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HEVC Support

With HEVC support coming to High Sierra, iOS 11 and tvOS 11, will an update be forthcoming for iTunes to utilize h.265 HEVC for Home Sharing streaming?  If so, at what resolutions/specs?

In the absence of any obvious announcement there is no point speculating.

tt2

Sure there's a point speculating. A lot of us still have a physical iTunes Library and would love to cut our storage space for a video file in half by using a new container. HEVC would need to be a new file format as .mp4/.m4v is H.264. So, if they do plan on allowing HEVC (H.265) codec files into iTunes, one would think they would create a new Apple branded container and call it something like ".m5v" - the natural successor to ".m4v" in terms of naming schemes. Plus it makes sense if H.264 = .m4v that H.265 (HEVC) would have the .m5v name. Unless they want to all of a sudden allow .MKV into iTunes, but I don't see that happening - I see them creating their own container if they allow HEVC at all. Here's to hoping & hoping it comes soon! With SSDs, storage space is precious.

The .mp4 and .m4v containers are completely compatible and work just fine for H.265 (HEVC).  I have recently been re-encoding my entire iTunes library from original source with H.265 and testing with macOS 10.13 and tvOS 11 beta.  The results in terms of quality and space saving are really amazing.  However, there are significant issues for Home Sharing, and these appear to be by design by Apple, based largely on a reply I received from having submitted a bug report.

1.  These files all play beautifully using QuickTime on the Mac (running macOS 10.13 beta).

2.  iTunes allows these files to be imported just fine into the library, and they can be played there on the Mac, just as always.

3.  These files can also be streamed to the Apple TV using AirPlay from any app on the Mac.  This includes using the Remote app on an iPad or iPhone to control the iTunes with the AirPlay function set to the Apple TV (icon at top).

4.  HOWEVER, these files do not show up at all on the Apple TV via Home Sharing.  This is the "bug" I reported to Apple, and the reply that came back from Apple was this:  "After reviewing your submission engineering has determined that the behavior you reported is currently functioning as designed."

5. Note that the older QuickTime Player v7 does not allow these files to be played, displaying the well known popup for an incompatible codec.

I strongly suspect that Apple is making a move to protect its iTunes Store sales and that the final version of tvOS 11 may not ever allow for Home Sharing of personal (ie, non-purchased) HEVC content.  At this point, I would not at all be surprised if only HEVC content purchased from Apple were allowed for streaming via Home Sharing.  I don't know this for sure, of course, but the reply above along with the technical behavior I've observed across several beta updates makes me strongly suspect so.

This being the case, I have moved my entire library from iTunes to Plex.  With a very small change to the current Plex version, all of my HEVC content plays natively on the Apple TV with tvOS 11 beta, with no transcoding by the Plex server.  My guess is that an updated version of Plex will get rid of the need even for the simple change I made, once the final tvOS 11 is released.  If, on the other hand, Apple should modify tvOS such that HEVC cannot be streamed from any other servers (ie, other than iTunes for purchased content), then I will unplug the Apple TV altogether and use another device.

Hi there, first of all I want to say thank you for your post. The numbered itemized list of info is very helpful indeed, so thanks!

The assumptions you begin to make after that however, seem unrealistic to me, and are likely way off base.   There are actually very good reasons why HEVC is not shared via home sharing yet.  HARDWARE REASONS. You must remember, homesharing and airplay were originally supported only on the newest devices - the ones with hardware H.264 chips built in.  At the time, realtime HD encoding for something like Airplay mirroring was well beyond the computers without these chips, but now everything has them.

Now here we are with a new format going mainstream, and Apple has just announced HEVC support on the next OS, iDevices, and Apple TV 4K. This is hardware support, in the form of a chip.  

If you want to make an assumption about HEVC support going forward, I would point in the direction of the just-announced upgraded hardware devices, which appears to be a very similar transition phase as when H264 and airplay was rolled out.  Soon, with these devices and HEVC, everything will likely work as it always has.  My question is, how long will the H264 chips continue to be included before they are phased out?  I would think we probably are entering a window of time here where we may WANT to convert our libraries for the future, while we can, before they get stuck in an unplayable past format prison.

Hello Coluch,

Thanks for your reply and nice comments. 

However, your technical argument doesn’t hold water. What possible hardware requirement difference could there be between sending a file to the Apple TV from iTunes on the one hand (which works) and using the Apple TV interface to choose it in the “Computers” app for playback via Home Sharing on the other hand? The actual playback of the file would be the exact same process on the same hardware in each case, with the only difference being the way the file was chosen.

Furthermore, as a related aside, I’ve noticed another recent change when playing back purchased content via the TV app on the Apple TV... in other words, when streaming it directly from Apple’s servers: You now get advertising. I’ll leave to the readers to draw their own conclusions, but it certainly adds up for me: Apple has removed a fundamental piece of the Apple TV functionality in order to ensure that new content purchases (HEVC) can’t be played back with those advertising streams attached.

So, I maintain that my remarks are indeed completely well founded. There just simply is not any *technical* reason why standard and simple HD playback cannot be supported via Home Sharing.  I, for one, will not be making any other content purchases from Apple and have already moved my entire library to Plex (which is far superior anyway and for which direct, untranscoded playback of HEVC works great).

最後更新：2017-09-15 10:56:09

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