Time for a show with a hardware bent!

Lots of buzz around the internet about a product that enables you to "hack" your Apple TV simply and easily. All without opening the case and potentially voiding your warranty.

The product is aTV Flash v3.0 from Applecore LLC.

In order to play virtually any video format on your Apple TV, the steps to update are these:

• Buy the aTV Flash software and download to your Mac.
• Download a free disk image file from Apple.
• Insert a Flash USB drive on your Mac and run a script
• Restore your Apple TV to factory settings
• Insert the Flash USB drive into the Apple TVs USB port and reboot

And that's it!

This weeks show takes you through all these stages in detail and even shows you how to setup and transfer media to your Apple TV via FTP plus how to use some of the Applications installed as part of the aTV flash upgrade.

As well as being able to play virtually any video format, some added benefits of upgrading your Apple TV which I cover in the show are:

• Decouple your Apple TV from iTunes and just drag and drop media files to your Apple TV via FTP
• Access and update metadata from the Internet Movie Database and other Internet sources for Movie and TV Show information
• Browse the Internet from your couch with a Webkit based browser

But there is still more I wasn’t able to cover in this weeks show including:

• Viewing Video_TS folders and accessing DVD menus
• Accessing Independant Movies via Jaman
• Even Ordering Pizza online!

Please note that this show has not been sponsored or endorsed by Applecore LLC.

Discussions: Forum

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Rounding off the two part tutorial on Apples iMovie '08, this week's show looks at some of the more advanced aspects of movie creation using this unique software application.

The 30 minute show covers various topics including:

• Sound Adjustments to Project Clips
• Adding and Manipulating Background Music
• Pinned and Floating Music
• Adding Sound Effects
• Adding Voice Overs
• Adding Titles & Transitions
• Advanced Tools
• Keyword Management
• Sharing Your Video

Also in this weeks 30 minute show are some details about next weeks Podcast and New Media Expo which I'll be attending. If you're around, say hello!

This weeks show is an Extra Members show and is available in Apple TV HD format (1280x720), Enhanced Desktop ED Format (960x540) and iPhone/iPod resolution (640x360). For full details on how easy it is to become an Extra! member and get this show along with the next six months worth of weekly shows PLUS access to over 110+ Mac based tutorials, just follow this link.

Discussions: Forum

Extra members get access to full versions of the show in AppleTV (HD), ED and iPod resolutions.
The free show (or trailer) is at a much lower resolution.
Click here for more details on becoming a ScreenCastsOnline Extra! member

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As promised, this week's show is an in-depth look at iMovie '08, the latest addition to the iLife '08 suite of applications from Apple.

Apple have re-written iMovie '08 from scratch and it shows! Ideal for new users or anyone who wants to edit video in record time.

But iMovie '08 is more than just a video editing package, it's a whole new way to organise, store and share video.

This week's show is Part 1 of what may turn out to be an extended series of tutorials on iMovie '08 and covers:

• iMovie '08 User Interface
• Understanding Clips & Storage
• Video Formats & Importing Video
• Basic Clip Organisation
• Creating & Assembling Projects
• Video Adjustments

This weeks show is an Extra Members show and is available in Apple TV HD format (1280x720), Enhanced Desktop ED Format (960x540) and iPhone/iPod resolution (640x360). For full details on how easy it is to become an Extra! member and get this show along with the next six months worth of weekly shows PLUS access to over 110+ Mac based tutorials, just follow this link.

Discussions: Forum

Extra members get access to full versions of the show in AppleTV (HD), ED and iPod resolutions.
The free show (or trailer) is at a much lower resolution.
Click here for more details on becoming a ScreenCastsOnline Extra! member

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You'll really need to concentrate for this weeks show! I covered this topic many moons ago and it was in fact, the very first pseudo members only show but before we had the Extra! membership scheme!

This week is all about searching, accessing and downloading from the amazing wealth of content that's available from the UseNet binary groups.

There's an awful lot packed into this week's show so you'll need your wits about you. The show covers:

Usenet - All about UseNet
GigaNews - A commercial UseNet host service
NewzBin - A Commercial UseNet Indexing service
iGrabNews - A brilliant newsgroup reader with support for NZB files
MacPar Deluxe - A great par checker and unpacker
Split & ConCat - A concatenation utility

By the end of the show you'll have a good idea on how to harness the power of the UseNet binary groups and fully understand how to access and download tons of content.

As promised, here are the links for the various services and software packages described in the show:

GigaNews
NewzBin
NB Since the original show was published, NewzBin have temporarily stopped taking new members. This may have changed again by the time you read this update! If you can't join NewzBin, check out the ScreenCastsOnline forum post for some alternatives.
iGrabNews
MacPar Deluxe
Split & ConCat



Discussions: Forum

Extra members get access to full versions of the show in AppleTV (HD), ED and iPod resolutions.
The free show (or trailer) is at a much lower resolution.
Click here for more details on becoming a ScreenCastsOnline Extra! member

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Yes, it's only just been released, but I thought you might like a quick overview!

