If you are returning from some sort of Internet exile, you might just be hearing that Apple is expected to announce a new tablet computer at an event in Cupertino on January 27. All we know for certain is that they are holding an event to showcase their “latest creation.” But there is an incredible amount of rumor and speculation about the company and the device that it is hard to ignore. I, for one, am obsessed, so I’m devoting an entire week to examining the possibilities.

Among the many questions about an Apple tablet are what software it will run, and what the user experience will be like. Before we dive into the specifics of what a tablet might offer, lets consider some history and the current state of Apple device operating systems.

History of the Apple OS

Apple first introduced Mac OS X in 2001 (though a server version was released earlier) after modifying the NeXT Computer operating system it had purchased in early 1999. Later in 2001, Apple introduced the iPod, which ran a different operating system powered in part by software from a company called Pixo, whose team included several former Apple Newton engineers. The Apple TV, running a device-specific variant of Mac OS X, shipped in March 2007, and the iPhone–also running a device-specific variant of Mac OS X–went on sale in June of the same year. Apple has released updates for all operating systems through software update and new devices, and major new versions of Mac OS X via box purchases. Major iPhone software updates are roughly on an annual release cycle, while major Mac OS X updates were once released on a similar schedule, but that has slowed in recent years.

Apple’s Snow Leopard version of Mac OS X was released in August 2009, and was touted by Apple as a performance update with few new features. My installations of Snow Leopard saved on average about 20GB of hard drive space, and seemed to make my computers run faster. But while these changes were great for my Macs, most desktop and laptop computers had plenty of memory and storage to run Mac OS X before Snow Leopard was introduced. The same improvements, however, would make a huge difference for devices like the iPhone and Apple TV, where memory and storage are more constrained and precious, and fixed for a particular model.

It is now a misnomer to refer to the operating system as “Mac OS X,” which is really just the version that runs on the Macintosh line of computers. “OS X,” however, runs on Macs as well as iPhones and Apple TVs. So all of Apple’s current devices, except non-touch iPods (and maybe those!), run OS X: Mac OS X, iPhone OS X, and Apple TV OS X (iSlate OS X?). Of course there are differences, most obviously in user interface and input method: keyboard and mouse for the Mac, touch for the iPhone, and remote control for Apple TV. Apple excels at creating user interfaces that are appropriate for these different input methods and other parameters such as viewing distance. One of the great things about OS X is its modularity: variants can rather easily be optimized for their target devices.

Its hard to imagine a scenario in which the Apple tablet won’t run OS X. But which OS X? The same version used in desktop and laptops, or the one used for iPhones? After all, won’t the tablet simply be a big iPod touch? Or will it be another operating system altogether?

Tablet OS X

The iPhone OS has a touch interface, as the tablet most certainly will, and is thus the most likely of the existing operating systems to be used in the new device. But iPhone apps–those built by Apple and third-party developers–are specifically designed to run on the iPhone’s 480×320 pixel resolution. Ideally, app developers won’t have to create 2 versions of their apps: one for the iPhone and one for the tablet. Which means other, more low-level changes to the iPhone OS would be required. Apps will need a form of UI intelligence to recognize which device it is being displayed on, then render a version appropriate for that device.

The tablet could run iPhone apps inside smaller windows, turning current iPhone apps into something like Dashboard widgets, but this doesn’t strike me as very elegant–or very Apple-like. Indeed, there is some evidence that a small group of select app developers has been asked to create versions of their apps for a larger resolution display, but we don’t know if these are new, single versions that work on both screen sizes, or if they are new, secondary versions of the apps that run only on the larger screen.

The team working on the Apple tablet likely began creating the user experience for the new device with a blank sheet of paper. Simply trying to scale the iPhone interface would be too limiting, and wouldn’t result in the optimum user experience. Yet there is a clear business need to support the app development community and leverage to tremendous success of the iTunes App Store. There just aren’t any easy answers to this problem.

