Full Transcript:

Benjamin Higginbotham: Benjamin Higginbotham with technologyevangelist.com. Today talking about how to hookup a Standard Definition monitor to your High Definition Apple TV. The Internet in a buzz saying “yes you can do it”, “no, you can’t do it”, “may be you can do it”. Well, we are here to see absolutely, you can sort of kinda mostly make it happen. Now rather than write a blog post about it and then show you some still pictures. We wanted to give you the true experience and shoot a High Definition video to show you how to use your Standard Definition monitor. So, first thing is first, what’s the difference between component video and composite video.

This is very important, because the Apple TV only has component video output, most Standard Definition monitors don’t have component inputs. A lot of people think they do, they think composite - they say 3 cables, “I have got my composite and could I hook three cables up to my TV?” The problem is that’s probably a Yellow cable, Red cable, and White cable and that would be your composted video, audio - left channel audio/right channel. That’s not we are looking for, you need to hookup five cables to your monitor Red, Green, Blue, White and Red for your audio. So, five cables total and you will see in the back of the Apple TV, we have got five analog outputs. Now, you can choose to use your digital output if you want to, but ultimately most people are going to be using their analog outputs. If your television only uses a Yellow cable, Red cable and White cable to hookup then you probably do not have component video input and the Apple TV will not work for you.

Now, let’s say you do have component video input like I do on this bad boy right here, but it is a Standard Definition screen and it is not a wide screen, so what are the limitations going to be? Well, first let me hook that up and show you exactly what the Apple TV picture is going to look like. So, we are going to hookup our component video directly to the Apple TV. So, I am going to take my luminance, my luminance minus blue and my luminance minus red, so there is my video signal hooked up and then I am going to take my audio, my left channel which is white, my right channel which is red, so this is all now hooked up to the Apple TV notice five cables had to be hooked in and now I will take my power and plug that into the Apple TV as well and we are ready to go. I will set you down here and we will give it a moment to boot, all right.

At this point the Apple TV logo is going to popup on the screen and this is the first part where we notice something is not quite right on this particular monitor. It looks mostly like the Apple logo and it is the Apple logo, but if you look at it very closely you can see it is actually squished quite a bit. It is not quite at the right aspect, in this particular monitor does not have a wide screen mode on it and a lot of Standard Definition televisions don’t have that mode either and if you don’t have that mode, this is exactly how your video is going to look.

So, asking me what resolution do I want? Well, standard definition is 480 interlace lines, so I am going to select 480i and hit the button on the Apple TV and it is going to popup and it is going to give me my main menu here in a moment. Great, here is my cool little intro , isn’t that awesome? Here is my main menu, I have seen this screen shot a lot online and everyone says wow, if my Apple TV is going to look like that and this is great, it looks perfect. It is not perfect there is actually a problem and that is this been squeezed down by the narrowness of the screen. It is not a wide screen, it’s supposed to be stretched out even further and you can see that and things like the Apple logo some of the O’s in the text are little bit squished, but the best way to describe this and show this off, I am going to go on the podcasts and I am going to select let’s say actually askaninja is kind of fun, so we will take “Ask A Ninja”, look at that, that’s not right, I have bars in the left and right side of my screen and as you look at this you can see he his squished quite a bit.

There is no way to get rid of this bar, because Ask a Ninja is short in Standard Definition 4x3, there is no way for the system to squeeze that back out, see how squished they are. This is one of the limitations of an Apple TV. Now, if your television has a wide screen mode that allows you to squish it down this way and the black bars to the top and bottom of the monitor, then you will have the proper aspect ratio. Depending up on the mode your monitor has, you may be able to zoom back into the picture to get rid of the bars all the way around the image, fine, lets go back out here, lets show you some actual 16x9 content. I am going to show you some Technology Evangelist 720p video, so I am going to play a High Definition video from this box back on my Standard Definition monitor.

So, we will do the project black-box video, I will go ahead and play this and you will see it fills the screen now, because it is High Definition image that was shot as wide screen, but once again everything is squished together, he is little bit too thin all my text is little bit too thin. Now, look great though, it looks great, so if you have a monitor that does not have wide screen modes on it and if you look at your remote control for your television monitor, if it doesn’t say something along the lines of aspect on it, this is what your video viewing experience on Standard Definition monitors is going to be. It is going to be squished. Everything is going to be the wrong aspect ratio and that might get annoying after a little bit of time. That’s why we say it is sort of almost work for Standard Definition monitors. Yes, you can get the image up on the screen, yes it will work through component video output as we are showing here, but you have no control over aspect.

There is no setting in the Apple TV that allows me to correct for this. Now, hopefully Apple release a firmware update that will allow me to do some basic aspect ratio correction, at least tell the Apple TV, “hey, I am hooked up through 4x3 monitor”, but today that’s not the case. Apple seems to be pushing High Definition monitors quite a bit, they say that they are just going to wear the hockey puck  is going to be. Now, I am not entirely sure that’s quite the wisest move right now and that there are still whole lot Standard Definition monitors out there. If you have a wide screen Standard Definition monitor and you have got component video input, then you are set. Now you have everything you need is all going to be stretched, the correct aspect ratio will automatically add black bars wherever it needs to be on the image. If you got a enhanced definition monitor or a High Definition monitor, you are set, it is strictly the Standard Definition monitors that have component input that are going to have this issue right here. Hopefully, that cleans up a little bit of your issues you are going to see, you can see what’s going on with the aspect ratio right here and you get better understanding for what the Apple TV can and cannot do when it comes to Standard Definition monitors.