[canadave]

Really appreciate all the responses. I guess I'm going to have to do some sort of comparison for myself. I just can't get my head wrapped around the idea of not being able to see the diff between 720 and 1080. If you can't see the difference unless you are sitting right on top of the screen, what's the point of 1080? I guess I think in terms like why would bluray be 1080 and not 720 if you can't tell the difference? Must be like the HD audio is a gimmick argument.

Honestly, there's little difference. Go look for yourself. I guarantee you that you will NEVER sit in front of a 1080p movie that's being output by the ATV2 in 720p and think to yourself, "oh, wow, this is horrible." It's truly not noticeable. As to "what's the point of 1080", that's a good question. Strangely, marketing people do not want you to ask that question--I wonder why?

[pko66]

Really appreciate all the responses. I guess I'm going to have to do some sort of comparison for myself. I just can't get my head wrapped around the idea of not being able to see the diff between 720 and 1080. If you can't see the difference unless you are sitting right on top of the screen, what's the point of 1080? I guess I think in terms like why would bluray be 1080 and not 720 if you can't tell the difference? Must be like the HD audio is a gimmick argument.

I can vouch for the chart procrastinator linked; I watch my TV at around 7ft, and when I had a 50', could not distinguish among 1080p and 720p with samples (actual 1080p movies usually have a much bigger bitrate, so they have less compression artifacts in difficult scenes and so they look much better... but in my case, the reason was NOT the resolution but the bitrate).

Now I have changed it to a 60' and I can notice most of the time (not always, it depends on the material) that 1080p looks better even when the bitrate is high enough in both 720p and 1080p. BTW, that is for movies, for sports 1080p is really worth the expense.

For most of the people, 1080p is overkill (as with music, 99% of people do not have the ears, the equipment nor the source material to distinguish among 192kbps MP3 -or even lower with VBR- and higher bitrates... but they select 320kbps CBR files and waste expensive memory in their players)

I've seen people spending more in a fullHD LED 32' screen than in a HD-ready plasma 50' when they intend to watch just movies in a mostly dark room at 15ft!. In that conditions, the 50' gives a vast superior experience.

Fooled by marketing...

[rickrude]

Really appreciate all the responses. I guess I'm going to have to do some sort of comparison for myself. I just can't get my head wrapped around the idea of not being able to see the diff between 720 and 1080. If you can't see the difference unless you are sitting right on top of the screen, what's the point of 1080? I guess I think in terms like why would bluray be 1080 and not 720 if you can't tell the difference? Must be like the HD audio is a gimmick argument.

It's a bit like digital camera marketing too, what are they up to now? 20 Megapixels?

[S80_UK]

Better not read this then... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_...Television

There was a demo at IFA in Berlin this month. I walked straight past - absolutely no point in more resolution for TV unless you need to sell more TVs to stay in business. (...and the TV business is a pretty bad place to be right now.)

[SkyBehind]

I have an ATV1 and an ATV2. One of my two ATV1s has a Crystal HD card and a Solid State Drive (16GB, only use it to stream from a media server).

After using the ATV1 as my main box, I hate using the ATV2. With the SSD, it's about 3 times as fast, especially scrolling through menus and fan art. Whats more, I paid $45 for the ATV1, the SSD was about $35, and the Crystal HD card was $45. It's much better, and if you forego the Crystal HD card, the whole set up is cheaper and better than ATV2 (except maybe power consumption).

[MadNachos]

For me ATV2 running XBMC is a perfect compliment to our HTPC but not a replacement. I have the ATV2 in our bedroom and use it to stream from our HTPC in the living room and for that its perfect. For the money its tough to go wrong as a secondary device...for the main TV I would stick with a nice HTPC.

[JeroenM]

Hi.
I bought one atv2 for the bedroom which has a Samsung 720p TV a year ago to try it out and replace the noisy htpc. I use it to watch TV( Satellite ) from tvheadend and all kinds of movies from SD to 1080p which works perfectly ( as long as the 1080p movie is a h/x264 encoded video.

Later on i bought a second one to the livingroom which has a 50" 1080p Samsung Plasma, A BenQ W6000 1080p DLP Projector on a 3m*2m kingpin screen and a 5.1 Surroundspeaker setup connected to a pioneer 1017 receiver.
The only time i notice any difference between 720p and 1080p is when i use the projector, but it´s not that bad at all.

Actually,
The only things that bother me compared to running a htpc is the lack of de-interlacing support for the tv-part in xbmc( None of my movies are interlaced ), and the lack of support to view the HD-Channels on Tvheadend, But i´m preaty sure it is tvheadend who is to blame.
The interlace problem should probably be fixed to in further builds.

But.... Then again, For the price and functionality and not at least the completely silent HT setup..... PERFECT!!

Well, This is my 1 year experience of the atv2.
I would by one and try for my self if i were you. You won´t be dissapointed.