Mac to Home Theater

Looking to set up a home theater by streaming content to your TV from your Mac. Plex has a new release that will make navigating your content a little more stylish and feature rich. With plex you can organize all of your media, from local drives, network shares, optical media and the Internet with ease. Plex includes a highly customizable skinning engine that allows users to alter the entire user interface.

So why wouldn’t you just use Front Row? Because Plex has more features and plays more content formats. Plex runs great with the Mac remote and would be a cool touchscreen interface. This would also be a brilliant car interface. I always wanted to put a Mac in my car.

Check out Plex at www.plexapp.com

Your Mac’s Birthday

Ever wondered what your Mac’s Birthday or Birthplace are? Me either, that is until CoconutIdentityCard offered the info. This free app will tell you what country your Mac computer or iPod was built in and when. It will also search a database of stolen Apple products (by serial number) and tell you if that used mac you bought is a fugitive or not. You can also manually type a serial number for info. Handy if your about to buy a used Mac or iPod.

Check out coconut-flavour.com to download the app.

iTiVo convert to iTunes

Got a TiVo and a Mac? Well you can pull those shows you recorded straight to your Mac, convert them and even pull out the commercials with just a couple clicks. A google code project called iTiVo has had an update that turns this interesting app into a must have utility. 

Imagine my amazement after installing this app and it finds my TiVo for me. Input my TiVo access key and select a couple shows to download. Click the options to cut out commercials during conversion and put the shows in my iTunes for me and leave it to its business. Come back a few hours later (depends on transfer rates and processor speeds) and you have your shows ready for your iPod. Finally something so technologically advanced, its easy.

Oh yeah, its free too. And works better than the TiVo Transfer I’ve been using From Roxio’s Toast app.

Check out iTivo at its google code page.

iTunes stopped podcast

I love having podcasts on my iPhone. And some of my favorites are from G4TV and Attack of the Show. I definitely don’t catch every episode, but when I’m in the mood to be entertained I want it to be there. The other day I opened up my podcast section on my iPhone and noticed that non of them where up to date. “I just synced my phone the other day” I thought. When I got back to my computer I noticed that iTunes had stopped updating my podcasts because I wasn’t watching them. But I was watching them on my iPhone. Who gives iTunes the right to stop updating? My TiVo doesn’t stop recording shows just because Im not watching. On top of that, there is no setting in iTunes to turn this feature off.

Well, once I noticed that Apple is being unresponsive to the publics numerous Apple Forum postings on this subject, I began a quest to fix it myself. er, well, find someone who fixed it that is, and solve my problem. Read the rest of this entry »

Netflix on your Mac

Update: It appears most sites have been premature to post this news as NetFlix has in fact not opened this to everyone yet. It is fact that it will be open to Mac users by the end of the year. If you really want it I suggest calling NetFlix and asking for the service early, as some users have been given early access.

Its been years,  Apple users want DRM streaming services like Netflix “watch it now”, on their Macs without running Windows or any Virtual Machines.Well good news because Netflix is now streaming to Intel Based Macs with the Silverlight 2.0 Safari and Firefox plugin from Microsoft. 

With this move forward I would hope to see Netflix adding more content and HD options. In my opinion Netflix “watch it now” is a nice addition to receiving movies in the mail, but its no competition on its own, to Amazons online rentals and Unbox for TiVo. However with Netflix making the effort to expand to other platforms besides the PC market, I would expect to see them expand the service in the future.