Mini Motor Racing and Mini Motor Racing HD ($0.99 iPhone, $1.99 iPad) are excellent top-down racing games from The Binary Mill.  A good racing game requires three main features to come together: vehicle control, a variety of challenging courses and a heart-thumping soundtrack. Mini Motor Racing excels at all three. But the real kicker is the game’s head-to-head multiplayer action.

Mini Motor Racing supports four styles of steering and an optional auto acceleration feature to accommodate your prefered style of gameplay. “Wheel” mode uses a virtual steering wheel on the left side of the screen very similar to the iconic d-pad. “Toggle” provides a left and right button on the left side of the screen, whereas “Tank” places the left and right on separately on either side. “Slider” allows the user to control the car by moving a slide bar to the left and right.

Each style of play will cater to different drivers. Some prefer the Wheel, but I found Tank mode to be the easiest to control.  The final control in all modes is a button that gives the car a boost of nitro during the race.  Thanks to the way that the car navigates the track, as well as careful camera placement, you will never find the controls getting in the way of the game regardless of your control scheme of choice.

The opening sequence and smooth 3-D transitions when navigating the game’s menu system attest to the development team’s attention to detail.  There are over twenty different courses to choose from, and variations in weather and time of day keep replay value high. All fourteen cars on offer are  customizable: You can select the color and style, as well as upgrade each as you collect money and customizations along the various tracks.  If you want to upgrade in a hurry, you can use in-app purchases ranging in price from $0.99 up to $14.99.

Even without multiplayer support, the game is worth buying. Being able to play with up to four racers over Wi-Fi or two over Bluetooth, the multiplayer mode just adds to the bargain.

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100 Rogues ($0.99, Universal) is a role-playing game that challenges the bond between a player and their character, which is normally a valued relationship in RPGs. How does it do that? By killing your chosen character, over and over, again and again.

Instead of a deep and meaningful bond with your character, 100 Rogues drives game play forward through classic aesthetics and a never-ending quest for food.  You also still have to watch health and energy, as in most RPGs, but the Belly stat is the key difference here. Unlike with health and energy, you won’t be told in the general heads up display when you’re running out of food, and items to bolster that stat don’t seem as plentiful as those for the others.

Once your belly is empty, you will start losing one point of health each round until you either find food or die. You are warned from time to time that your character is getting hungry, and when that happens, you may find yourself taking unusual risks in your quest for food.  And just when you thought things couldn’t get worse, you’ll discover that some of the food in the dungeon is rotten, and eating it will deduct permanent points from your max health.

When you’re not in panic mode searching for fresh food, the randomly generated levels and over sixty different monster types will certainly keep you on your toes. Your character also earns experience which you can spend on skills, and the world is littered with treasure and merchants that will sell you items, including food, for a price. When you start a new game, you can choose between a Human Crusader, a Fairy Wizard, or one of seven different classes available via in-app purchase.

Overall, thanks to the unique belly stat, and variety of levels and characters, Dinofarm Games and Fusion Reactions have done an outstanding job of injecting new life into the dungeon crawler genre with 100 Rogues.

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Video

iTunes. The easiest way to get video content onto your iPad is to simply buy or rent it from the iTunes Store. You can initiate the transaction on either your computer or your iPad. Keep in mind if you copy a rental to your iPad, it won’t be available for watch on your computer, and if you rent a video on your iPad, it can’t be copied to the Mac. This FAQ from Apple has more information on rentals. To copy videos to your iPad, select your iPad in the sidebar in iTunes, choose the Movies (or TV Shows) tab, and choose what videos you want copied. To watch them, simply launch the Videos app on your iPad. This method of transfer is also how you’ll copy movies you convert in this next step.

Handbrake. Handbrake is a great video converter. It can convert most encrypted DVDs and any movie you may have that’s not in the .m4v file format. Choose the Universal preset on the right, press Start and let ‘er, um, rip.

Reading

Instapaper. This is one of my top five iOS apps. Instapaper is a way to save web pages to be read later, and presents them to you in a nice, easy to read layout. You can install a bookmarklet on your favorite browser to save pages for later reading, and many Mac and iOS apps will send your links to Instapaper — if the app supports it, it will have a Read Later option. Before you head out, just open the Instapaper app to download the content and you can read it even without an Internet connection.

Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook . Both of these proprietary e-book readers are good for one thing: reading books bought via their online stores (naturally, they can’t read content from each other’s stores). To download a book go to the retailer’s web site, purchase the book and when you open the app on your iPad, the book will automatically download. If you have one of their hardware e-readers, you can download previously purchased books with the app as well. As an aside, if you have a non-DRM .mobi e-book, you can side-load it into the Amazon app via iTunes.

iBooks. I’m separating iBooks from the other book reader because it’s the only one that can take the popular epub format (without DRM) and PDF files directly. This has made iBooks my preferred e-reader. If you have an e-book in another file format, you can use Calibre to convert it to epub. Once you have an epub or a PDF file, just drag the file into iTunes and sync it to your iPad. One other nice feature in iBooks is the ability to sort your files into collections.

Zinio. While individual magazines like Wired have their own apps, Zinio is my go-to magazine reader for the simple fact that most magazines I read are available via this service. Unfortunately, Apple’s influence spreads to this app. Apple pressured Zinio to not allow certain magazines to be copied to iOS devices. Which is a shame, because those magazines have some fantastic articles I’m sure I’m missing out on. Even so, there are lots of good content to be found there.

Games for the whole family

While Angry Birds is fun and all, I’m going to list some games you can play with your family, too. Or, could play, if someone would give me my iPad back and put down “the Angry Birds machine” for a few minutes. The games can all be played on a single iPad via pass-and-play mode. While there are a ton of multiplayer games available for iOS, I’m just going to mention a few here. Any slights are unintentional, it just means the I didn’t have enough space to mention it.

T Chess Pro. This is the app my girlfriend uses to beat me at chess. T Chess Pro lets you either pass-or-play or use Game Center. During a fairly frustrating process getting some of the free multiplayer chess apps to work for multiplayer, we decided on this one. Setting games up via Game Center is very easy, and the graphics are great. As a bonus, it also has an analysis mode to help you improve your game.

Scrabble. This is one of my favorite iPad apps. One of the great features it has is if everyone playing the game has an iPod Touch or an iPhone, you can download the free Scrabble Tile Rack app. This lets each player keep his or her tiles on their device, and you can leave the iPad in the center of the table. Scrabble also lets you Pass-N-Play as well as connect via Facebook. No Game Center support, sadly.

These are my choices for basic approaches to getting entertainment on your iPad. There are no shortage of options, so get out there and find your own, too.

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Casual media is that comfy space we all need to retreat to on occasion just to remain sane. It’s the simpler stuff we’ve used to fill the gaps between major media events in our lives, like going to a first release movie, a stage show, music concert or a sporting even. Traditionally, it’s often taken the form of TV shows. But with the advent of apps, that’s changing.

Shortly following the release of the iPhone 4 and the iOS version of iMovie, Majek showed off exactly what could be accomplished with the pair in the short film “Apple of My Eye“.  Behind the scenes footage showed a level of care normally reserved for more traditional platforms, as special rigging and professional lighting were used throughout the production. The end result was stunning.

So it can be done, but where to go from here? Perhaps looking at recent trends where people are spending more time with their smart devices than their television sets, and realizing audiences have shorter attention spans for content on their smartphones, Majek opted instead to produce a weekly series titled Goldilocks, featuring three-minute episodes.

The big difference between it and the usual YouTube fare is production quality. Not only was the entire series filmed solely on HD-capable iOS devices, but it appears that Majek is experimenting with app-based distribution as well (iTunes Link). While we’ve seen individual books as stand alone apps, and more recently, magazines and newspapers delivered the same way, we’ve yet to see TV-type content bundled and sold this way.

Aside from episodes of the show itself, the app also provides behind-the-scenes footage and photos taken from the production. Everything we’ve become accustomed to seeing in a DVD is packaged as an app. It’s an alternate model to plain old online video that’s likely to become a lightning rod for discussion at industry events like the upcoming NewTeeVee Live, and one that could help creators add a price tag to content.

The possibilities of how an app like this could benefit from iOS features are many. To take advantage of Apple’s plans surrounding streaming video in its ground breaking iAd technology, this mini-episode format could adopt something like the Super Bowl’s one second commercials. Or perhaps adopt its own in-app purchasing of future episodes or seasons. Majek’s episodes also remain in the cloud, a design that would lend itself very well to an Apple TV that supports apps.

Creative minds are finding new ways to utilize Apple technology in order to feed the appetites of Apple’s sophisticated customers for interesting content. While media executives try desperately to hold onto the past, could Majek’s model for Goldilocks be the real future of casual media?

