the right direction.

 

Alright, figured it out. All you have to do is go into:

System Pref/Security/Disable Remote IR

Anyway -

The new Apple TV is quite stunning in 1080p - iTunes has upgraded many older shows from 720 to 1080 and upgrading is free.

 

Nice.

Mine's hooked up, but I haven't used it much yet. Know of any good free 1080p shows in iTunes?

 

I haven't explored free stuff yet. But I recommend Twin Peaks in 1080.

 

Anyone know if you can watch Apple TV through your satellite ethernet port? My projector is older with no HDMI port.

 

No chance. You'd have to get an HDMI to component breakout box, and those are more expensive than the cost of an AppleTV.

 

Since the OP problem is solved, let me pose another...

Just got my ATV last night. Plugged it in, up and running quickly. I tried it out with Lillyhammer (episode 2), and I noticed that the video was a bit choppy. The rolling credits at the end really highlight that. Does anyone have this issue?

I'm wondering if:

a) My 15 down / 5 up FIOS bandwidth is inadequate.

b) The wireless on my FIOS modem is too old-school and I should add an Airport Extreme.

c) I should test out b) by hooking my FIOS modem directly to the ATV via Ethernet. There's no reason the modem can't be in the TV room instead of the office, really.

d) The video compression just kind of sucks, and this is normal viewing.

 

its the wireless.

wireless = blocky/choppy

 

Try this, first.

 

nobody is offering/streaming proper 1080 HD. its kinda funny to imagine the bandwidth that would be needed - simply not possible at this moment in time.

when they say 720/1080 streaming.. it 'was/is HD 1080' just super ultra mega compressed. not unlike youtube.

 

Yeah, I actually wasn't expecting much from a streaming source. But I figured the choppy playback would have been unacceptable as general viewing, and was fixable.

I'll definitely try plugging it in directly. Thanks guys.

 

Thanks. I'm just going to hook it up to the plasma I think.

Hope my projector dies soon so I can upgrade!

 

x2 on the wireless - it's a MI424WR, I assume? The wireless is awful and is the likely bottleneck.

I added an external wireless router onto my MI424WR and it works just fine and a significant speed improvement. However I only tested 720p (in my case a WDTV) - I've read that even N speeds could choke on 1080p video data transfer.

 

Correct. A direct wire on a fast-bandwidth connection can give you non-choppy playback. I know on Netflix and Amazon downloads, they have to fill a buffer before you can actually start watching. When you start watching, it's still downloading in the background.

WiFi is gonna be iffy under most circumstances, especially with HD.

 

Bingo.

I did hook up the modem directly to the ATV - no wi-fi anymore - and I'm trying it now, again, with the HD Lilyhammer (episode one this time), and the ATV set to 1080 (default setting). Unfortunately, playback is still not as smooth as it should be. It's like watching a film where every forth frame is missing and in each case, the missing frames are interpolated from their surrounding frames ....it keeps up time wise, but lots of information is obviously not there.

Is 15 down / 5 up FIOS enough to do these kind of streams? Should I consider upping it to 30 down? If this is what "HD" (or whatever hyper-compressed version of it) streaming is supposed to look like, it's not remotely cutting it. :thumbsdn: Thanks as always for your help.

 

I would say it's significant. Especially when it comes to HD as you want the best wireless router you can get, and that's not always what you'll get from your ISP.

I have this argument with Verizon, maybe a year back when I was starting to setup video streaming (or the lack thereof, given all my problems). When I asked about the wireless on my ISP's router, they basically told me that the wireless was "a gift", and that they don't support it at all. I ended up getting a Linksys router that I DD-WRT'd and the difference between them was significant. Especially if I went up to my top floor.

The 15/5 is only the Internet, so it's outside the house. Inside it would be whatever the throughput of your internal network is. Even pulling the wireless out of the equation, your internal network is 100Mbps - I don't think this Verizon router is Gigabit capable tmk.

I'll be honest that I've messed mainly with 720p, not 1080p - I usually reserve the latter for local playback. For 1080p I'm pretty sure even an N network would choke, but on a 100Mbps Ethernet link I think it should playback OK. I might need to test that out on my media server -- I'll report back in a few.

(Ubuntu media sever, Ethernet connection - not the same as your setup, but more of a baseline to see if it even works without lag. I'll test my WDTV as well, if my wife lets me).

 

Well this is a shock - 1080p (in my test case, 1920x816 x264) is actually working for me. Not only on my local Ethernet, but also on my WDTV Live, which is Wireless N. I tested for almost 10 minutes with no noticable lag.

This is a shock because I really hadn't tested this since upgrading to the WDTV Live - before I was using a PS3 as the media client and also the FIOS router Wifi and it was just horrible. My current media server is a Zotac Atom PC running Ubuntu x64 and Mediatomb, and that's Ethernet connected. The WDTV Live is one floor up. And my Wifi router is also in the basement, running a Linksys WRT160N with DD-WRT and just slightly overclocked, but not by much. I know this might be all techno-babble, but I wanted to mention the specs.

But it's working so far with 1080p, which was honestly a surprise. I'm guessing that the WDTV Live itself is a solid device, but I'm also guessing that my extra Wifi router is probably the main thing that's helping me out. I'm almost 100% certain that if I tried the FIOS router Wifi, 1080p would choke.

As for the AppleTV on Ethernet, I honestly don't know. Since it's 1080p capable the device itself shouldn't be the bottleneck. And assuming our routers are the same, then that's probably not a factor either. Perhaps try a few different files - if, for example, your test file was a BD rip you created, perhaps the rip itself is problematic. But if it's a purchased iTunes movie, then I would think it would be optimized for the ATV.

 

Re: Choppy picture--the AppleTV can't do 24 fps. You may have got used to blu-rays with your 120+hz monitor.

 

I should have mentioned that I'm streaming Lilyhammer on Netflix. So I'm starting to wonder if the stream is encoded/compressed to look like this, and perhaps there is nothing wrong with my setup. Kind of like expecting a 128kbps mp3 to sound like cd quality.

I haven't gotten into blu-ray yet, but even by dvd standards, this isn't happening like I hoped.

 

Ah! Could be. I would test the video out on a Win/Mac Netflix client first, to get a good baseline. Then, test it on the ATV to see if they look the same artifact wise / lag wise.

No worries...you got me to test my own setup, which I've been meaning to do.

 

Good idea, I'll try that.

Yeah, sorry for the mix-up there.....us Bucks County late-nighters up tinkering.