Ultimately, I expect Apple to create a third operating system (after Mac and iPhone, not including Apple TV or iPod since they don’t support app development) for the new tablet. It will be based on OS X, but will have an entirely new user interface that is optimized for the screen size and purpose of the device. Apple’s developer tools will also be updated to include support for the new tablet, including a Mac-based emulator, allowing developers to use XCode, Interface Builder and other tools to support all of Apple’s product lines. The iPhone OS will be updated to support new app parameters so that apps can be easily updated to run on both devices. Perhaps on the 27th but likely later, the Apple TV will get a similar update to support the iTunes App Store.

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It is, however, possible to customize your Apple TV with unauthorized third party software (much like a jailbreak for iPhones/iPod touches) to transform it into a fantastic cheap media player (with certain limitations).

Suitable For Your Needs?

Now I have a Mac mini downstairs connected to my HDTV with EyeTV USB tuners and I think this is the ideal setup. However, upstairs in my bedroom I have an old SD TV that was paired up with an old HP laptop running windows with XBMC. The HP’s lack of stability finally became too frustrating, so after researching my options, I spent AU$330 (~US$276) on an Apple TV box and put XBMC on it.

My SD TV has component plugs so Apple TV works fine with it, and I’ve not had one hiccup while streaming .avi files from my file server over my wireless network. Its important to note, however, that some 720p HD playback can be a bit jerky, due to XBMC not having hardware acceleration support — but if you’re like me and wouldn’t want to watch 720p downscaled this doesn’t matter. I’ve finally got a totally stable (and completely silent) wireless TV streamer upstairs that I can control with my iPhone.

Here’s a complete guide on how to load XBMC and Boxee on to your Apple TV to make it much more useful.

Required Tools

*A USB Memory stick with at least 512MB that can be formatted.
*A PowerPC or Intel Mac. The procedure can also be done from a windows box, but since this is TheAppleBlog, this guide is exclusive to Macs.
*An AppleTV device with firmware version 2.3 (the most current at the time of this writing).

Preparing

Head over to http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/ and download the OSX version of the atvusb-creator. This will let you boot your Apple TV from the USB stick and install the required patches to your device.

First, you should remove all USB drives from your computer as a safety precaution to prevent accidentally picking the wrong USB device to create your patchstick. Insert your empty USB stick and run atvusb-creator.app:

The default options as above are suitable for most, so you can go ahead and click the “Create Using ->” button (assuming your usb pathstick is the only usb drive connected as recommended). This will partition and format the patchstick and then copy all the required files to it. With this done, it’s time to go to your Apple TV.

Patching Apple TV

Unplug the power cable from your Apple TV and put the USB stick in the port at the back.

Plug your Apple TV back in and watch the custom Linux OS do its work. This will take a few minutes and you will see lots of lines of text:

When you see the text “Please unplug your Apple TV to reboot/reset the device” you can unplug your USB stick and reset. When it boots up again, you will now see a slightly altered menu:

You now have both XBMC and Boxee installed on your Apple TV — however its best to update your system to the latest releases. From the new XBMC/Boxee menu on the left, go into the “Updates” menu on the right. Then select the Launcher 3.1 download:

This will be a quick download and update process. You should then also turn off Apple TV’s ability to automatically update itself. This is to prevent any new updates from Apple breaking your ability to use XBMC or Boxee. This can be done in the “Settings” menu by toggling the “ATV OS Update Enabled” option to “No”:

You can then download the latest stable release of XBMC and/or Boxee in the newly renamed “Downloads” menu. The standard Apple TV Remote works fine in both XBMC and Boxee. There are also a number of iPhone/iPod touch apps that let you control these directly.