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The Current Marketplace

Consider how you currently watch TV, which could be through broadcast or cable television. If you watch cable, you pay a fee to a provider (like AT&T), which allows you to see certain channels based on your subscription (though that model doesn’t seem to be panning out so well anymore). The providers pay a portion of your subscription fees directly to the networks (an average of about 26 cents per channel). Networks make additional money with the ads they run on their channels as well. If a network doesn’t show ads, you can expect they charge the cable provider substantially more than 26 cents per channel, and the opposite is true if they show an average amount of ads. This is all relative and pretty much a standard business model.

How Apple Could Shake Things Up

With the introduction of the App Store, we’re starting to see how some industries are shaking up the status quo. For instance, consider the magazine industry. Wired now provides its app directly to consumers, and can sell a digital version of its magazine at a comparable price (per issue) to the newsstand price. Yet, without having to incur the printing costs behind it, and even while giving Apple 30 percent of the revenue, Wired pockets a lucrative profit.

Can the same model work for the television industry? Network providers already provide their content through iTunes, and, through negotiation, have arranged to sell content at $2-$3 per episode. Rumors of 99-cent TV shows have been rampant but unfulfilled, simply because of the tough negotiations required to make it happen. Could the solution be to simply bring an App Store directly to the TV? If so, similar to the Hulu or Netflix app, a network provider like HGTV  could provide its own app for free and charge within for in-app content, like episodes of a show. If it wanted to provide streaming content of the past few episodes for free, it could do so. As long as it approves of the 70/30 profit split with Apple, it would maintain a lot more control over its content and pricing. The networks would be happy, and Apple would be happy. Networks could still run ads as they wished and earn even more profit.

Who would stand to lose from this? At the outset, nobody, but if such a solution were to become mainstream, then cable providers could begin to see a dip in subscriptions. Why would most consumers pay a monthly fee of $30 to over $100 if they only want to watch a certain show or a certain network? Instead of paying for needless extra content that consumers never watch (based on their own viewing habits), they can pay for content that matters to them. The providers are aware of this, which is why many of them also provide internet service (think about Verizon, Comcast (c cmcsa) and AT&T).

I think an App Store on the TV could really revolutionize how we watch and engage with content.

What are your thoughts? A new Apple TV could revolutionize the television experience. Do you think it will take off? I’d love to hear what you think, so please share your comments!

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This has made me take a serious look at Hulu Plus and Netflix.

The CliffsNotes version of this article: if you’re a movie person, get Netflix, If you’re a TV person, get Hulu Plus. The reason: Hulu’s movie selection is completely abysmal, whereas Hulu Plus is good for current-run TV shows.

Now, lets look at the apps. Our sister site NewTeeVee has a write-up covering the availability of shows here, so I’m not going to subject you to a large table in this post.

Hulu Plus ($9.99 per month)

There’s been a lot of bloviating about the short ads you’re forced to watch, even on the paid version of Hulu. They are noticeable, with an announcer’s voice that frequently grated on me. While I can kinda see the point, for me, it’s not a big deal; my cable-only channels subject me to longer, more frequent commercial interruptions. The ads on Hulu Plus aren’t a deal-breaker for me, but they are a point against the service.

What’s more of a bother to me is how limited the mobile offerings are. Not all Hulu shows are available for viewing on the iPad or iPhone. Stargate SG-1 is available in its entirety on the web; not at all on mobile (according to Netflix, this will be available for streaming August 15, so we’ll see if it’ll be on Hulu Plus then). However, Hulu Plus’s offering are deeper — where the free version might only have three shows of a season, the Hulu Plus version is more likely to have the full season. I did find Hulu was more likely to have older TV shows, as full seasons of Hill Street Blues and the A-Team are available (and let me say, the A-Team does not hold up well after all these years). Hulu’s movie selection is very weak — no mainstream movies to be found.

The app performs well. You can manage your queue, although, oddly, you can’t add a full season in one press. Because Hulu’s service is entirely streaming, I found the app a little easier to navigate than the Netflix app. However, in a curious technical decision, the Hulu Plus app doesn’t support the VGA output cable. Since I don’t have a 3G iPad, Hulu was the only one I was able to test over a cellular connection, and the results were fair, but from a small sample set: On the train to work, where AT&T coverage is spotty, the video was pixellated; at home with a better signal, it worked fine. One annoying feature in the Hulu Plus app is every time I launched it, it reminded me I was watching a video and did I want to continue watching it?

