Hi,

Not sure about the best forum for this, but decided to try here.

From what I can tell, the iPad 2 should be capable of playing back the HD TV channels as broadcast on Freeview HD without re-encoding the video or audio streams.

According to Apple's site it can handle, amongst others:

"H.264 video up to 1080p, 30 frames per second, High Profile level 4.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats;"

From what I can tell, Freeview HD is H.264 High Profile level 4.0 with AAC-LC audio at 128kbps (for Stereo transmissions), or 320kbps for 5.1 transmissions.

My question is whether anyone has tried this? The video and audio would need to be remuxed in a mp4 container (and audio downsampled to stereo and re-encoded for 5.1 transmissions).

I only have an iPad 1, so can't try this - IIUC this won't be able to decode the HD video.

Thanks.

It would not have a problem playing them as long as they are in a suitable format the iPad can read that format – Freeview HD is not the highest quality – what is used on BluRay discs is higher and the iPad could deal with that quality as well.

Thanks. Yes, I know that in theory the iPad should be able to play them. I'm just curious whether anyone has tried.

Or failing that, is anyone with an iPad 2/3 willing to try out a test file if I make one available?

I expect people have (would be surprised if no one had) – might be worth asking on the Freeview forum