Soft or Blurry Picture with iTunes Purchased Content

Cnet says contents from itunes store is a step down from DVD. It sounds like it is what you are seeing.

most of the trailers aren't even in HD either.
apple really should have waited for content to release this.

I think the problem is taking the 640x480 movie and stretching it to 1280x720. The cable can only do so much to help. You will need HD content to make it look really good.

I have the same problem. I purhcased a TV series on ITunes and the video is terrible. I bought the same series on DVD and its unbelievable. What can I do? Video is not worth watching on this thing if it doesn't look any better. I am using component cables into a new 42" panasonic HD plasma tv. any recommendations? i think it made it look better to reduce resolution setting on the ATV from 1080i to 780p but perhaps there is something else i should do?

apple really should have waited for content to
release this.

Users are free to wait for content before buying it; not sure why Apple needs to wait to release it 😝

The iTunes content I have bought ( a few music videos, and a few Pixar shorts), do indeed look like crap pn a 53" WS HDTV. But that is to be expected.

If you have Quicktime Pro, you can download and save some 720p HD movie trailers that are not too bad to look at. I would not say that they are "real" HD, but they are considerably better than the stuff I have seen from iTunes.

People have to remember that this is ATV 1.0....surely HD content will be forthcoming.

Brian

Then what do you guys think about this macintouch testimonial?

Video quality -- I took 1 min video clips, SD and 720 HD, and compressed them using Compressor, full resolution (640x480 and 1280x720). Both were 24p so no deinterlacing needed (highly recommended otherwise). Compressed them to about 2 Mbit/sec h264 for SD and about 6 for HD. The results ARE STUNNING. Much, much better than my DirecTV signal. The SD was as good as DVD. I don't think the HD was quite as good as HDDVD or Blu-Ray (I'm working off memory - I don't have units here for comparison), but still much better than the HD signal coming off DirecTV. I am just using analog stereo audio, so I have not tested the surround sound features.

Joe

Well the Macintouch comment sound cool. And yep, the picture seems soft. But when I check out iphotos, ect., it looks good. I was thinking it was my Sony 30 HD CRT, that I need to change some type of settings. I'm kinda waiting around to see what everybody is up to.
Mark

I bought an episode of "The Office" and it looked very good, almost as good as the 1080i NBC HD broadcast. Again, this generation#1 of Apple TV, remember that and how the 1st generation of iPod was. HD content will be on the way as will updates. There is a software update in settings....keep an eye out for it. I anticipate something such as a firmware upgrade with the release of Leopard as well!

I am running ATV through HDMI and the content I am watching looks mediocre at best. The content is too compressed. Apple is going to have to sacrifice size for quality eventually.

Component and HDMI do not good when the source material is so pixelated.

Once they get that solved, this thing will rock!

G5 Dual 2.0Ghz / TiBook G4 1Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.9) 1 iPod Mini (green)

Is your TV content widescreen? Mine is not. Has the anoying bars on each side.
In addition the video is poor. Seems I am better off buying the series on DVD.

Unfortunately, the quality of the video offered through the iTunes store is not up to the video capabilities of the Apple TV, a rather ironic situation.

iMac Mac OS X (10.4.9)