Running the Latest Bleeding Edge XBMC

If you’re brave (or some may say foolish), you can also run the latest nightly builds of XBMC. To do this you’ll need to telnet into your Apple TV and set a preference via the command line to make this option appear in Launcher’s Downloads menu. From a command line tool (such as Terminal that comes with OSX) type:

ssh frontrow@appletv.local

When prompted for a password, enter frontrow and then type:

defaults write com.teamxbmc.xbmclauncher XBMCAdditionalDownloadPlistURLs -array http://www.sshcs.com/xbmc/Info.asp

This will then enable the option in Launcher to download a latest nightly build of XBMC:

Restoring to Factory Settings

If you want to restore your Apple TV to its vanilla settings, simply follow these steps. From a command line tool type:

ssh frontrow@appletv.local

When prompted for a password, enter frontrow and then type:

sudo rm -rf /Applications/{Boxee,XBMC}.app/
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/XBMCLauncher.frappliance/
rm -rf /Users/frontrow/Library/Application Support/{BOXEE,XBMC}/
sudo reboot

It’s a shame Apple doesn’t seem interested in unlocking the power of their home media device themselves, but at least doing it on your own isn’t as difficult as you might expect.

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Pandora and RadioTime

The Pandora feature is absolutely brilliant. I had a chance to play with it for a while on Tuesday; it is the full Pandora experience on a 10-foot interface. You can log in to your account, select any of your channels, give a thumbs up or down, skip a song, and even create a new channel. I cannot begin to tell you how cool it is to listen to Pandora on my home theater sound system with the song information displayed on the big-screen TV, all thanks to boxee on the Apple TV. Driving this software with the free boxee remote iPhone app just makes it that much sweeter. Pandora on Apple TV is amazing.

The CTO of Pandora, Tom Conrad, got on stage at the meetup to talk about how excited his company was to be bringing their Internet radio service to the platform. You can get even more Internet radio by using the RadioTime application, finished just in time for the release, to listen to over 100,000 terrestrial radio stations. This app cleverly picks up your location by your IP address and presents you with a list of local stations. I found several popular FM stations (but not all of them) in the Denver area.

Developers, Start Your Engines!

The boxee API has big implications. The Pandora Radio service was built using it, and developers with Python and XML skills can build boxee apps with full control over the UI and the metadata for media playback. BoxeeHQ also released a PBS application in conjunction with the alpha release. This app updates every 30 minutes to pick up PBS shows as they’re added to the web site for viewing. If the excellent Pandora and PBS apps are any indication, we can look forward to really well-done add-ons for boxee.

Can We Get Hulu, Please?

The XUL-based framework for getting web content is built on the same technology as the Firefox browser. This should allow boxee to access just about any web-based video content, even Hulu’s RSS feeds. When asked about full Hulu support returning to boxee, Avner was noncommittal, but expressed hope that the pressures that prevented Hulu from working with boxee would fade over time. In contrast, ABC is working closely with boxee to bring their content to the media center software.

Will boxee Ever Reach Beta?

During the meetup, Avner also discussed some of what we can expect to see in the beta release. A lot of time was spent on the customizable home screen, which will allow you to arrange your favorite channels and content for quick access. There will also be more control over finding and adding friends, as well as over how you share what you’re watching with them.

I’m So Excited, and I Just Can’t Hide It

With apologies to the Pointer Sisters, I am about to lose control and I think I like it. Boxee just keeps getting better and better. The new radio features and the promise of the API and XUL-based framework have me really looking forward to the beta releases and an eventual 1.0 version. I am also fascinated by the evolution of the business plan. Avner was very sincere when he said that boxee is agnostic to the business model of their content partners — they just want to bring more people to content providers that are looking for more viewers. Netflix is one business model (access to content with a paid subscription) and ABC is another (free content with inline ads). I’m fascinated to see how this all works out.

If you watch the video loop of the presentation, be sure to hang around until they do the stupid human tricks contest at the end so you can watch the beatboxing performance that won the Mac mini giveaway.

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Sometime between last night and this morning, Apple released a minor update to the Apple TV. The new software version is 2.3.1 and includes a new network test function and other fixes that haven’t been listed by Apple as of this time. The update, just like all previous updates, disables Boxee and other hacks, but these are easily restored by running the patchstick again (more notes on that at the end).

