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Apple TV |OT|
- Thread starter wachie
- Start date
Hmm, I might have jumped the gun buying one of these. I have a Synology NAS that can do transcoding. When I'm watching stuff on the iPad, I use Airplayer for native file support. That covers all my mkvs and audio codecs just fine. But, if I have a particularly high-bitrate video file, the iPad simply can't keep up, so I use the DS Video app, using Synology's Video Station as a Plex-like media server, and it'll downsample and play flawlessly.
Now, just like Video Station, Plex supports transcoding, but it's miles slower than Video Station at doing it. Plex is basically telling me it can't transcode anything higher than 480p because the server's not powerful enough, while Video Station works through 1080p DTS monstrosities like it was nothing.
So, since Plex is pretty much a non-starter, can anyone check if there's an Airplayer or DS Video app on the TVOS store? Is there any way for me to check myself?
Now, just like Video Station, Plex supports transcoding, but it's miles slower than Video Station at doing it. Plex is basically telling me it can't transcode anything higher than 480p because the server's not powerful enough, while Video Station works through 1080p DTS monstrosities like it was nothing.
So, since Plex is pretty much a non-starter, can anyone check if there's an Airplayer or DS Video app on the TVOS store? Is there any way for me to check myself?
LyleLanley
Banned
Kabuki Quantum Lover
Member
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Marty Chinn
Member
Ya, you can do a simple server box on a $35 Raspberry Pi if that's the goal. It's not even an issue of wanting something in a small box because there are plenty of those too. So I'm not sure what the gain is from using an Apple TV for that. I'm fully behind a jailbreak, but Linux just seems overkill.
but one needs to apply some logic to it..
The italic part above is important (second line from bottom). There is literally no reason (until jailbreak) for an app to exist off of the app store, but not have the source code available.. the only way a binary would exist where there is a legit reason for no source code.. is in the case of a commercial release for say iOS, but that won't work on tvOS anyway. If someone says "I have a Prime Video app!!! But I'm not releasing the source code!!!" that is basically the same thing as saying "There is no prime video app!!!"
I think his point sailed over most of your heads
He's talking about the (still pretty beefy) A8 w/2GB ram and 64GB SSD storage as a linux box. Arguably nothing in ATV4's form factor comes even close in performance.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Bingo.I think his point sailed over most of your heads
Kabuki Quantum Lover
Member
I think his point sailed over most of your heads
I dunno... a Linux on an Apple TV. It's like stepping on a baby's head. You can do it, but you shouldn't.
Do we have power consumption numbers yet? Would love to see this box's consumption compared to the power sipping ATV3.
lolwtf
brianmcdoogle
Member
Whoops. Nvm
infiniteloop
Member
Might be worth having a play around with plex server settings and trying plex on the web or PC to see what the server is doing. If you have normal MKVs with ripped blurays etc, then the plex server shouldn't need to transcode the actual video - just remux into a different container which should be doable on a relatively low powered server.
What CPU is in your Nas?
FlyStarJay
Member
no top charts for uk store.
What is the difference between air video and plex?
What is the difference between air video and plex?
We just got one and just had to do a dumb unboxing video, because why not.
https://youtu.be/vK4BySIozXs
The control stick remote thingy feels great in the hand, can't wait to see some actual builds running on it.
https://youtu.be/vK4BySIozXs
The control stick remote thingy feels great in the hand, can't wait to see some actual builds running on it.
sonycowboy
Member
ahh.. Enterprise distribution...
1) If Apple catches that enterprise developer, they revoke the certificate. And they eventually catch them, but another one sprouts up...(it's $299 per year and requires giving Apple your DUNS and proof of legal entity documentation).
2) Apple doesn't currently support enterprise distribution on the Apple TV and likely won't (for a long time).
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Nothing actual yet, but going by the power supply, 12V * 0.917A = 11.004W.
LyleLanley
Banned
lol, what the hell?
Marty Chinn
Member
But you were trivializing sideloading on iOS like it was comparable to sideloading on the Fire TV or Android. Having someone setup a development environment to compile and generate a binary, with hope that the project and everything is setup right to begin with, in order to push an app unofficially to a device is a far cry from simply taking the binary and pushing it to the device. That doesn't even factor in the fact that you can use any phone or tablet app on the Fire TV where as you're limited to apps written from the ground up to work on the Apple TV.
