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Filed under: *VIDEO* •Distribution •Hardware •Interactive •

AppleTV, WDTV, or Blu-ray: Which one is best to distribute your HD project?

Even if your HD project isn’t destined to be broadcast over the air, you’ll still want to have your client be able to play it on an HDTV set, not just on a computer. The good news is that you have several options to make that happen, including Blu-ray, AppleTV, and the brand-new WDTV device from Western Digital. During this transitional period, it is often the producer who influences the client as to which HD player to acquire. Many producers even incorporate the cost of one of these HD players in the project price and then give the device to the client “as a gift” with the first HD project, if the client doesn’t already own any HD player. It’s great to have options, but you must understand them fully (both their strengths and weaknesses) in order to pick one, two of them, or all of them, depending upon the exact format of HD you have produced, the hardware you own (or are willing to buy), the type of client, and the type of delivery. This article will help you learn the details that will help you make the appropriate decision.

AppleTV from a consumer perspective


AppleTV is the name of a not so new device from Apple. Apple’s goal with this product is that the owner of every 16:9 video screen accompany it with an AppleTV to play various types of content. AppleTV can play photos, audio, and video… and the video can be full-raster HD (see important details ahead). The content can come from different sources, including the media produced by the user, the user’s audio collection or video collection (DVD or other source)… or may be videos purchased or rented from Apple’s online iTunes store. In fact, the latter is probably what Apple had in mind when first designing, manufacturing, and marketing AppleTV. Many analysts and journalists have suggested that Apple even sells the AppleTV device as a loss leader, just to promote sales in the iTunes store. Fortunately however, Apple doesn’t limit the use of the AppleTV device to that source.

With measurements of just 197 x 197 x 28 mm (or 7.7 x 7.7 x 1.1 inches), the AppleTV device is very small, yet very powerful. It contains a hard drive and has audio/video output via HDMI, as well as analog. One of its slogans is “Like a 21st century DVD player”. Another says: “If it’s in your iTunes, it’s on your widescreen TV.” The second slogan is 100% true, since the iTunes content of up to five computers in your house or office (Windows and/or Mac) can synchronize with (or stream live to) AppleTV. The first slogan is partially true, because although AppleTV acts as a movie player, it has absolutely no tray or slot to place or insert a DVD or other type of optical media. However, if one has a DVD, one can rip/transcode the content on a computer and send it to iTunes for playback on AppleTV. The synchronization or streaming happens either via 10/100BaseT Ethernet or via 802.11n WiFi. The ideal códec for AppleTV is H.264.





YouTube via AppleTV


In June 2007, Apple added the option of viewing YouTube videos via AppleTV, without having to download them first to a computer. This works with those videos that YouTube has encoded into H.264 so far. YouTube has already encoded many of its most popular videos into H.264 and has promised that soon, new videos will also be encoded in H.264, although I haven’t verified whether the are really doing it with all of them. YouTube has traditionally used Flash, at very low quality.

AppleTV’s user interface


Like the majority of Apple products, AppleTV has a multilingual user interface which is both intuitive and attractive, with excellent animated graphics. Of course, AppleTV includes a wireless remote control which allows access to everything that’s on the internal drive, plus on-line movies and podcasts directly from the couch.





AppleTV from the producer’s perspective


Fortunately, no special burner is required to prepare and deliver your HD video material for AppleTV. However, no visual authoring is possible within a project. Only individual files can be created. If the file contains chapter markers, they work in AppleTV, although without labels. For full-raster 720p HD (1280x720) on the current AppleTV, the maximum framerate is 25p, and that will work fine even if your client owns a segregated HDTV set, which is very common now in the USA. (See my related articles: When 25p beats 24p and Liberating segregated HDTV sets). If your framerate is higher than 25p, you will have to reduce your spatial resolution to 960x540 for the current AppleTV to keep up. The current AppleTV doesn’t play any 1080 formats. The ideal códec for AppleTV is H.264. Many other códecs can by added via a third-party consolidated upgrade called aTV Flash, which also adds sneakernet (via USB devices) and other capabilities. Fortunately, aTV Flash can be installed without surgery, and without affecting the AppleTV’s warranty.





Delivery for AppleTV:


If you are “giving” the AppleTV unit “as a gift”, you can load the encoded-for-AppleTV file on the AppleTV’s hard drive before delivery.
 From there forward —or if your clients already own one—, you have many options, i.e.:

• Deliver the encoded-for-AppleTV file as a video podcast, (Podcasts can be requested directly from the AppleTV interface.)
• Send the client an e-mail containing a link to the file on your FTP server saying: “Click here to download your HD video directly to your iTunes folder for playback on AppleTV”, or even do the same thing with YouSendIt.com or a similar service.
• Copy the file to a data-DVD disk and label it nicely saying: “This data-DVD contains HD material for AppleTV. Please drag the file to your iTunes folder for playback on AppleTV.”

Next page: WDTV from Western Digital

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