Watching TV online + encoding DVD’s for Apple TV

We recently joined the big kid world & got a new 50 inch plasma TV!

It’s been about 3 years since we’ve had cable or a TV that didn’t require bunny ears. However, even now that we have a legitimate TV, i’m still reluctant to plunk the money down for a bunch of cable channels that we probably won’t watch, when we can watch our regular shows online or on DVD.

Right now we watch TV by hooking up our Macbook to the tv with the apple remote, but pretty soon we’re going to hook it up permanently to a Mac Mini so it can be a full on wireless media center. The Mac Mini is a little more expensive, but it can do a lot more than an Apple TV. With the iPhone Remote app we can even wirelessly play our music throughout the house.

Watching TV Online:

Here’s a few resources for watching TV online:

• Hulu Desktop – Hulu has a new desktop application that you can run on your Mac & control with the Apple remote. It’s still not perfect (sometimes, the streaming hangs, and they don’t have all tv networks online yet), but it’s a pretty promising start. It definitely feels like cable tv’s future replacement.
• ShowsRSS + Transmission – I used to use the TVShows app (which let you subscribe to shows and would automatically download new episodes), but when their rss tracker went down, the application stopped working [EDIT – TVShows is back up!!!]. ShowsRSS is a good substitute. It lets you subscribe to your favorite shows, and creates an rss feed letting you know when new episodes are online. If you use Automatic, you can configure the episodes to download automatically, similar to the TVShows app.
• If you can’t find the show you’re looking for on ShowsRSS, check EZTV or Mininova – probably the two best resources for TV torrents out there.

Encoding DVD’s in Apple TV format

There’s a few tools you need to digitize your DVD library. I wanted to make sure mine were actual DVD quality and would play full screen on our plasma tv. There’s a few tricks to it, and here’s what I learned:

• Handbrake – First up, you need Handbrake to encode the DVD.

  

  • Presets – The best way to ensure DVD quality is to use the AppleTV preset (.mp4 format/2500 bitrate).
  • Deinterlace – Make sure to set the Deinterlace to Slow or Slower. To learn more about what Deinterlacing is, you can read about it here, but if you don’t deinterlace, you’re going to see a lot of annoying lines every time there’s motion in the video.
  • Picture Settings – In order for the video to display full screen on a Plasma/LCD tv, the Anamorphic resolution needs to be 854 x 480. Many movies are already in this resolution, but most TV shows are 640 x 480. If that’s the case, you’ll see black bars on the side of your TV screen. If it’s 640 x 480, go ahead and encode it that way & we’ll come back to that later.
  • Cropping – some movies in widescreen format are burned on the dvd with the top/bottom black bars as part of the video. To get rid of it, go into Picture Settings and set Crop to Automatic

  Encoding with the above settings in Handbrake will get you DVD quality video, however, if the resolution isn’t the full 854 x 480, it won’t be full screen on your TV. The only way to get it full screen is to ‘stretch’ the video (which is what most DVD Players do when they play back on your TV). Some people like this approach since it gets you true fullscreen, but others don’t since technically, it’s distorting the video to stretch the image taller or wider. I prefer it stretched, so here’s how you do it.

• Quicktime Pro – In Quicktime, open your .mp4 movie.
  • Go to Window > Show Movie Properties
  • Click on Video Track
  • Uncheck ‘Preserve Aspect Ratio’
  • Set the Scaled Size to 854 x 480
  • Make sure the ‘High Quality’ box is checked in the lower right corner
  • Click ‘File > Save As’ – it will force you to resave the video as .mov format

  

  Once this is done, you’ll have your video in fullscreen! Now the only thing left is to add the movies to your itunes library so you can play them in FrontRow with the apple remote. I use the Set Video Kind iTunes script to easily organize my movies/tv shows in my library. Saves a ton of time.

  Now all you need is a big enough external harddrive to store all your movies, and say goodbye to all those DVD’s cluttering up your bookshelf