Netflix ($8.99 per month)

Comparing Hulu to Netflix is a lot like comparing iBookstore to Amazon’s Kindle store; like Amazon, Netflix has the benefit of a large library. As with Hulu, there are shows only available on Netflix — I could not find Nip/Tuck, Weeds, and Thirtysomething on Hulu; the complete offerings are only on Netflix. It also bears repeating for people who skipped my intro bit that Netflix is the place for you to go if you’re into movies.

I found the Netflix app to be a little sluggish. The video playing was usually fine, but I encountered a lot of slowness browsing the libraries. It’s also hard to pull down the Genres list — postings at the bottom were cut off. In addition, it’s impossible to just search by the titles available for streaming. Unlike the Hulu app, Netflix actually uses the VGA cable.

Final Thoughts

I was hoping that, at least for TV shows, one service would be a home run. Sadly, that’s not the case. While I found more TV shows on Netflix than Hulu that I enjoyed, I could convince myself to pay for Hulu for a few months to re-watch Hill Street Blues as well as start House and Law and Order. I’d be well ahead of the DVD costs. Hulu also earns points for current shows.

Given the economics, it’s not a requirement for an either-or service, For less than $20 a month, you can have access to a great library of movies and TV shows. The ads on Hulu Plus are a bummer. You get no commercials and larger selection (including movies, on Netflix) but Hulu Plus also lets you stay current on your shows. If you’re just staying current,  and not digging through a backlist, there’s little reason to sign up for Hulu Plus.

Looking Ahead: My Wishlist

Both these apps are fantastic, but operate under the necessity of an Internet connection, which means you’re screwed if you’re on a plane or in a bad cell area without Wi-Fi. What I’d love is for these apps to have the ability to also download movies into their device library for off-line viewing. I’m not sure how the licensing or logistics would work, but I hope that’s in their plans.

Which app do you prefer, and why?

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Scrabble

Such a classic, Scrabble is awesome on the iPad platform. Enjoy playing against friends (or a computer) on a gorgeous large game board. If you have an iPhone, download the free Scrabble Tile Rack and arrange your letters on your own device. When it’s your turn, simply flick them towards the game board and they’ll appear, ready for you to place and score big. Similar to the iPhone version, you can play against your friends locally or over a local network. Scrabble is $9.99.

Words with Friends

If there’s one app at the moment that’s popular across social networks and mobile devices, it’s Words with Friends. Similar to Scrabble, this game allows you to play, turn based, against friends who are playing on their iPads, iPhones or Facebook accounts. The app supports push notifications to let you know when it’s your turn, and you can chat in-game with your friends. At $2.99, this is definitely a fun board game for those who enjoy playing against friends and don’t want to take the leap to Scrabble.

Game Table

One of the first game apps on the iPad, Game Table provides a virtual game board for a variety of games, like checkers, chess, poker and other card games. It’s not a traditional game in the sense that you’ll have scoring or rules and stuff. Instead, it’s simply all the pieces to play games without all the fuss so you can play them any way you want. For 99 cents this app is a great value and the developers have promised that additional game pieces for Backgammon, Go and Reversi will be added soon.

UNO HD

While UNO technically is more of a card game than a board game, I decided to include it because it’s a very fun experience on the iPad. It features all of the traditional UNO rules and actions, like Draw 2, Reverse and Wild cards. It also supports multiplayer (sharing one device or multiple on a Wi-Fi network) and features challenges allowing users to unlock additional themes to give the game a fresher look. UNO HD is $4.99.

Strategery

Strategery is an engaging game originally designed for the iPhone that has been optimized for the iPad as well. This game of world domination features you as leader of a “country” (think Civilization style) and you battle against your neighbors to gain/lose territory. It supports pass-and-play style multiplayer (with up to five players) or online battles with push notifications. The iPad version allows for much larger maps and a much more engaging experience if played like a traditional board game (a group of players gathering around the iPad). At $1.99, this app is a definite must-have.

Theme Checkers

Of all board games, Checkers (or Chess) was probably the most expected to debut on the iPad. There are a variety of both available now, but my favorite is Theme Checkers HD. Just like a real game, the movement is very fluid and natural. This game supports one and two player modes and regularly updated themes for unique checkers experience. Users can even create and install their own custom themes as well. Theme Checkers HD is 99 cents, so give it a spin and see what you think.

