Thinking about Apple TV - How do you use it?

[Maui]

Personally I've been ripping the kids DVD's and converting them to Apple TV format. Your not going to get a truly HD cinematic experience with the ATV, but its great for the kids movies or any movies you might want to put on there. They just pick a movie and watch.

Same here -- much easier to load everything onto the ATV rather than fumble around with scratched DVDs. The kid content from iTunes is just ok, not great, but you can fill up your ATV with all of the DVDs you have sitting in a drawer getting scratched.

 

[TJK71thai]

confused, please help

Hi All,

I am new to this forum but always been a big MAC fan. I am looking to buy apple TV but have a lot of movies in AVI format and understand there is difficulty in converting them to sync with ATV. Can you let me know if there is an easy and painless way to do this as i dont fancy trying to get the crack i have seen online working and would really love to buy an ATV.

Thanks in advance,

T

 

[netdog]

I buy stuff from iTMS and also watch all my video podcasts (like Ted talks) on my TV. I really don't watch much regular TV anymore. As soon as iTMS gets F1 rights, or as soon as F1 starts selling direct downloads, I will really be finished with normal TV altogether.

 

[gkarris]

Hi All,

I am new to this forum but always been a big MAC fan. I am looking to buy apple TV but have a lot of movies in AVI format and understand there is difficulty in converting them to sync with ATV. Can you let me know if there is an easy and painless way to do this as i dont fancy trying to get the crack i have seen online working and would really love to buy an ATV.

Thanks in advance,

T

VisualHub

 

[Nicolasdec]

Or quickTime Pro

 

[TJK71thai]

Thanks so much for your help, do these 2 programs take a long time to conert, say a 30 to 45 minute TV program?

 

[gkarris]

Thanks so much for your help, do these 2 programs take a long time to conert, say a 30 to 45 minute TV program?

Depends on your processor. G4 a long time, C2D really fast. Search for benchmarks in other forum threads.

 

[mrcap]

Music, Movies, Photos and Podcasts

I bought the AppleTV the first day it was availible and use it pretty much every day. First off i have a big music collection and use it as the main living room widescreen HDTV with a simple but nice 2.1 audio system.

Second I have converted about 200 movies so far, mostly using an inexspensive tool (Visual Hub). It converts virtually any video file automatically to mp4 and puts it directly into iTunes.

I have many regular podcasts that replace the normal heavily commercial television with some great alternatives. Like Reuters News instead of the"Situation Room" crap from CNN.

You also have new access to YouTube that is great for alternative video content.

Photos are the only thing that I Sync to the AppleTV (cuz they are the only thing that won't streem) and have never synced more than 15 gigs at a time and would not benifit from a bigger drive. (I have the orig. 40gig)

My housemates are all set up and stream at any time their own music libraries with a quick source change. Even with our older 802.11 g I never see a lag and totally love the Apple TV.

To sum it up, the quality is good not super high end, but the quantity and selection of material makes up for any real quality issues for me!

Hope this is a helpful late entry. Good Luck!

 

[aricher]

What is the benefit of using VisualHub over Handbrake? Is the video quality better from a DVD? Do you use the advanced settings of VisualHub or just the "Go Nuts" setting? Should de-interlace always be on like it should be in handbrake?

 

[powerbook911]

Thanks everyone.

I ordered today. I hate spending the money, with a new iMac around the corner that I'll have to buy too.

However, I really want an Apple TV, and it's weird that months after it's debut I didn't have one, so I thought it was time.
TV will arrive before too long I hope.

I ordered on Amazon.com through J&R. Brand new unit for $279 plus I had a $25 gift certificate, so it was a good deal!

 

[imlucid]

Photos are the only thing that I Sync to the AppleTV (cuz they are the only thing that won't streem)

You can stream photos from iTunes 7.3 to Apple TV 1.1

Kevin

 

[powerbook911]

I have a g wireless network, but the TV is at the farthest part of the house (small house though). I wonder if it will still be fast enough, to stream videos. I hope so. I will see in a few days I guess, but if anyone has an experience. Thanks.

 

[Shoesy]

I have a g wireless network, but the TV is at the farthest part of the house (small house though). I wonder if it will still be fast enough, to stream videos. I hope so. I will see in a few days I guess, but if anyone has an experience. Thanks.

Mine works fine on my b / g network (airport express) from one end of my house to the other, it also picks up my flatmates' windowsy itunes library so we can all share and be happy people. I don't keep any of my media on the actual machine, not so much as a single photon, and it works just dandy-o.

The fact that the video streams so well through such a 'slow' network totally bemuses me- it's all about the width of my band apparently.

Seriously though the h264 encoded-special-for-tv stuff seems (for me) to work the best, and the low res mp4's I've got kicking around seem to work worserer- if still amicably.

I hear tell the h264 format is designed for streaming, hence the reason apple persuaded google to reformat all of youtube. I wonder how that's getting along- I can't seem to find anything I want on there still, and autumn is just around the August.

Nite nite x