As for me, I don't care about divx or any other codec. I just want to rip my dvd collection into itunes as easy as i can with cds. I am tired of my dvds being scratched by my kids. Why can't apple make some kind of arrangement with movie companies as they did with record companies? I know there are many other softwares that does this already, but they are not as user friendly. Also, not that many average people know about Handbrake or iSquint. I just want to pop in the dvd to my mac and let itunes figure out the codec that works with apple tv for me and rip it into my computer. Also, let me choose the quality of the rip like we do with cds. If this becomes possible, definitely appletv will be on my buy list.
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Apple TV Unboxing Photos (and Video)
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Good call. Worked at Best Buy for 2 years. I'd usually send the customers I liked to the dollar store for their USB cables.
Even with Apple's fancy looking cables, it wouldn't cost them much more to include a cable...
Do you think they should have included component AND HDMI?
I say, this guy deserves a honorary badge or medal of some sort for making this point.
If you're looking for the operating system the box is using, you'd probably need to look in firmware rather than on its disk drive.
My guess is it's on both. The core OS is probably in Flash, but why use any more flash than absolutely necessary if you already have a 40GB drive there. (Unlike the iPod, I doubt 512K or 1M of flash would be sufficient for the whole OS).
I'm also more interested in the file system (is it just HFS+) and how the database is structured (similar to iPod?).
B
Are you mental? What does that even mean? Seem pretty defensive to me...
Guilty??? Enjoy your converting. I'm sure Automator could run em all for you.
Um, so where can i find a "xvid/divx to mp4" converter?
if there aren't any, how would i use quicktime to convert to h.264
thx much (already purchasedtv so i gotta deal with this.)
iSquint ... free from Versiontracker. Drag and drop. Works without any sort of hiccup, offering several perfectly acceptable default settings, including standard .mp4 or H.264 if you'd prefer and will even add the converted files to iTunes for you. There are more in-depth options if you prefer to roll your sleeves up.
It's not given me a problem yet ...
Cheers!
Jim
EyeTV doesn't have to use DivX ... I've got mine running in straight MPEG-4 with no problems at all.
As for converting them back into .mp4/H264 ... iSquint has come up several times on here already. It's drag-and-drop, so you could drop a whole batch of files onto it, specify the save path, set it going, and head off down the pub, which doesn't strike me as a massive hardship. As I mentioned, it will even add them to iTunes when it's done.
FWIW, once I've converted say, a 350Mb .avi to .mp4, there seems to be no appreciable difference in file size and on a faster machine than my Mini, I imagine you'd probably be able to convert 1Gb every 15 minutes or so.*
That means your entire 200Gb library could be reconverted inside a week in 30(ish)Gb batches running overnight.
Yeah ... I'll grant you that it's more of a pain in the arse than not having to do anything at all, but certainly no more of a pain than getting all your CDs/tapes/vinyl into iTunes in the first place.
Just a thought.
Cheers!
Jim
*I'm sure someone with a faster machine will be along shortly with a set of timings to demonstrate that I'm talking utter rubbish.
OK, fine, it's agreed. Apple could have included a set of HDMI and component cables, in lengths of .5m, 1m, 1.5m, 2m, 3m, 5m, 10m and 15m, in black, blue, purple and pale grey, both copper-core and silver-core cable, all without incurring any significant cost. So we could have had a $299
TV (with an additional free crate of cable) that would have satisfied the cabling requirement of all customers apart from the really picky ones, who would still bitch. But they didn't, which sucks. Can we all get over that now?
If it ain't broke...
Bluetooth is a battery hog and the whole pairing process is tedious, especially with something that has to have a fixed pairing code, like a remote.
Why? Nothing else in the living room comes with high-end cables. DVD players don't come with optical cables, nor do surround receivers. High-end cables have always been purchased separately, and no self-respecting home theater builder would use some random cable he knew nothing about.
And you know what else? Sodas in restaurants don't cost anywhere NEAR $3! zomg. Of course cables are marked up into oblivion. If you want to keep up competitive pricing, though, something's gotta give. It would have been more expensive (or lower quality) had they included the cable. They *could* sell them at a dollar above cost, but they won't. All costs are passed on to consumers.
So people could throw them out and buy their own from known and trusted brands, or to get the appropriate length, or to match their color-coding scheme, or all the other possible options? It's like lamps and light bulbs. There are too many options to suit everyone, so you're just on your own.