When you run the network test, it will ask if you’ve been having trouble with slow downloads from the iTunes store. You can answer Yes or No to this question and it will still proceed to run the test. It then asks you what download speeds you expect to get from your Internet connection and begins a download test, probably similar to the various speed tests available on the web that simply download a file of a known size and then track how long it takes to complete the download. The test is a little dissatisfying because it doesn’t tell you anything — all the information from the test is sent to Apple and you never know what kind of download speeds you were seeing.

Restoring Boxee was as simple as running the patchstick update again. I had an additional problem on my own Apple TV in that my external USB drive wasn’t seen after the update. I was hoping that a quick reinstall of nitoTV would fix everything, but the USB drive was still not showing up when I ran “diskutil list” from the command line. I rather like having a 1TB Apple TV, so I’m off to restore the box from factory settings and make sure everything is working. I’ll let you know what happens in the comments below.

That said, I wouldn’t let my experience scare you away from the update. The new network test will be useful for anyone that is experiencing problems with downloading purchased or rented content from the iTunes store and there may be other fixes that Apple hasn’t announced yet. Some users on other forums are reporting improved responsiveness on the iPhone Remote app, which would be a welcome benefit.

Let me know how your upgrade goes in the comments.

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Boxee is telling their Mac users to get LOST — that is, they are telling them that they can watch the hit show on their Mac.

Boxee is releasing a new update for their Mac version today that allows users to stream content from ABC. The release is timed to coincide with the season premier of LOST, which will be available through ABC.com the day following the broadcast. The Apple TV, Windows, and Linux updates are in the works. I’m not-so-secretly pleased to see this update out on the Mac platform first.

I had a chance to ask the boxee team for a quick response on why support for ABC is coming to the Mac before all those other guys. If you are a regular visitor to TheAppleBlog, you will not be shocked to see that the team at boxee just likes the Mac. And I say, why shouldn’t they?
 Here are the four reasons that they said Mac people are getting the ABC love first…

1. Consistent hardware – The Mac is the easiest to program for because they know exactly what kind of hardware people are on.
2. Macs work well with (and often come with) remotes.
3. Half of boxee users are using boxee in conjunction with their big screen TV and an AppleTV. Since the majority of their users are on Mac, that was the platform they decided to launch ABC with (and the platform they initially launched boxee on back in June).
4. Last, but not least, they’re all on Mac and they like Apple products.

We have been encouraging people to try out boxee on their Mac or AppleTV, but I am pleasantly surprised to learn that half or more of their users are on an Apple product. Now if we could just get Apple to sit up and notice that boxee is the perfect reason to buy a Mac mini, maybe they would get around to updating the graphics chip after three whole pickin’ years with the GMA950.

Of course, adding more streaming media isn’t all that boxee has been up to lately. They received a lot of recognition at CES and have started receiving coverage at major news outlets like the New York Times.  There’s been some interest in getting boxee onto a specialized media player device that would be easier to set up than hacking your AppleTV. Even if the patchstick procedure is pretty straightforward for the technically literate, it’s certainly not something my parents would ever do.

You can sign up to join the public alpha test at boxee.tv.

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Today, boxee is releasing their latest alpha build for the flexible media player. The big news for this release is the tantalizing Netflix support and new custom interfaces for various channels like Hulu, CNN, Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube. There are a few new content sources as well.

Netflix takes center stage for this release at the request of users. The boxee team ran a survey just two weeks ago and the results put Netflix out in front as the most requested new addition to the media center app. The initial implementation for the desktop seems to be pretty complete even at this early stage. You can browse content available in Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” category, add items to your Instant Queue, and play the streaming content. Here’s a couple shots to tide you over until you can download and install for yourself.

Browse through your own Instant Queue

See details on selected items

Search Netflix content using an on-screen keyboard

Because Netflix uses a subscription model that makes instant content available to their DVD rental customers, there is an abundance of older “catalog” titles. New release movies are generally not available through Netflix Instant Play. TV shows are the exception to this rule as you can find several current season shows from CBS and NBC on Netflix. In some cases, the content on Netflix is actually better than what you can find elsewhere. For example, Hulu (in which NBC is a primary investor) only puts up the 5 most recent episodes of Heroes on their own streaming web site. Netflix has the full season available from the season premier to the latest episode.