I think his point sailed over most of your heads
Nah, that aspect didn't go over my head at all. It feels more like he's trying to shoehorn something specifically so he can do it on the Apple TV. I have to ask, what does one plan to do with the Apple TV that is going to justify that much power that won't be taken care of by a Raspberry Pi or a Chromebox, or even spending $20 more for an Intel Nuc with an i3 CPU in it which I believe is more powerful than the A8. To me, there sounds like there are a ton of options for cost or performance or even both depending on what you want to use the box for and that there's very little need to be begging for an Apple TV to fill those shoes by putting Linux on it.
Ah, thanks for the clarification.
EDIT: To compare with ATV3:
awesome. thank you.
for those looking, http://www.apple.com/environment/reports/
actually the power supply is only 6w.
that is you taking what I said as trivilaizing. I just said it was possible (and for me, is trivial). And in most cases of developers actually trying to be helpful (like Provenance), it IS in fact that easy for even the most unknowing user (even videos showing the 3-4 steps needed)
but even here, you only can, unless you can't (no cursor control, etc). I mean you have been basically going for a bit now as "oh man there are a ton of gotchas on apple tv for unauthorized apps, but none on FireTV".. which obviously isn't true.
judging by geekbench, a NUC might be a little faster, might not be. NUC slightly edges out iPhone 6/Plus (A8), but we also know this runs at a slightly higher clock speed than those with double the RAM. Hopefully Geekbench releases a tvOS version soon to get actual results with.
It's an Intel Atom CE5335.
I'll take a look at the settings. It's the first time I've installed it on this box, so it's crunching through the media to add metadata right now. I'm holding out a little hope that that's a possible cause for the performance difference I'm seeing.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Which part of 'the most power efficient device in its performance class' is not clear to you?
'What does one plan to do on a small desktop equivalent that won't be taken care of by their budget-level android phone equivalent'.. That's what you just said. I'll let it sink for a while..
Care to back that up with a link? NUCs are anything but cheap, not even in the $200 range. Not to mention their single-thread sustained performance in that TDP bracket as provided by Atoms gets blown away by the A8.
You need imagination.
You mean as in measured under load? Or iFixit got those readings wrong?
Not sure about TDP/power consumption of NUC... but yeah, browsing Geekbench, NUC is just slightly(VERY slightly) above A8 in single core and multi-core, based on the 6/Plus. My guess is with double the RAM and a higher clock speed ATV4 might pull ahead (at a ridiculous TDP profile). The 6/Plus (surprisingly) had very little in the way of throttling (I mean really.. A8 and A9 are just... wow...), so throwing it in the ATV4 is likely only getting a higher clock speed due to no power consumption worries.
oops. I was looking at ATV3. So probably 12w PSU than.
Marty Chinn
Member
There's a lot of hoop jumping and gotchas with more limitations doing it through iOS compared to Fire TV/Android though. It's like trying to equate the app store on Windows Phone to an iPhone. Sure they both have app stores, but there's clearly a big difference to the two. I never said there weren't issues in some cases with sideloading apps on the Fire TV/Android. You're not going to play something like Angry Birds which inherently is designed around various touch inputs, but for something as simple as touch to click which most apps do use, the navigating with a cursor instead to do so is going to work just fine. Media streaming apps fall more into that category which is one of the primary reasons you'd want to side load. Again, most of the time it works. It's not 100% flawless, but it's certainly very usable and is very advantageous having that ability. Want to use a Wiimote for emulators? Just launch the existing app to sync it.
Right, so there's very little reason to force yourself into a situation that fits perfectly for an Apple TV. An Apple TV2 was great to jailbreak and put XBMC on it back in the day because it was powerful, inexpensive, and very little to no options existed at the time to do so. Now though, there's a ton of inexpensive powerful computers that I just don't think an Apple TV4 running Linux is nearly as compelling. Sure it would be neat to do, but it would just be one of the many hundreds of options out there that can do the job.
I believe in getting the hardware that fits the job rather than finding something to do just because you have hardware. For me wanting something power efficient, it's because I want to leave it running and in the background. If it's running in the background, then either time doesn't matter to get the job done, or there's going to be a task that's going to need to get the task done in time when being utilized. So what did you have in mind that a Raspberry Pi, a Chromebox, or an Intel NUC doesn't fit the bill but an Apple TV4 does?
I wasn't talking about Atoms or Celerons, that would bring the cost down even more for an Intel NUC. There are plenty of them under $300 and starting at $235. I even found an Atom based one for $167 that according to the benchmarks slightly edges out an A8X chip in performance.
