AppleTV & HDMI A1378 vs A1469

Question

AppleTV & HDMI A1378 vs A1469

I have been using AppleTVs for several years without issue. I have 3 of past generations units. One such unit, an A1378, serves in my home theatre, and the HDMI port successfully drives a 50 foot HDMI cable into an HDMI to DVI converter into my projector. I get a good stable picture. I recently had need (want?) of another ATV, and upon buying a new (refurb) unit, I decided to use the new one in my home theatre, replacing the old. I did a simple cable swap - Ethernet, optical audio, HDMI, and power. The new unit came up, but the picture was not stable. Lots of remedial attempts were made including, upon the advice of the Apple support techs, a full restore. No improvement was made, so the unit went back for replacement. The new unit arrived this morning, and again, I chose to swap out the older unit in my home theatre. The results was the same as experienced with the returned unit – no stable picture. The older unit was put back into service.

It would seem that the current generation of ATVs are less capable (powerful) in HDMI output than the previous model. Has anyone else had similar experience? What distances have you driven the HDMI output of your AppleTVs? If you have succeeded in extending the range, how did you do it?

Thanks, Brian

Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4), 3.2 GHz Quad Xeon 16GB RAM, 12TB HD

Posted on Jul 20, 2015 6:37 AM

Reply

Answer 1

vazandrew

Level 8

40,834 points

Jul 20, 2015 10:22 AM in response to Brian Williams2

HDMI is the only supported method so if you are using a converter there will never be a guarantee and functionality can cease at any time.

Reply

Answer 2

Jul 22, 2015 12:22 PM in response to Brian Williams2

One would expect that moving up a generation, a product would have equal or better capabilities than the previous, but, unfortunately, we have seen that not to be the case with many Apple products; but mostly with software (Pages and iMovie come to mind); but I hadn't until now, seen that in hardware. As stated in my original note, my Gen 2 ATV has for the past couple of years been able to drive my projector over 50 feet of good quality cable. This Gen 3A device couldn't. Today I bought an HDMI Active Extender. I added it at the projector end of the cable – ATV>50' cable>Extender>6' cable>HDMI-to-DVI-D adapter>projector. Great stable picture!

The extender is a small device (2 inches long) with 2 female HDMI sockets and electronics inside. There is no external power, so I presume that it is powered by the 5 VDC that is specified in HDMI (pin 18), which must be being delivered by the ATV. ($25 CAD, plus tax from Canada Computers. Their own brand (iCan) ADP HDMI-ACT-01)

The bottom line is that I am now satisfied that all is working. Unfortunately, I went through the return and replace process. Most likely, there was nothing wrong with the original unit. I wonder how many ATVs get returned because of this issue. It may explain why there always seems to be ATVs available at the Apple refurb store.

Reply

Answer 3

vazandrew

Level 8

40,834 points

Jul 22, 2015 1:26 PM in response to Brian Williams2

The fact that it only supports HDMI does not diminish capabilities. The point was that this is an unsupported setup so there will never be a guarantee. It may continue to work or there may prove to be other issues, but it will be hard to provide support under those circumstances.

Reply

Answer 4

Alley_Cat

Level 7

20,560 points

Jul 23, 2015 3:01 AM in response to Brian Williams2

THe earlier Apple TVs consumed more power, maybe there was more available to bolster HDMI performance which was just a lucky side effect.

VEry surprised you managed to get it working effectively passively at 50 feet to be honest But probably reflects a very good cable.

hdmi.org is rather vague about cable lengths:

http://www.hdmi.org/installers/longcablelengths.aspx

I Bought a powered 25-30 ft HDMI cable a couple of years ago to connect to a new projector rather than using several cables daisy chained together - it actually works without power but is connected to my AV amp not AppleTV direct - at the amp end it has a USB connector which ifneeded could be used to power the cable active booster.

Reply