The Netflix support is available for those that have an active Netflix subscription. Support for Apple TV is being worked on, but the limited hardware power of the Apple TV created some difficulty.

The other big change in this release is that boxee now has custom on-screen interfaces for certain content channels including Hulu, CNN, Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube. These custom looks go beyond simple skinning and provide a way to tap into the unique options of each underlying service. In this shot of the CNN interface, you can see the top stories on the site, what’s most popular, staff picks or browse by CNN’s sections.

The custom interfaces are intended to provide a proof of concept for the possibilities for developers to extend boxee. The CNN and Hulu screens show a lot of promise for what is possible.

The new content sources in this release are Netflix, The WB, The Boston Globe’s Big Picture Blog (an incredible source of photos from around the world), and MTVMusic. If you check the results of the boxee user survey, you wil see that there are a lot more sources planned that might appear in future releases. Personally, I really want to see Pandora radio next.

I’m a little disappointed that Netflix streaming isn’t available on the Apple TV just yet, but apparently the hardware requirements for Silverlight (what Netflix uses from streaming) are about double the specs of the Apple TV. I’ve noticed some minor glitches with Hulu streaming but the boxee team is working hard to improve streaming performance on the Apple TV and I’ve seen it improve with each release.

After getting past the envy my Apple TV feels for my MacBook at having Netflix content, I am really impressed with this release. I understand that features are still being added during this alpha phase, but I am surprised at how quickly new content is being added. Only two weeks after asking users for feedback, the top request is implemented along with other features, new content, and bug fixes. With a such a solid team of developers that care about their users and having just raised $4 million in new funding, I am really looking forward to seeing what will come next from the boxee team.

If you want you’d like an invite to boxee, just go sign up at boxee.tv/theappleblog and boxee will send you an invite in the next few days to use the boxee service!

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The video encoding and transcoding tool, Handbrake has been updated to 0.9.3. This latest release brings a number of substantial changes to this excellent video utility.

The two most fundamental changes make Handbrake more flexible and also more limited. First flexibility — Handbrake will now accept many different video sources and does far more than just DVDs. The second change is that DVD decrypting has been completely decoupled from Handbrake and you’ll need another app to do perform that step in the conversion process. This version has a number of other improvements for Mac, Apple TV, and iPod users. Read the release notes to get a full list of changes.

Video Cornucopia

Just in time to help us deal with our grief at the passing of Techspansion and its seminal video converter, Visual Hub, Handbrake now has the ability to convert all sorts of different source material to H.264 or MPEG4 video. This potentially allows Handbrake to transcode AVI video from digital cameras and other such files. This new flexibility comes as a benefit of incorporating the libavcodec and libavformat libraries from the FFmpeg project. Unfortunately, the AVI file from a Canon P&S camera I used to test this on resulted in great looking video with a bunch of static in the audio track.

DVD Decryption Decoupled

For reasons that perhaps only the developers fully understand, Handbrake no longer includes the libraries required to decrypt commercial DVD’s. We Mac users are fortunate in that Handbrake will dynamically use VLC to decrypt a DVD if the app is present in your Applications folder. Just install VLC as you would normally and then anything that can be played with VLC can be read by Handbrake. If you want, you can also use something like RipIt, DVD2OneX, or Mac The Ripper 3 to decrypt DVD’s and place a copy on your hard drive. Personally, I’ve found RipIt.app does exactly what I want (makes a copy of the full DVD to the hard drive) and is dead simple to use. It costs $19, but it is simpler than the convoluted MTR donationware process (join the forums at ripdifferent.com to get the details), and cheaper than D2OX.

Other Benefits for Apple Fans

Besides the built-in VLC integration (a Mac exclusive), Apple users also get a number of improvements to the Mac GUI like better organization of presets, a better queue (that is saved between sessions or in case of a crash), reading from ZFS volumes, and more. Many of the presets have been redone as well to take advantage of the updates to the underlying encoding libraries. The new Apple TV preset is great at constant quality and supports Dobly Digital for Apple TV files directly (that still work with Apple TV 2.3). If you are really interested in tweaking the Apple TV preset to get transparent standard definition DVD, you’ll want to hang out in this thread at the Handbrake forums. The iPod and Universal presets have been updated as well. Be sure to “Update Built-in Presets” from the Presets menu when running the app to make sure you have latest settings.