Well clearly you have something in mind since you want that performance for the price and power level. Please enlighten me what fits better here with an Apple TV4 that a Raspberry Pi or Chromebox can't handle, but you don't want to get an Intel NUC with better performance to do either.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Not to mention an A7 can beat a Haswell per-clock at some tasks. Yes, I've carried the measurements. No, I'm not going to elaborate. Yet ; )
Well they could just do pass through like the Shield does. That way they don't need to license as they aren't decoding.
FlyStarJay
Member
the device needs a clock. maybe top right
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
A long-running task does not need be a background task, mind you.
..Or it's a long-running task that you still want to complete as soon as possible. In which case you care about TDP, especially if distributed across many nodes.
The NUCs that should decisively outgun an ATV4 are in the $300 range (and of TDP way above). Re that $167 NUC, mind if I ask what benchmark is that? A Silvermont can edge out on a A8 in (a) single-threaded turbo-boost scenario (i.e. by brute clock advantage), or (b) in multi-threaded when the core count ratio is ~2:1 or more in favour of the Atom (in which case TDP might be an issue). Silvermont gets pummelled per-clock by any of apple's ARMv8.
Simulations.
That's what I assume - Amazon only has the Prime streaming service as a hook to get people to buy or rent other film and TV (which is why they annoy people by mixing it all together - and they don't want to give Apple a 30% cut of those digital purchases. But they have to realise Apple, Google and even Microsoft are going to eat the digital STB space thanks to their existing ecosystems, and all will want a cut of sales made on their respective platforms. Expecting the independents like Roku or internal FireTV devices to hold their own in the long term seems foolish. Or maybe Amazon's holding out for Apple to close their deals with the network and take advantage of whatever new revenue sharing precedent that sets?
Marty Chinn
Member
If I'm going to be running simulations, I'll just get a bunch of Intel NUCs and get the higher performance to run those simulations. It's not something I'm going to want to delegate to an Apple TV4. What type of simulations are you trying to run where you need a small foot print, low power and low cost as a requirement? So much that you wouldn't spend slightly more to get a higher performance to get them done sooner? As for benchmarking, the comparison were coming from Geek Bench.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Nope. Simulations where 2xN ATV4 outperform N NUCs in both performance and TDP.
Can you be more specific?
Marty Chinn
Member
Can you be more specific? You're being awfully vague about what these simulations are that fit perfectly on an AppleTV4 that doesn't work well anywhere else where you not only need performance, but low cost and low power consumption to go along with it. Why can't you write your simulation and sideload it on to the device rather than needing Linux?
infiniteloop
Member
Yup. I believe it has every app from the old ATV
yup
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
No, I can't. It's not public material (in contrast to Geekbench scores). I gave as much backing as I could - there are classes of tasks where apple's chips are so efficient (uarch + ISA) that they outgun Haswells per clock. Computational tasks. That combined with apple chips' TDP makes them prime candidates for distributed workloads of said classes. A high-clocked* 2x A8 @ $150 comes at no competition in that space especially when it comes to budget installations. It's as simple as that.
Erm, you need power efficiency for most computationally-heavy tasks. One of the reasons GPUs pummel CPUs at GPGPU - you can always throw more CPUs to match the power of a GPU, but the GPU is still more efficient.
* Still sub-2GHz, I guess.
I don't believe anyone said it was the perfect or best box, but rather, it has the brightest future. I would agree with that, given Apple's chops in software and their developer base.
And you did say the Fire TV was the better solution than the Apple TV, which I don't agree with because of my own preferences. I don't care for XBMC or side loading Android apps, like you do. Both decisions are perfectly acceptable.
acheron_xl
Member
The CBS app is bullshit. You can play the last week of the Late Show on their site for free, but you need to be CBS Access to do it from the app. Insta-deleted.
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
Gave the Apple TV 4 a spin. I really like just about everything except for the damn scroll pad, which I just couldn't get the hang of.
I'll probably buy one soon. $150 is a bit steep in my opinion, though.
I'll probably buy one soon. $150 is a bit steep in my opinion, though.
SmackCrackleNPop
Member
After a weekend I got used to it, not my favorite way of typing but it's not frustrating anymore. I have it set to fast.
you could also use a universal remote for it or the old Apple TV remote.
Unless you have a BD that uses VC1 or MPEG2, it will only have to remux the container which is trivial on even a lower powered NAS. Audio transcoding can be a little slow depending on your CPU though (particularly for FF/REW and skipping around), so you should select the LPCM, Dolby Digital, or Dolby Digital Plus (if available) soundtrack if performance isn't acceptable.
