5 ms·

But why? Handbrake can convert most video formats to something Apple TV-compatible and play them on the Apple TV through iTunes.

• vetinari 16y ago
  The XBMC library mode is much better than iTunes. XBMC is living-room ready, wife-approved media player (one of the best on the market, in fact). As a bonus, you don't have to convert anything.
  • rb2k_ 16y ago
    > As a bonus, you don't have to convert anything. And that's the biggest bonus imho. Most people will watch pirated content on XBMC (torrented TV shows etc) and transcoding everything is pretty annoying.
    • aw3c2 16y ago
      Bought content is usually an even bigger pain in the arse to transcode. I am currently trying to rip some DVDs of mine and it is an incredibly frustrating experience.e
      • patrickk 16y ago
        Here's a solution: http://lifehacker.com/355281/dvd-rip-automates-one+click-dvd-ripping http://lifehacker.com/355281/dvd-rip-automates-one+click-dvd...
        • jokermatt999 16y ago
          Aside: although Lifehacker's day to day quality seems to have declined, I've found searching their archives for common tech problems like this to be extremely good at returning results. How To Geek (frequently linked from LH) also has a lot of similar solutions. Any other recommendations?
          • patrickk 16y ago
            Here's one possible solution (appropriately enough from LH itself): http://lifehacker.com/344188/get-only-the-posts-you-want-from-lifehackers-site-feeds http://lifehacker.com/344188/get-only-the-posts-you-want-fro... I would suggest subscribing to the type of posts you like the most by tag. My recommendations for tags would be: #hivefive/ #hivefivefollowup #feature #downloads (you can specify which OS, see link above) #featuredworkspace (I like them, you may not) #featureddesktop (again, I like them) #howto #diy There are more I can't think of right now. I definitely agree that the overall quality of LH has declined, however HN and LH are still my number one and number two sources of tech information on the web and I typically check both multiple times a day. Some of the best tips and software I use comes from LH - Dropbox tweaks, XBMC, CCleaner, BitTorrent tips, Launchy and many, many more. Check out their recommended bundles of apps also available for Windows, Mac and Linux, e.g: http://lifehacker.com/5562864/lifehacker-pack-for-mac-our-essential-list-of-the-best-free-mac-downloads http://lifehacker.com/5562864/lifehacker-pack-for-mac-our-es... http://lifehacker.com/5713510/most-popular-free-mac-downloads-of-2010 http://lifehacker.com/5713510/most-popular-free-mac-download...
        • aw3c2 16y ago
          Thanks but I am actually on Linux and I don't believe an automated tool could prepare the result as I like it.
  • patrickk 16y ago
    Not to mention it's 100% free, highly customisable and it looks damn fine.
• randall 16y ago
  Converting: BLECH. Converting a two hour HD movie sucks for both time and storage. XBMC can play back pretty much any format natively. Huge time savings for people with a large video library.
• jroes 16y ago
  Ok, I read elsewhere in this thread that apparently you can stream directly from a NAS, which is definitely an awesome use case. XBMC wins!