Could Have Been Great
I’m sad to see that Apple TV does not support Xvid or Divx. As much as I want one, I’m not going to pay $299 for a box that plays only State approved content. The same goes for the Xbox 360’s Media Center Extender functionality. Unnecessarily gimped.
I don’t see how offering alternative codecs hurts the bottom line, unless you’re from the camp that believes all Xvid content is pirated. If that’s the case, I guess all MP3 content is pirated as well, right?
Update: Somebody has already gotten Xvid to work, though it’s not a pretty solution.
March 22nd, 2007 at 2:14 pm
…Apple TV does not support Xvid or Divx.
According to David Pogue:
Apple TV requires the latest version of iTunes (7.1.1 or later), which comes with the latest version of QuickTime. That’s important, because it means that you can now convert any QuickTime-recognizable video format into Apple TV’s video format. A new “Apple TV” export option actually appears in the Save As dialog box for QuickTime Player and iMovie.
I’m not quite sure what all of the implications of that are, but I think there are tricks that might work here. Give me a Dvix file, and I’ll give it a shot.
March 24th, 2007 at 7:04 am
You bought an AppleTV???
March 24th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Yup. I hooked it up last night. I got it mostly so I could play the music in iTunes on the network from the home theater system without having to go to the computers themselves to choose songs, start, stop, etc. But it’s also good for audio and video podcasts and whatever other video content we have on our computers.
The great thing about iTunes as a media management platform for music is that I could quickly rip my thousand or so CDs onto my hard drive and then put them in storage. This is great in the limited space of a New York apartment, but music on a hard drive is also easier to sort and search than physical CDs. I’d kind of like to do the same with my DVDs, but it’s a bit more painful. Because of CSS, iTunes won’t do the ripping itself. There’s HandBrake, which works well, but it’s a slow process (especially ripping to the preferred format of H.264) and there are more settings to be tuned than when ripping a CD. But it does work.
March 24th, 2007 at 9:35 am
I am sold. With the new setup I am getting it’s a perfect fit. I can sell my modded Xbox and Airport Express and replace them with the little white box.
Funny you mention CDs and space. I just went through my CD collection putting all the discs and liner notes in a giant wallet. I don’t listen to 95% of my old music anymore so I won’t even bother ripping any of it. It was liberating trashing all the jewel cases. To hell with sentimentality.
DVD collection ripping would be an awesome project, albeit time consuming. Thing is, there are very few movies I would want to watch more than once, so is it really worth the time and disk space?
March 24th, 2007 at 9:36 am
[...] seems I spoke too soon in saying Apple TV does not support alternate codecs. Perian is an OSS component wrapper for [...]
March 24th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Thing is, there are very few movies I would want to watch more than once, so is it really worth the time and disk space?
That’s a good question. My thinking is that if I bought the DVD, I must have been planning to watch the movie again, and I’m not going to revisit the question now. I think it’s more interesting for television shows–how great would it be to have the entire run of Arrested Development or the British Office at you fingertips? Also, disk space is cheap and getting cheaper. The only real issue is the time, but you’ve just got to start the ripping process and let things go on their merry way. As long as you don’t have a deadline, it’s not a big deal.