While I like the layout overall, am I the only one that doesn't like Apple's Skittles gradients? Looks like a rainbow exploded on the screen
Clearly Plex doesn't make sense in your particular case, but so others don't get scared off it needs to be pointed there are numerous situations where it could be useful for them.
Plex's client / server model was certainly a product of its time. There were a number of streaming boxes hitting the market that simply did not have the processing power to do software decoding of HD content. So the idea of a breaking XBMC in two so you could have a transcoding server made perfect sense. And even today, there can still be issues on devices like the Fire TV. For example, high bit-rate 1080i deinterlacing can still struggle a bit on Fire TV Kodi, so people utilizing networked tuners or DVR content may still need a transcoding backend.
For people on the cutting edge, I'd say we are getting towards the end of its necessity on streaming boxes. In a few generations I suspect we'll be at a point where they can handle any HD playback. So for that reason I think it makes sense for Plex to start doing a hybrid approach; clients that have the processing muscle should start doing software playback. Of course the reality is there will still be plenty of people that are slow to adopt. Not everyone is like us and buys new streamers every year.
Even then however, it still doesn't mean the server transcoding doesn't have use. What's gonna happen with UHD? I suspect we'll have a nice period where a PC backend still makes sense for a large contingent. The bigger point though being what about mobile? Sure phones keep getting faster and faster, but until there is a major breakthrough in battery life you still would be running into battery drain issues from software decoding.
More importantly though ... what of bandwidth? Plenty of people use Plex to stream over a WAN (or even mobile). Running full bitrate, even if you can decode it on the other end, can be problematic. Whether it's a phone, tablet, browser or streaming box, if you want to access it outside of your home there's plenty of reason to transcode it. Some people have bandwidth caps ... some people have slow upload speeds ... plenty of locations you may access your content on the go have crap download speeds. The list goes on and on.
I admittedly haven't kept a close eye on current models to comment on whether 24Hz support is dwindling, that may be the case. Well on panels at least, it's still common in front projectors.
From the content end though, it's not uncommon. Movies and filmed TV from most of the providers is actually encoded at 24p because it's less bandwidth. It's the device decoder that (typically by default) is outputting it at 60Hz. Some settop boxes and even several BD players with streaming apps can actually output them at the native refresh rate. So I'd argue 24Hz on the content end is most certainly not largely dead. It's actually television broadcasts where you mostly see 60Hz (and even there we see some VOD and movie channels that do 24p). For physical media and most streaming / digital downloads, 24p is generally the standard to my knowledge.
For me personally, I don't care that much. I actually have a video processor that can convert telecine content back to 24Hz if need be, but to be honest I rarely use it. I actually use some level of de-judder most of the time. Even when you remove telecine judder, that natural 24Hz judder still looks atrocious to me in most content.
That's interesting people are having issues with Dolby Digital Plus. I wonder if that's a client or server issue? I'll see if I have any encodes laying around and test it with my Roku. It's possible Plex doesn't have decoders for it at all?
Odious Tea
Member
As far as I know, I'm the only one that's actually trying on the entire internet. Plex doesn't decode anything itself. The Apple TV can decode and passthrough DD/DD+ as PCM or can bitstream DD/DD+. I haven't been able to get the Apple TV, regardless of the app, to play any files where the audio is Dolby Digital Plus.
Would love to hear your findings.
There still are. I know with my Nexus Player using kodi, I have a bunch of bluray rips that play slower than normal because of I assume less than enough horse power. Not sure what the reason is as the majority play fine. I think maybe the common point is them being VC1.
I'll admit I assumed it was standard now on panels, where before it was only the higher end ones that supported a 24hz mode.
And yeah all the disc source film material seems 24hz based. Makes me actually wonder how Apple will manage framerates with UHD once we start seeing HFR content (and wider gamut and HDR for that matter). Admitedly thats not an issue for this version.
Having never really bothered with any DD+ content on my server, what I'm curious is whether the client or server is failing here. Is the AppleTV telling the server, 'hey I can do DD+ ... give me it', and then actually failing at play it back via DirectPlay? Or is the AppleTV not advertising that it can play back DD+, and the server is actually failing on the transcode?
I'd be somewhat surprised at the latter, but having never tried any DD+ content I have no idea whether Plex has transcode problems with it in general.