Summary

I have been using the development snapshots for a while now and the improvements in video quality are great. I am really glad to see the changes move into the standard release. Taking out DVD decryption is not a huge deal because there are other alternatives for the Mac. And adding the ability to work with a wider variety of video formats is particularly welcome now that Visual Hub is no longer being developed. I will post follow-up comments if I figure out what caused my issues with my AVI video file. Let us know about your experiences with Handbrake 0.9.3.

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Some other things to be aware of…

New remote behavior:

• long “select” switches between now playing and ui
• long “menu” takes you home
• back on login screen takes you out

Known caveat: with the update to 2.3, Apple broke a few things, one being the ability of the app to consistently appear in the foreground. Until this is figured out, if you run boxee, and get a black screen, you need to back out of boxee by clicking menu on the remote, and try launching boxee again.

Apparently Scott and Stephan are working on this last bit to kill the black screen bug dead for good.

I like the new features in Apple TV 2.3, but I missed having access to boxee after I upgraded the other day. I’m was having minor issues with boxee and Hulu. Playback gets just a little bit jittery at times. I’m hoping the upcoming releases will help improve this situation.

Also, as a side note on boxee, the boxee team just released the results of a user survey they conducted to determine which media sources to add to boxee next. You can read all about the results on their blog. Personally, I’d be thrilled if they can deliver half of the sources on their list. Pandora on Apple TV would be amazing.

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Apple’s summary of the 2.3 update highlights four key features that have been updated..

• AirTunes Streaming from Apple TV
• Third-party Remote Controls
• Playlists
• Music Volume Control

The AirTunes update allows the Apple TV to become a source for other AirTunes speakers in the house. I haven’t been able to test this because I only have one Apple TV, and no Airport Express, but this sounds like a great feature for party music. You can now select the music or playlist on the Apple TV and have it play elsewhere in the house. No word yet on if this means simultaneous output to local speakers and remote speakers, or just output to remote speakers and no local audio. And sorry, I don’t have the setup to test it myself.

Third-party remotes are supported by selecting “Learn Remote” under Settings > General > Remotes and then following the on-screen instructions to send IR commands from the other remote. The idea is that you can select an unused device on your existing multi-device remote and have the Apple TV learn the default IR commands that the remote sends and map those to Apple TV commands. This will work well for people that have a multi-device remote for their cable box or something. For those of us that already have a learning remote, this isn’t such a big deal because you can reverse the process and just have the remote learn the commands for the Apple TV. What I’d really like to see next is an update to the Apple Remote app for the iPhone so that you can control all on-screen menus and navigation from the iPhone rather than having to use both the IR remote and the iPhone app.

The Apple TV now has an option to display all playlists in menus, including those with Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, and Music Videos. You can turn this on by selecting Show Playlists > All in the Settings > Audio & Video menu. The Apple TV is somewhat smart about how it decides which playlists to list in each section of the interface. When in Music, showing all playlists will display all lists with music in them. When you are in Movies, only playlists that actually have movies in them will appear. This works the same for TV Shows and Podcasts. Music Videos are still a subset of Music and don’t have their own playlist menu.

Control of music volume is one of those details that certain people have been asking to get for a long time, but unfortunately they only get a partial solution. You can control music volume with the Apple TV remote, but it does not appear to work with TV Shows or Movies. Still, for some, being able to control music volume is great. You can only really appreciate this if you use the white remote that came with your Apple TV. With that remote, you could not control the volume without picking up the remote for your receiver. Now, you have the option for using the Apple remote to control the volume. This works with the optical audio out (which is what I use in my setup) and I assume it will work with analog out as well. You can change this setting by going into the Settings > Audio & Video and selecting “Control Music Volume: On” by toggling that item. Again, if you have a learning remote and have already mapped the volume buttons to control your receiver, this new option is not really for you.

