Why did you mess up HD feeds?

[mfulton]

Used to be, I could watch all of the Revision 3 shows in HD on my first-gen Apple TV and it worked just fine. However, you guys recently changed something about the encoding of the HD feeds so that they no longer work on first-gen Apple TV models.

You're even AWARE of this... your webpages warn that the HD feed won't work on first-gen ATV.

Why would you do this? The new feeds are the same frame rate and the same resolution. Frankly, I don't know why the first-gen ATV chokes on them, since they are within the description of "compatible" video formats the device is supposed to support, but the bottom line is you used to have a version of the feed that would work, and now you do not.

I cannot imagine that the newer version Apple TV had any problem with the old-style feeds, so why the heck would you change to a format that no longer works on the old ATV?

There is a HUGE difference between the "large" and "HD" feeds when you're sitting in front of a 60" bigscreen TV. Please consider restoring the old format.

[boldfire]

You can't surely expect them to support every device under the sun, it's not even as if the original Apple TV sold incredibly well. They obviously made the decision based on download and usage stats.

[mikec]

Patrick Norton addressed this during the last episode of Tekzilla. He said they eliminated the least watched formats.

[mfulton]

You can't surely expect them to support every device under the sun, it's not even as if the original Apple TV sold incredibly well. They obviously made the decision based on download and usage stats.

If the old feed format was specifically for the Apple TV you might have a point, but it was not an Apple TV only feed. Furthermore, the idea that they were dropping less popular formats does not apply here, because they did not actually drop the HD feed. They just tweaked the encoding format to go from 24fps to 30fps.

The change makes the feed incompatible with a lot of older devices. Ultimately, they gained a very minor quality increase on some machines while causing a HUGE quality LOSS on those devices which now have to drop down to the "Large" feed, which is 1/4 as many pixels as the HD feed.

[mikec]

And you are paying how much for the show?

Someone made a business decision. Some think a company like Revision3 shouldn't be about $$, but if they can't pay the bills the electricity goes off and the staff looks for new jobs.

[xfuuey]

And you are paying how much for the show?

Someone made a business decision. Some think a company like Revision3 shouldn't be about $$, but if they can't pay the bills the electricity goes off and the staff looks for new jobs.

^this.
/thread

[damnedeyez]

And you are paying how much for the show?

I would hope a time investment to watch the ads/sponsors.

[mikec]

I would hope a time investment to watch the ads/sponsors.

Doesn't give the viewer any claim to demand a file format just for them.


I must say I do not understand why people get bent out of shape when they talk about video formats for the shows on Revision3. It isn't like the company is producing concerts or entertainment (think prime time network TV) or movies. You are looking at talking heads for the most part.


HUGE quality LOSS on those devices which now have to drop down to the "Large" feed, which is 1/4 as many pixels as the HD feed.

What is the number of bits per second difference? I can create a "HD" feed that is so compressed that you wouldn't want to watch it, BUT it's HD.

[hellhound]

the big loss is those that are deprived of low file size downloads.

Of all Rev3 content... is there fast action, high color contrast content that needs HD?... no.

Its just people talking... and the small wmv format gave me that w/o dealing w/ the apple QT formats to watch on my pc.

Now the small file formats are labelled "Phone"... how stupid?

[mikec]

the big loss is those that are deprived of low file size downloads.

Of all Rev3 content... is there fast action, high color contrast content that needs HD?... no.

Its just people talking... and the small wmv format gave me that w/o dealing w/ the apple QT formats to watch on my pc.

Now the small file formats are labelled "Phone"... how stupid?


Your post is the only one that could give a person at Revision3 some ammo to fight this. Claiming one NEEDS a specific HD feed means nothing, but with Canada trying to implement their usage based billing and other places having data limits, having only a large files sizes could possibly force a person to abandon Revision3 or a specific show.

The data folks can use info like that to argue why they should be able to still render a different format or two.

[damnedeyez]

Doesn't give the viewer any claim to demand a file format just for them.

Nor would anything short of an agreement saying as much, or a majority of the funding for the show.

Point being, the paying for the show comment was a moot point. The business decision comment hit it on the head, though.

[hellhound]

Nor would anything short of an agreement saying as much, or a majority of the funding for the show.

Point being, the paying for the show comment was a moot point. The business decision comment hit it on the head, though.

Smart business decision? ... I think not.. a $300 pc could do the small wmv conversion in prolly less than an hour for most shows (I do divx to dvd transcodes of 90 min movies on my crappy $250 pc in about an hour, and I'm outputting a 4 gig fle not a 50 meg file). For a business to dismiss the limited B/W /capped Windows platform users a small wmv file is stupid.
Guess they are too busy shooting nerf guns at each other (as vid shows) and need to cut down the viewers (who watch the ads/sponsors) options.