This week's show takes a look at the new YouTube integration delivered for free to your Apple TV. Instead of crouching over your Mac watching postage stamp sized, badly encoded video clips, you can now watch them in your living room on your HD TV in h.264 goodness.

OK, so it's not quite HD quality but it's a much improved user experience.

Take a look and see if it's enough to make you finally decide to get the Apple TV - This is the first of many upgrades and additions that are slated to occur over the next two years following Apples recent change in accounting practice. This means that can add functionality to existing devices without having to charge for it and still remain within the bounds of corporate governance (or something like that!).

Also this week, my good buddy Victor over at the Typical Mac User Podcast has asked me to co-host this weeks live podcast with him on Talkshoe - the interactive podcast. If you've not used Talkshoe before, it's a great service that allows you to host a fully interactive podcast to a live audience and includes a live chat room and the ability to telephone in and chat with the hosts. This weeks show is on Sunday 24th June at 5pm PST, 8pm EST and 1am for me over in the UK. I'll be staying up late with some strong coffee and I'd love for as many ScreenCastsOnline viewers to join in.

The screencast gives a quick overview of Talkshoe and shows you how to get setup for Sunday.

If you don't want to participate directly (or if it's too late for you!) you can listen live or download the podcast once it's finished.

Discussions: Forum

Extra members get access to full versions of the show in AppleTV (HD), ED and iPod resolutions.
The free show (or trailer) is at a much lower resolution.
Click here for more details on becoming a ScreenCastsOnline Extra! member

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Yes, the 100th show!

Thanks for all the support and good wishes from everyone which has made reaching this milestone possible!

This week is a double episode covering two very distinctly different product areas.

Elgato turbo.264 Video Encoder - The first is the new hardware based H.264 video encoder from Elgato. This innocuous and inexpensive piece of kit plugs into a spare USB 2 port on your Mac and turbocharges your H.264 video encoding with amazing results. If you do any amount of video encoding for your iPod or Apple TV you must watch this screencast!

You'll be amazed at how cheaply you can double, treble or even quadruple your video encoding speed, even on an older Mac!

Product Link

OmniPlan - The second part of the screencast is all about the Project Management application OnmniPlan from Omni Group. I don't usually cover business based applications in ScreenCastsOnline, so this is a bit of an experiment. If you like it, let me know and I'll cover some more business applications.

OmniPlan is another of those Omni Group applications that just works and make planning on the Mac a pleasure!

The screencast covers the basic UI and functions of OmniPlan and leads you through making a simple project plan. I also cover some of the exporting features on OmniPlan.

As mentioned in the screencast, you can get a 10% discount of the usual price of OmniPlan by using the coupon code SCREENCASTPLAN when buying via the online store (valid up to 15th July 2007.

Product Link

As mentioned in the show, as a celebration of the 100th episode, I'm releasing both the Hi Definition version (1280x720) and the Enhanced Definition (960x540) for freedownload together with a time limited offer of a discounted Extra! membership offer. Please follow this link to download the HD shows and check out the details of the discounted membership offer.

Discussions: Forum

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Did you know that your Mac comes with the power to be part of a multiprocessor supercomputer, straight out of the box!

Yes, included as part of OSX (Tiger 10.4) your Mac has access to Xgrid, software developed by Apple's Advanced Computation Group which allows you to group and access a network of Macs and share the under utilised processing power using Distributed Computing technology!

What's even better is it's pretty easy to setup (at least if you follow this screencast!).

But why would you want to do this?

Have you got an Apple TV?
Do you encode or convert lots of video?

Well Xgrid is fully supported by VisualHub, one of the video converters demonstrated in SCO0095 - How to Get Videos Onto Apple TV. So if you have a few spare Macs, you can create your own Xgrid network at no cost and speed up the encoding process significantly.

Check out the screencast for a brief explanation of the technology and a walk through guide on setting up your own Xgrid network.

Even if you don't want to set Xgrid up, it's pretty cool technology and yet another reason why we love the Mac so much!

Here are some of the links as mentioned in the show:

GeekMeetsGirl - VisualHub Xgrid Enabler
Xgrid Wikipedia Entry
Apple Server Admin Tools
Apple Xgrid Page
VisualHub Forums

Discussions: Forum

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It's the first week of the month so it must be an Extra! members only show!

