iFunia News Blog

Apple TV lets you buy and rent HD movies right from your TV. Plus, enjoy YouTube videos, HD TV shows, podcasts, music, and photos. Well,  with that latest advances in home wireless networking and iTunes we have found that the Apple TV has become a viable choice as a home media centre. There are still a few holes in what it can do, but it looks pretty good.

First, access to your iTunes library directly. With the advances of N-series wireless home networks it is now possible for your Apple TV to stream content direct from your iTunes library. Prior to N-series wireless, the speeds were not fast enough for streaming, forcing you to sync content from your iTunes library to your Apple TV. This syncing approach was also limited by the size of the Apple TV internal hard drive.

Second, digitising your DVD collection. For those of us who are sick of digging around DVD boxes and trying to find that lost DVD, it is now very easy to store your DVDs in your iTunes library. All you do is rip your DVDs using Handbrake or 3rd-party app like iFunia DVD Ripper Pro, then drop them into iTunes. It couldn’t be easier. You can then play the videos on your Apple TV.

Third, enjoy various video files(including HD!) onto the widescreen TV in your living room with Apple TV. All you do is convert all popular video to Apple TV MP4/H.264 video or M4A, MP3 audio formats using Apple TV Video Converter and drop them into iTunes.  Also, the iTunes store in most countries now supports movie and TV show rental and purchase. From a technical viewpoint, this works just fine. We’ve rented and purchased a few movies and there is at most a 2 minute delay between purchasing and being able to start watching. With a few clicks of the remote, you may rent and watch HD movies or TV shows to your widescreen TV easily.