New iTV (Not final name)

[mindbend]

Ok, right about the HDMI, but where is Apple expecting you to get HD video (720P or better) to run through the iTV? (Since iTunes won't get it to you).

Or maybe they're just planning ahead.

[MnM]

I believe full HD is supported but not sure( HD trailer playing from apple.com to your tv). But my problem with quality is the movies you download from the ITMS. Its only 640...if you stream that to your TV and then stretch it on a 42 or 50 inch plasama its probably not that great.

Should have been full HD support and a built in video resizer to resize videos specifically for your ipod. This way your tv gets good quality and you don't kill space on your ipod.

[fryke]

I'll use my MacBook instead, thank you. Connects to my video beamer just fine, and even with iTV, my MacBook would still have to be running and provide the movie. FrontRow works fine on my MacBook - and things look gorgeous on the beamer. But I guess there _is_ a market for this. Desktop computer users mostly, of course.

[ksv]

Where's the TV tuner and the optical drive? :P Without those, the device is pretty useless unless you buy all your music and movies from iTunes.

[Captain Code]

I noticed they just said 802.11 networking, not 802.11g in the stream of the event. I think they think they'll be using 802.11n by then, so new Airports probably in the works as well. I don't think you'd get good performance with g since it already can't play an avi video without crapping out, at least in my experience.

[Captain Code]

The thing has optical audio out so it supports Dolby 5.1 or better which is great. I guess the movies they sell on the store are going to be Dolby Digital.

[Thank The Cheese]

Originally Posted by mindbend

IN short, it will look way better than SD, but nowhere near as good as it could.

will it? standard def is 768x576 (PAL), so I'd say it would look about the same, perhaps even slightly worse.

looks great, but I still plan on buying a Mac Mini instead, because I don't want to have my iMac on and doing nothing just to stream video to my TV.

[mindbend]

True, the specs for SD may indicate something better, but we all know that in reality American (digital) SD is a horrific mpeg-2 transmission, which won't hold up nearly as well as h264 or even a nicely compressed mpeg4.

I watched last season of Lost on my 20" iMAc (dragged it into the bedroom like a TV). From about 8-10 ft away, even 320x240 looked surprisingly decent. I was really surprised by how watchable it was. In some ways it was better than digital cable thanks to cleaner compression, but obviously the 320x240 held it back. But keep in mind also that average old-school NTSC TV won't show you anywhere near all of those SD lines, so in that sense 640x480 on an LCD will be noticeably better than SD on an older TV.