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I'm not sure I have posted this since the last time I talked about this subject saying it wasn't working so good. Well I have it figured out now.
I have dolby digital and HD working at the same time on the Apple TV. It can handle 720p videos and dolby digital at the same time but they have to be DivX HD (.avi).... h.264 (mp4 or m4v) only works well in HD if you have a two channel soundtrack on there so I reserve that format for standard DVD rips and MKV doesn't work well in HD there at all so I don't use it and I'm going to convert some MKV files I have to .avi or .mp4 depending on resolution.
With standard DVD rips I have made dolby digital work there as well with h.264 and the way you have to do it is by putting in two soundtracks. The first one being a two channel AAC version and the second track being AC3 pass through (dolby digital) and the Apple TV automatically picks the latter when playing on a DD reciever.
There's a trick to getting the AC3 tracks on divx files in .avi containers to play on the Apple TV though. If you do it on a fresh boot the Apple TV merely plays the soundtrack as white noise. But if you launch XBMC and play a test AC3 file first (or any file with AC3) it somehow changes something in the software environment that lets it see the AC3 track properly when you go back to front row. Don't ask my why it works it just works for me. It stays that way until you reboot the Apple TV which then you have to play the file again. I have short test file that tests all the channels specifically for that purpose.
They have some cheap hardware out there now that can play HD movies better and I think Apple should go ahead and update the Apple TV to that. But I'm not holding my breath.. some people thought the special event yesterday was going to usher that update in. It didn't.
I have dolby digital and HD working at the same time on the Apple TV. It can handle 720p videos and dolby digital at the same time but they have to be DivX HD (.avi).... h.264 (mp4 or m4v) only works well in HD if you have a two channel soundtrack on there so I reserve that format for standard DVD rips and MKV doesn't work well in HD there at all so I don't use it and I'm going to convert some MKV files I have to .avi or .mp4 depending on resolution.
With standard DVD rips I have made dolby digital work there as well with h.264 and the way you have to do it is by putting in two soundtracks. The first one being a two channel AAC version and the second track being AC3 pass through (dolby digital) and the Apple TV automatically picks the latter when playing on a DD reciever.
There's a trick to getting the AC3 tracks on divx files in .avi containers to play on the Apple TV though. If you do it on a fresh boot the Apple TV merely plays the soundtrack as white noise. But if you launch XBMC and play a test AC3 file first (or any file with AC3) it somehow changes something in the software environment that lets it see the AC3 track properly when you go back to front row. Don't ask my why it works it just works for me. It stays that way until you reboot the Apple TV which then you have to play the file again. I have short test file that tests all the channels specifically for that purpose.
They have some cheap hardware out there now that can play HD movies better and I think Apple should go ahead and update the Apple TV to that. But I'm not holding my breath.. some people thought the special event yesterday was going to usher that update in. It didn't.