This week I follow up with part 2 on the Apple TV. Last week I looked at a basic overview of its setup and operation, this week I look at getting content onto the Apple TV. This is incredibly important for those of us outside of the US with no access to video content from the iTunes store except for video podcasts.

So this week I look at:

* Moving your iTunes Library to Airport Extreme and External Drives
* When to sync and when to stream
* Configuring your Apple TV
* Using video "watched" status to automagically manage your Apple TV content
* Ripping and Converting DVDs to Movies
* Creating and Installing DVD cover art
* Using your Mac as a PVR and importing TV shows into Apple TV
* Using Bittorrent to find TV Shows on the Internet
* Converting TV Shows to play on Apple TV
* Accessing hidden MP4 metadata to organisise videos and add special tags

So as you can see, it's another pretty packed show running to over 40 minutes of content.

You'll need to be an Extra! member to get this weeks show (it's the usual monthly Extra! only show). Get yourself a membership to make sure you don't miss out - full details here And don't forget, Extra! members get access to this show (and over 70 other shows) in Apple TV compatible HD format - that's 720p or 1280x720 - to watch ScreenCastsOnline in HD on your Apple TV.

Here are some links mentioned in the show:

Handbrake/Mediafork
VisualHub
EyeTV
tvRSS
xTorrent
Lostify

Also in the show, I mention the new ScreenCastsOnline Affiliate scheme, a free way for you to promote ScreenCastsOnline and get rewarded in the process! If you're interested in taking part in this new scheme, checkout the details here

Discussions: Forum

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Well at long last, the Apple TV has finally hit the UK! Following on from the anticipation, does the Apple TV match the hype? Find out by watching this weeks show which takes you through the basic setup and usage of Apple TV.

Using live video capture and screencaptures, I take you through the process of setting up an Apple TV, the basic menu structure, syncing with iTunes, streaming from other computers, basically everything you need to know about the Apple TV.

Next week, I'll be looking at some cool utilities and tools that help you get your own content on the Apple TV, especially useful if you're not in the US as we don't get TV shows or Movies from the iTunes store anyway! You'll need to be an Extra! member to get get next weeks show (it's the usual monthly Extra! only show). Get yourself a membership to make sure you don't miss out - full details here

Also in the show, I mention the new ScreenCastsOnline Affiliate scheme, a free way for you to promote ScreenCastsOnline and get rewarded in the process! If you're interested in taking part in this new scheme, checkout the details here

Discussions: Forum

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Democracy Player is a free, open source video player built from the ground up to watch Internet TV. With its inbuilt channel guide of over 600 Internet TV channels, Democracy Player is the ideal tool to manage and view an ever increasing library of free video content available on the web.

This show previews version 0.9 which is due out in the next week or so (4th Sept 06) and has some great new features included making Democracy Player more than a viable alternative to iTunes to manage and view your Internet videos.

The free show is in the the usual Desktop and iPod format of 640x360 so if you want to get the higher resolution versions you need to sign up as a ScreenCastsOnline Extra! member.

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Want to watch and record TV on your mac? Want to use a "Front Row" intergrated interface to access your TV guide and recordings? Want to use your Apple remote to control Live TV and recordings? Want to edit your TV recordings to remove ad breaks? Want to make DVDs and VideoCDs of your TV recordings? Want to convert and copy your TV programs to your iPod automatically?

This screencast shows you how to do all this by utilising the amazing new EyeTV 2 software from Elgato Systems

In the show I also demonstrate the new EyeTV for DTT device just launched by Elgato in Europe. It's basically a Freeview tuner that's the size of a memory stick and plugs straight into your USB2.0 port, turning your mac into a powerful PVR.

Even better is that we're giving one away as a competition prize (kindly donated by Elgato Systems)

No Extra! section this week as the show is sponsored by Elgato Systems. As it's a sponsored show, I'm releasing it in high resolution (960x600) to the free feed but Extra! members will still have access to the extreme high resolution version of 1280x800.

Discussions: Forum

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A run down of three different apps to encode your video clips into iPod format.

I also include some tips on managing your clips within iTunes and announce details of a new competition coming up in the next few weeks

Please leave all comments about this ScreenCast on the ScreenCastsOnline Forums

Duration: 15:42
Size: Desktop:28MB iPod:TBA HiDef:40MB
Platform: mac
Level: Easy
Links:

Quicktime Pro
Podner
Mpeg Streamclip

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A 10 minute screencast demoing the new Beta 2 release of DTV - Internet TV on your Mac

A brilliant app that uses RSS feeds with enclosures to assemble Video Channels that you can subscribe to and download to your mac. Sorry the app is mac only at present but a Windows version is planned. At least you can watch this screencast to see what you are missing and what you can look forward to!


Duration: 9:27
Size: 23MB
Platform: mac
Level: Simple
Links: DTV

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