Err.. Did you guys not read the (bold)
I'm well aware EyeTV/quicktime etc can encode to MPEG/h264 - a lot of people encode to other formats so their copies will play on a DVD player they already own, while saving space. My 200GB library is a pretty small one - as I said, I have more than that in divX/xvid on discs already. Leaving my machine (which i need to be working on) converting all week+ *and* swapping discs constantly.. Yeah. That's super practical. (but yes, I realise it'd be necessary. I can see it being jolly inconvenient and a deal breaker for some people though. Hence some of the negative comments/votes I'd guess.)
This is a non-issue, I'm not planning on getting an
TV, lol. Are you mental? What does that even mean? Seem pretty defensive to me...
Guilty??? Enjoy your converting. I'm sure Automator could run em all for you.
I don't think I'm mental? Are you?! I have no idea what point you're trying to make? There are legitimate uses for other codecs is all i was saying. Using divX doesn't make you a bad/amoral person. Bittorrent is similar.. You can have a perfectly clear concious and use it, and other p2p networks - depends what you do with them. I'm one of the most anti-piracy people I know..
- So no, not "Guilty"Hmm.. There'll be a hell of a lot more h264 torrents online if the
TV takes off.. There are already a huge amount of ipod-ready video files.. I just bought the 30$ iPod Universal Dock and connect my iPod to the tv when I want to watch something. The quality is perfect with the S-Video out connection on the dock.
There isn't any HD content to watch from your iTunes library anyway right now. I don't think this product will do half as good as the iPod did.
Yes -there's no real need for a BT controller - if your watching TV you'll always be in line of sight ( listening to music is different ).
A BT controller doesn't need to be paired with codes, it can auto paired much like the Controllers on the Wii.
Why? Apple is meant to be about simplicity - things just work out of the box. The aTV definitely does not, if it doesn't come with all the cables.
A BT controller doesn't need to be paired with codes, it can auto paired much like the Controllers on the Wii.
Why? Apple is meant to be about simplicity - things just work out of the box. The aTV definitely does not, if it doesn't come with all the cables.
I user Divx and Xvid because I trade off a little bit of Quality over H264 for Time, on the Mini it takes about 5 Hours to convert one 50 min show, can you imagine doing a box set of episodes, or 10 hours to do one movie. My PC is still only a AMD 3800 and thou a bit faster it still takes about 90 min per 50 min show. Using Clone Mobile I can go to Generic Divx or MP4 in about 20 min for an hour show, the quality is still pretty decent, but I have to encode at a higher bitrate to get a result closer to H264, around 2 mipps which means larger file sizes.
Right, PC switchers go home! We Mac lifers don't need you; we were so happy with our .001% market share.
Avi with dixv/xvid encoded video today is a lot like mp3s in popularity and mobility. Quicktime a can play avi files natively. It can also hold H264 formatted video. And last of all, it's one of the most compatible formats between players. I wouldn't compare it to mov or wmv.
The mp4 format doesn't look that bad. I was a bit surprised to see that it supported text subtitles. That gives no excuse for apple not supporting closed captioning etc on the iTunes store.
Just got mine! Haven't even opened it yet. The FedEx guy that brought it said that it was the sixth Apple TV he had delivered so far this morning, and it's only 9AM and I don't live in a big city. Methinks Apple may have a brisk seller on its hands.
Divx and Xvid aren't these radically weird formats. They meet the mpeg-4 standard. The difference between Divx and Apple's Mpeg-4 is much closer to the difference between the itunes mp3 encoder and lame mp3 encoder than the difference between h.264 and mpeg-4. All mpeg-4 compliant codecs, including Xvid and Divx (version 4.0 and forward) are compatible with the .mp4 container.
On the other hand, Apple's codecs, like .mov and .m4a for example, are completely non-standard.
You just got it and are still posting here
Get that thing open and post some picts!!!......please
Are you mental? What does that even mean? Seem pretty defensive to me...
Guilty??? Enjoy your converting. I'm sure Automator could run em all for you.
Weirdo...
Anyway, we don't need the
TV at all. It really isn't necessary at all. Even if I did have an HD TV I wouldn't use this. I would have a HD DVD or BLuray player. Furthermore, I would have, in my ideal world, a mac mini as my media centre. A lot more useful than this thing.