Board Box

If you’re looking for a little more than just checkers or chess, you should check out Board Box. Similar to some of the others I’ve mentioned, it includes checkers and chess, but this app goes further by including Reversi, Tic Tac Toe, Go, Draughts and more. Not only does it include the regular version of these games, but it also includes some variants. This app doesn’t support an automated second player, so you’ll either need to suffer from having a split personality or have a friend to play against. If there’s nobody local, you can play against friends through email. The developers of Board Box have promised that there will be no in-app purchases for this app so as they continue to update and add additional game boards and variants, the updates will be free. At $3.99, Board Box is a great investment.

Ludo

If you’re a fan of Parcheesi, you should definitely check out Ludo ($3.99). Supporting up to four players (both human or computer), the game plays like real Parcheesi, except with a fresh modern interface and smooth animations and sound effects. Though there are a few other Parcheesi variants on the App Store, this one is definitely the best for the iPad. Additionally, your game state is saved so you can start and stop the game as you please.

Moonlight Mahjong

If you’re one who loves playing mahjong, check out Moonlight Mahjong for 99 cents. Putting a literal spin on the traditional idea of mahjong, this version is 3D, allowing you to use touch gestures to tilt and turn and zoom in and out. There’s over 90 built-in board layouts. When you get bored with those, you can create your own and share them with others. Plus, it offers for support of multiple players (even across Wi-Fi or against an automated opponent). If you’ve never given mahjong a shot, this is an excellent game to reduce stress and relax.

Honey, That’s Mine!

This is a “sweet” board game where players compete against each other to collect the most honey. If playing on the iPhone or iPod touch, the game supports pass-and-play for multiplayer, but if you’re on the iPad, the larger screen makes it easy to just place your iPad on a table and play against your friends. The idea of the game is rather simple, but the options for computer opponents and difficulty variations give this game additional replay value. Honey, That’s Mine is available on the App Store for $1.99.

This is just a small sampling of some of the apps available for the iPad. If you’ve tried these or found others you like, share your thoughts in the comments below. Personally I’m thrilled to find replacements of my favorite board games on the iPad. Just imagine how many little pieces I don’t have to keep up with anymore!

Steve Jobs calls the iPad Apple’s “most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device” and I’m certainly not one to disagree. The iPad boasts significant advances over the iPhone in terms of hardware and software which makes me wonder, how much of that advanced technology could make it’s way into a future Apple TV?

Hardware

While the current Apple TV boasts an Intel Pentium M 1.0GHz processor, Apple’s advances in its own chip design could pave the way for a custom processor fine tuned for the device. Apple’s reason for custom chips in the mobile arena is to provide them with what they need while giving them more control over other aspects, such as battery life. While this isn’t a concern with the Apple TV, certainly a more powerful chip while still being power efficient is desirable. A custom chip would give Apple more flexibility over performance as well. Consider the video formats the iPad can play. Many were shocked to see support for full 720p at 30 frames per second and support for .avi files up to 35Mbps. In terms of processing power, that’s more advanced than the Apple TV, and its a mobile device!

The iPad also brings support for an external keyboard through Bluetooth. That’s right. You can use your plain off the shelf Apple Wireless Keyboard with your iPad. Why not bring this same bluetooth functionality to the Apple TV? This could allow support for a wireless keyboard or any host of other Bluetooth-enabled devices. (What other devices might one use? Read on, my friend.)

Software

While the current Apple TV software runs on a modified version of the Mac operating system, there’s really no benefit provided from this approach versus an iPhone-like OS. Consider the similarities already between the two: only one “application” can run at a time and the official method of pushing content to both devices is either through the Internet or iTunes.

Another arena that Apple could pursue is to finally offer an App Store for the device. Now that the waters have been tested with the iPhone and iPod touch, an Apple TV App Store makes sense. Considering that the device has been hacked numerous times and there are many unsupported applications that can be run on the device, an official App Store would give the device more expandability and return a portion of the profit back to Apple. Since the App Store model allows the developer to reap profits from the app too, perhaps this will finally pave the way to bring Hulu into the living room via the Apple TV. If Hulu and Netflix both offered apps for the Apple TV, imagine how many of these devices Apple could move off the shelves? Game developers could build their own applications and provide interaction using an iPhone or iPad as a controller (gaining accelerometer functionality) or through their own Bluetooth-enabled peripherals.

