Apple TV 2 Profile m4vs dont work on 1st gen ATV

[knemonic]

Hey all,

I have been encoding my DVD collection using the Apple TV 2 profile. I bought a 1st gen ATV because my TV is a little older and does not have HDMI.

When I attempt to play the videos on the TV, I get audio but no video and it basically screws the ATV, requiring me to reset it.

I have plenty of videos that I encoded before as mp4, not in h.264, which work fine on it. It is all the newer videos that wont play.

I assumed that the ATV 2 profile would work for the older ATV and have encoded about 75 movies already, so this is quite discouraging.

Any suggestions?

Thank you!

[JohnAStebbins]

There wouldn't have been a reason to create an ATV2 preset if the ATV1 had the same capabilities. The ATV2 is significantly more powerful. I'm afraid you will have to re-encode using the correct preset.

[Deleted User 11865]

Re-encode. You assumed wrong.

P.S. if the AppleTV 2 preset worked on the original AppleTV, it would be called AppleTV and there would only be one preset, not two.

[JohnAStebbins]

hehe, here's an alternative. Buy a CrystalHD decoder (pcmcia card). Plug it into your ATV1. Load XBMC. Bingo! It'll play darn near anything.

Talk to dynaflash if this piques your interest

[knemonic]

Is having the files in atv 2 an advantage? That is, do they look better? I am quite bummed because that is quite a lot of encoding and I might be prone to try and find a way to use the Apple TV 2 now, especially if the quality is worth it.

I found the possibility of getting this HP hdmi to VGA adapter but I need to confirm if it works with the ATV 2

Thanks for the quick reply!

[JohnAStebbins]

HandBrake uses constant quality mode for both presets. So the quality will be roughly the same for many cases. But the ATV2 preset uses more advanced encoder settings that will result in smaller file sizes. Also, the ATV2 supports higher resolution/framerate than the ATV1. So when encoding HD content, you will get much better quality with the ATV2 preset because it will be encoding to a higher resolution.

[knemonic]

Do you think hacking the ATV and installing XBMC on it will fix my issue? All my videos are DVD quality, I dont have any HD content, so it just sucks that I need to rencode everything to the same quality.

[JohnAStebbins]

Oh, it'll definitely fix your problem. The CrystalHD decoder is even more powerful than the ATV2. It can playback full resolution bluray files without issue.

Setting it up is a bit involved. So if you are not very technical, it'll be a bit of an ordeal. dynaflash was working on creating a boot image to make it easier to install the os and xbmc, but I don't know where he got with that. I know that he has several ATV1s set up this way.

[knemonic]

What if i were to just to install XBMC and not the decoder?

[JohnAStebbins]

What if i were to just to install XBMC and not the decoder?

Nope, that wouldn't help. This is a hardware problem, not a software problem.

[knemonic]

Curious, would just installing the decorder card work, without XBMC? Or do you need XBMC to use the decoder card?

All I really want is the ability to watch my movies and tv shows. As much as XBMC is nice, I am just looking for something lean and simple (even though XBMC is something I would definitely play with)?

The thing is the ATV 2 wont work for me, and I paid $50 for the ATV, so we would be talking about same price here if I got the decoder and it would wok. The ATV2 would require me to purchase crazy expensive equipment to get it to work over component cables opposed to hdmi.

Its either that or I re-encode my entire collection. I mean, I even notice some of my older encoded movies not playing well, so that means I should encode my whole collection using the Apple TV profile, which is about 250 movies, plus another thousand or so tv episodes.

This sucks. This is turning into a headache i didn't anticipate

[knemonic]

Found a solution. Refurbished ATV2 with one of these

http://www.amazon.com/HDMI-RCA-componen ... B002WBOQPU

Comments on amazon confirm it will work. I would rather retain the quality and save myself days if not weeks of encoding time here.

A little more than I wanted to spend, but at this point, I am going out of my mind what to do.

[knemonic]

Thought I would let everyone know the option above, the HDMI to component out device worked like a charm.

Kind of nice too since the new ATV is quite quick and has netflix too. So I don't have to re-encode everything and I get some little extras.

Thanks everyone for the help!