Now for the bad news…

For those of you that love boxee, be warned that this update will kill boxee on your Apple TV. @boxee posted a note on Twitter that this wasn’t working right after the update was released. It has always been true that Apple TV updates disable any extra items like boxee and you would have to reinstall. The difference is that boxee will not run at all on Apple TV 2.3. You can check for updates on the official boxee forums to see when the xbmc/boxee teams finds a fix. There is a sticky thread with the warning and a discussion thread where people are trying to figure things out. The most important tidbit from those threads is that you can disable auto-updates on the Apple TV if you wish to stay at 2.2 with all your boxee goodness still running. SSH into your Apple TV and issue the following command…

sudo bash -c 'echo "127.0.0.1 mesu.apple.com" >> /etc/hosts'

If you’re not sure about SSH and need some help, don’t fret — it’s actually pretty simple. kschroll wrote a nice summary in the boxee forums that is easy to follow. The bottom line is that the technique will prevent the Apple TV from contacting the update server by overriding DNS lookups for mesu.apple.com and instead point all those attempts to check for updates back to itself (which of course, fails).

The 2.3 update itself is pleasant enough, but no boxee will mean “no install” for those that are watching Hulu on their Apple TV. The new features are really more refinements than new functionality. Still, I find it encouraging that in these days of the iPhone and Snow Leopard that Apple still has resources devoted to improving Apple TV. I would love to see some new functionality at MacWorld in January, but this latest update will keep my hopes alive that Apple TV will grow into more than just a hobby business. We’ll see what 2009 brings!

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Liberate Your Memories

Just like those pictures that I maybe wouldn’t take the time to look through otherwise, I’ve decided to start converting some of our home movies to play on the Apple TV. One of the big problems with the movie footage we have on tapes or in iMovie is that we never watch it. Getting our home movies on to the Apple TV means that we actually get to enjoy reliving some of those memories together.

The first step is to get the video into a format that will play on the Apple TV. If your home movies are in iMovie, then it’s a simple matter to export or share to iTunes. I would recommend VisualHub, but Techspansion shuttered their doors just earlier this week (literally, the day I started to write this post — I’m still not over it). If your movies are already on DVD, Handbrake will convert them for you. Also, the latest development snapshot of Handbrake will accept multiple file formats (not just DVD) for input so it can take the place of VisualHub in many cases. Targeting Apple TV is a matter of selecting the appropriate preset and clicking start. MPEG Streamclip is another tool that can help convert video from one format to another. QuickTime Pro also has some limited options for converting video.

Once you have video in the correct format, you just need to provide some extra information about your videos so that iTunes can properly identify them to your Apple TV.

Tagging the Past

One of the keys to get full enjoyment out of my Apple TV is the killer program MetaX. This little gem allows you to set and manipulate all the meta-data for iTunes media files including cover art. What I do (and this is the really clever part) is to set all my movies as episodes of a TV Show named “Home Movies.”

What’s cool about this is that all my Home Movies appear together in the Apple TV menus under TV Shows : Home Movies. I can further organize them by year (using “Season”) and I can write down who appears in the movie in the “Artist” and “Actors” sections. “Description” and “Date” are obvious and make browsing the movies on the Apple TV convenient. MetaX also allows you to grab a frame from the video and set that as the cover art for your home movie as well. MetaX is donationware, free to download and use, but please consider donating something via PayPal.

Personal Media Bliss

So now I have all these home movies that otherwise would never have seen the light of a display all organized in iTunes and synced to my Apple TV. They are all together, sorted by date, include information about what’s happening and who’s in the movie, and display a frame (that I picked) to represent the cover art. Most importantly, all those old home movies are finally being watched and enjoyed, which I’m pretty sure is what we all had in mind when we filmed the event in the first place.

Good luck with liberating your own memories and media files. If you have any other ideas, particularly for tagging, please share your tips and tricks in the comments.

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