The Apple TV is a product that has seen few updates and is referred to by Apple as a “hobby.” But what are hobbies really? It’s something done for pleasure and for leisure. Something that you work on slowly over time, but stay the course. Apple has reaffirmed their commitment to investing in the device but much like the iPhone and the iPad, it isn’t going to be a runaway success if its not the right product at the right time. The iPad will be wildly popular because of the success of the iPhone, which owes its own success to the accomplishments of the iPod. Apple has carefully built an entire ecosystem around iTunes and its devices. With the Apple TV, the best is yet to come.

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Leading up to Apple’s music event last week, rumor sites had been circling about a new format from Apple that would provide additional content, like lyrics, liner notes, video interviews and more. The rumors came true as Apple announced yet one more way to spend more money inside iTunes: iTunes LPs for music and iTunes Extras for video. Here’s what they look like up close.

Deconstructing the LP

When you purchase an iTunes LP (for this example, I’m using Tyrese Gibson’s MAYHEM!), you actually end up downloading the songs included and the animated content in a new format, called .itlp. This new format is (in this example) a very big file, a little over 400MB. Not only does it take a while to download that content, but if you start to fill your library with several of these, you’ll run out of room very quickly.

For diehard fans, iTunes LPs are simply amazing. In MAYHEM!, the additional content is an animated comic book that comes to life with spoken dialog. As more and more artists sign onto creating iTunes LPs, these will become big time components of true music enthusiasts. Let’s just hope new iTunes LPs are released more frequently than the GarageBand Artist Lessons.

And Now for Video

Apple also announced iTunes Extras for video content, allowing quick scene selection and other animated “behind the scenes” content available in these exclusive packages. For many, this could be the real deciding factor between opting to purchase a new movie on DVD or Blu-ray versus purchasing it within iTunes. The end result, while perhaps not equal in terms of additional content, is a complete movie experience, with a substantial amount of supplemental content. Unfortunately, iTunes Extras are only available when purchasing content from iTunes; they are not available with movie rentals.

If you purchase content from iTunes on your iPhone and that content supports iTunes LP or iTunes Extra, the base content (songs or movie) will download immediately to your device. The LP and Extras content will download to your computer the next time you sync your iPhone or iPod touch. Upon doing so, be sure to go to “Store” and click “Check For Available Downloads” to download the additional content.

A Good Start

The iTunes Store currently has 12 iTunes LPs available (and even some of those are pre-orders) and 15 movies featuring iTunes Extras. Though Steve likes to attribute Apple’s new iTunes LP concept to a desire to pay homage to classic LPs that included bonus content, one can’t help but think that these extra features are offered to persuade users to purchase complete albums instead of a la carte downloads. The concept is very trendy and will definitely turn heads, but will the majority of our music collection feature iTunes LPs? Probably not. Will we have them for some of the big time major artists? Maybe.

What about iTunes Extras for movies? Will this stop some people from ripping their own DVDs and purchasing the content from iTunes? Perhaps. It’s unlikely that anybody (or perhaps this is a challenge to the Handbrake team) will be able to reverse engineer the .itlp format to allow users to have their own ripped DVDs with all special features play natively within iTunes.

At the moment, iTunes LPs and iTunes Extras are only playable within, you guessed it, iTunes 9. Others have already noticed, however, that the interface for these could definitely support interaction through touch, so perhaps eventually we’ll see the ability to sync these content types with our iPhones, iPod touches or even Apple TVs.

Now the question is passed to you. What do you think? Is it worth it? Have you pre-ordered Pearl Jam or downloaded The Doors yet?

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I have a fairly large music and movie collection, and a fairly nice TV/stereo setup in the family room. To watch my movies and listen to my music on the good TV and stereo I could hook my Macbook Air up to the TV each time, but who wants to do that? Fortunately, we have an Xbox 360 in the living room that we can use to stream everything to.

I have found several different pieces of software for OS X that allow the Xbox 360 find OS X based computer’s media, but hands down the best one is Connect360.

Things I like:

• Can stream divx – this is a new feature and it totally rocks!
• Can point to a specific movie folder – instead of simply streaming iTunes content
• Can view all of your iTunes playlists
• Can adjust how often it scans your libraries – that way everytime you add media you don’t have to restart the software

Additionally, Connect360 can pretty much handle any format you throw at it:

• AAC, Apple Lossless, WMA
• MP3, WAV, AIFF
• H.264, DIVX, XVID
• MOV, AVI, WMV, ASF
• JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP
• RAW

So if you want to stream your media from your mac to your living room and have an Xbox 360 then definitely make the $20 investment into Connect360. I absolutely love it!

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