So we convert. I’ve found a relatively painless workflow that will allow you to convert your media from just about anything (AVI and MKV included) to Apple friendly formats, and tag it with metadata so you can enjoy film description, movie posters, episode information and more on your Apple TV (just as if you bought it on iTunes).

Conversion

The first, and most time consuming step, is to run all your media through conversion software. I’m using two pieces of software. Video Monkey and Handbrake.

The benefit of Video Monkey is that it has a queue interface, so you can drag a selection of videos into the app, choose your options, hit start and grab a coffee.

Handbrake is a little smarter than Video Monkey and it allows you to preserve 5.1 audio tracks if your vidoes have them. It also has a queue, but its cumbersome and you have to add each file individually.

If you’re using Video Monkey:

1. Drag in your videos
2. Select the Apple TV preset
3. Check “Limit output params to input” (doesn’t work with MKV’s)
4. Default quality is good enough for me, but adjust to your fancy
5. Hit Start (it could take minutes or hours depending on your machine)

If you’re using Handbrake:

1. Use the Source window to choose one file (or drag the file from the Finder into the Source window)
2. Select the Apple TV preset from the presets pain on the right (might have to “Toggle Presets”)
3. Handbrake automatically limits output parameters to input, and this does work with MKV’s
4. Default quality is good enough for me, but adjust to your liking
5. Hit Start (it could take minutes or hours depending on your machine)
6. To add another file to the queue, click Source from the toolbar and repeat the process, clicking “Add to Queue” instead of Start at step 5

I recommend trying it with one file first to make sure quality is what you expected.

My next post covers tagging your converted media so it displays nicely in iTunes/Apple TV.

My goal is to sync or stream all of my digital media (music, TV shows, movies, pictures etc) to a large SDTV (standard definition television) in the family room.

 1) AppleTV

The AppleTV is an amazing little box. It’ll sync or stream nearly all of your media from any computer that can run iTunes. There’s also some nifty plugins to extend its functionality. On paper it looks perfect, but in practice it caries a number of limitations.

• Initial cost
• File type limitations (think DIVX etc)
• Limited configurability/tweaking
• No support for SDTVs

These limitations are somewhat superficial, I could solve most of them by hacking and having a bigger wallet. At this time, however, the AppleTV just isn’t a viable option.

2) Tiger + ATV4mac

Because I already have an unused Mac mini, this option removes the up front cost of running my media center. AT4mac is a really cool project that lets you run the Apple TV OS as an application on any intel Mac running Tiger. It requires OS X 10.4 because the Apple TV OS is based on the older version, and it turns out that installing Tiger on my mini was the most difficult step. I installed Perian to cover those missing formats and picked up an Apple DVI to Video converter to connect to the television. Audio went through a headphone to composite adapter directly into the receiver. The procedure to get ATV4mac up and running was quick and painless. Afterwards I was able to sync, stream and play with my media flawlessly. All the functions of the Apple TV were present and functional. 

The problem is, once again, that I’m using an SDTV (See update below). While the ATV4mac brings down the resolution, it still has a widescreen ratio. This means the right most 1/4 of the picture is cut off. By using this solution I avoided all the issues surrounding the Apple TV except for the problem related to my SDTV. 

3) Leopard + Front Row

Until an HDTV enters the equation, it looks like the Apple TV route isn’t the way to go. The next obvious solution is Front Row. I had problems with Front Row on Tiger crashing, so I reinstalled Leopard on the mini and chose some tools to make things work. 

I installed Perian again, and I also got a copy of Sofa Control. It lets you do almost anything you can do with your mouse and keyboard right from your Apple Remote. Then I installed Syncopation. This little app is idea for our project. It connects to iTunes libraries on the network and automatically merges them into to one. All the media can then be played in Front Row. Its pretty slick, but I’m disappointed that there isn’t a free alternative. I’d really like to sync remote iTunes libraries just like you can an Apple TV. You can’t buy or rent content directly from Front Row either, and there’s also the missing YouTube and Flickr access. This solution is less than perfect, but at least it works without cutting off the screen.  

In conclusion I have to say none of these solutions turned out to be all I hoped for. The good news I can watch video and play my music, even if the process to do those is convoluted. I hope that someone finds a better solution or that I get an HDTV, and I’ll update this story once one of those things happens.

Update: I found a solution (SwitchResX) to the ATV4mac / SDTV problem. I’ll provide a tutorial soon outlining how to get your intel Mac and old SDTV to work together.