A simple how-to for those who still haven’t figured out they can move their DVD collection do the atv. “Ripping your personal DVD’s for the AppleTV adds convenience. Selecting them from My Movies is so much simpler than finding and then loading up the DVD,” says Guy and we do agree. Guy recommends using DVD43 for ripping and HandBrake for converting to mp4, but remember there is a lot of other software that can do this job. For those who like to organize their movies with DVDpedia, PARA9 has just released DVDpedia FrontRow and AppleTV plugin 2.0.6 with AppleTV 3.0.1 support.
Read How to add your DVDs to AppleTV
After all the rumors and geek’s dreams… I’m almost sure some people get disappointed about the device and the general consensus among the people I spoke with about the iPad is that “Wow! But is not for me,” or “It’s only for geeks.”
Yeah, Wednesday’s presentation was quite impressive and I have to agree that it would be nice to have such a device. But if I already have a computer and an iPhone… the only reason to buy the iPad would be that is not so expensive and that I love to have gadgets.
But I have to be positive on it. I think it will make a huge difference and it’s the first of a new category of devices that will come sooner than expected.
I see two main market segments for the iPad. Well, three if we include the geeks.
Who does not have a photo album at home? The experience of opening the book, sharing and commenting the pictures while handling it and sitting close to our friends… Digital photography has reduced the amount of printed pictures, and we have started to use TV and computer slideshows to view it.
I can imagine my parents using the iPad just like they were using an ordinary photo album, having it ready to show the pictures of their grandsons to unexpected guests. No need to open the TV, no need to bring the computer.
In order to fit in this category it will require over the air iPhoto synchronization, something that Apple TV already does. Also, it would be great to have bi-directional synchronization to be able to play with the photos (re-arrange, comment, tag) on the iPad.
Another area is a segment of professional applications. The list here is long: from doctors handling it in the hospitals, decoration outlets and architects showing their projects and interacting with their customer’s work, to more basic, like a restaurant menu or beauty salons offering it instead of newspapers and magazines.
What the device is missing?
Clearly it needs a video camera for video conferencing. It would be great if it also had a rear camera.
Size is important… and most probably we will see this device in smaller, portable 6” format as well as in a larger format to facilitate reading newspapers and magazines.
A memory slot and USB connector to connect with the rest of the world are also more than welcome.
And networking capabilities! Why do I have to have the media in the iPad? Why not let the device mount an AFP or SMB drive, so that it could have virtually unlimited storage capacity?
My conclusion is that it is only a first step, but the iPad is definitely a revolutionary device.
Jordi Duran i Batidor
Originally appeared on Smartphone.Biz-News.com
Although there is still no official release from Boxee team, the community has already brought the Boxee Beta to the Apple TV. On the Boxee Blog, Jim Wiley posted a step by step guide on how to enable the Beta on the atv.
The guide assumes that you have SSH enabled on you ATV and you know how to log in to it to issue commands via a Terminal and that you know how to copy files over from your PC/Mac. But in case you were a complete noob, Jim has also given a short explanation on how to do this.
It was already verified on the latest ATV 3.0.1, as well as on ATV 2.4 software.
Find the guide here.
The FAQ and comments below the post clarify a bit how to solve some of the Beta issues (online content, scraping issues).
Great job, Jim!
That’s a great news: several TeamXBMC/Redhat developers and the Broadcom Media PC Group made it possible to play 1080p content on Apple TV! It is called Broadcom Crystal HD and it’s a cross-platform hardware decoding of mpeg2, h.264 and VC1 video content up to 1080p.
It will be coming to XBMC on OSX, Linux, and Windows via the Broadcom Crystal HD Hardware Decoder (BCM970012). It is available now in a mini-PCIE card with ExpressCard and 1X PCIE form factors.
Good news is that it has a common programming API and it’s an open source solution with full source code for driver and library available for OSX and Linux under a GPL/LGPL license. Go ahead, 3rd party developers!
The Windows driver binary, as well as the Linux source code for the driver and library can be found at the Broadcom web site. For OSX, the binaries and source code for the driver and library will be hosted at google code. Users in the USA can purchase the Crystal HD mini PCIE card from Logic Supply for $69, and of course there’s always ebay for those outside the USA.
Source: XBMC
This Monday, at the Boxee Beta Unveiling event in Brooklyn, the Boxee hit beta status. The Beta comes with completely re-designed home screen – the menu is now put front and center. Below you will find Feed (recommendations from friends on boxee, Facebook or Twitter), Featured (recommendations from Boxee’s staff) and Queue (things we’ve saved for later).
The new additions – global menu – makes it easy to access helpful resources (Logout, Settings, Queue, Feed, History), the main menu (Photos, Music, Movies, Home, TV Shows, Apps, Files) and shortcuts to our favorite apps, TV shows or movies.
The Boxee sidebar has been extended to Music, Photos, and Apps.
Boxee overhauled Movies and TV shows to include both internet and local content. If you know what it is you want to watch, there is no need to go through an App now.
The Beta organizes TV shows by season and episode, and let’s you filter by whether freely available or not.
Along with the Beta Bexee introduced three new Content Partners – Clicker (a TV Guide to the Web), The Escapist (a video game review site), and Suicide Girls (sexy nude photos & videos of tattooed girls).
Boxee team have also increased what people can do with Boxee Apps. Developers can now use OAuth to give Boxee access to private resources meaning users can easily access their accounts across the web.
We can now not only watch video, but also start browsing websites that don’t already have a Boxee App or RSS feed using a Boxee browser.
The Beta also brings official support for Snow Leopard and Ubuntu Karmic.
The graphical back-end has been switched from OpenGL to DirectX to take advantage of Direct X Video Acceleration. Boxee has also worked closely with NVidia on their ION platform to offload video processing with DXVA and Flash 10.1.
Boxee Bata will be open up to the public at CES 2010, Jan 7th.
