Sling Media has released their SlingPlayer 1.0 for the Mac today. The software client allows for 'placeshifting' your television to your remote location. This will allow you to watch your local media from your laptop while your away on business or vacation. You will need a Slingbox to receive and encode the tv stream as well. The SlingPlayer software is available for download from their site.

This of course leaves the hackers to get it running on AppleTV which would be the first TV feed viewed from AppleTV. But it only soundslike an expensive alternative to just connecting the cable feed to the TV to begin with.

With the latest release of HandBrake, you can now quickly and easily add Chapter markers in your movies in FrontRow. Prior to the latest HandBrake adding Chapter markers would require some extensive work within Quicktime, and another export to a MOV file.

1. Handbrake Setup
With v0.8.5, a new set of options appear. I've heard the bst preset is the AppleTV preset. It is a MP4/AAC file @ 2500 kbps. Make any other video and audio preferences you would like. Be sure to select the 'Create Chapter Markers'



2. Change File Extension
By default MP4 files are not identified with the ability to have chapter markers. Change the file extension to .m4v. Without doing this, your chapter markers won't work in FrontRow, QuickTime or iTunes.



3. Add to FrontRow
After the file has been encoded, add it to your ~movies folder or to iTunes. This will make the m4v movie accessable via FrontRow, and that is basically it. Instead of jumping 30 sec forward or back, your movie will jump to the next chapter marker, just like a DVD.

This process should work for movies sent over to your AppleTV, but it would be great to get a confirmation.

Many of you FrontRow users out there often boast about how large their mp3 / media collection is. Well Will Friedwald claims to have the largest iTunes Collection. Glenn Wolsey has a great interview with him over at his site.

So how large is it? Well it is about 300GB larger then the largest I have heard of. At 849GB Will can listen to his iTunes collection for 809 days without hearing the same track again. He has even dubbed it The Matrix. Oh yea... it all music.

He maintains 2 seperate libraries. One for the main collection 'the matrix' and the other the 'annex' (200-300gb) which is slowly being added to the matrix. If you were to combine the libraries you'd be looking at over 1.2TB!

The iTunes Library: 'The Matrix'

• 849 GB
  
• 172k Tracks
  
• 2,935 Artists
  
• 11x561 Albums
  
• DB File 282 MB
  
• XML File 259 MB

iTunes was designed for people to buy music from the store, to put CDs on their iPods, and then, perhaps lastly, to store some of a personal CD collection in the library. It was NOT designed for what I am doing with it, which is to store, manage and access a major music collection of nearly 200,000 tracks. As a result, when I am working with the full 800 GB library, it is painfully slow...

It would be interesting to see where iTunes's breaking point is. The library is loaded into RAM so, a 8 Core MacPro with some RAM would probably have no issue with his collection, but the single processor G5 tends to take 4 min to get info on a track.

After a slight identity crisis, HandBrake is back. Their latest release includes several improvements over the previous versions. These included user requested features such as AAC5.1 and DolbyProLogicII, AppleTV and PS3 Support, High Profile H.264, and my favorite Chapter Markers! You can read the entire change set in their release notes.

The update is available now at 15.2 MB for us Mac users. Remember its still a beta but it looks like with the new improvements a lot of users will be re-ripping their dvd libraries!

When MediaFork 0.8.0 was released there was a swarm of new users and developers to help their cause. A year ago they had 2 devs, today they have over a dozen! Impressive! With this we should expect to see more features and more releases!

Elgato has released version 2.4. The main feature of this release is the new AppleTV support. Utilizing their iPod export (should this be AppleTV export?) which can be utilized manually or through scheduled recordings.

Additionally EyeTV 2.4 includes several improvements and bugs. These include adding Apple's Spotlight, additional language support, multiple monitor support and in the program guide additions.

EyeTV 2.4 adds more features to the Program Guide. Program description texts supplied by tvtv are now considerably more detailed. Areas of the time line in which broadcasts are scheduled for recording are now highlighted in pink, providing the user with a quick reference. A progress bar now tracks Program Guide updates, an improvement that is particularly valuable for users of satellite solutions with many channels for which a large amount of program data must be transferred.

Concluding the update it also includes fixes and additional support for TerraTec Cinergy T XE and Hayuppauge's WinTV Nova-TD.

As promised, iTheater 0.1.4 was released today. From the basic user many of the new features will not be apparent right away. The latest release is more focused on application development. The application architecture now contains a framework API, 3rd Party Plug in Support and Module support. Basic users will notice the new tabbed interface in the preferences, and shutdown and start up transitions.

Giving it our quick testing, we noticed the interface is still just as fast and responsive as before. The interface is sleek and we are looking forward to the potential 3rd party modules that may be developed.

The application downloads at 5.9 MB, which includes the installer, and new uninstaller. You can get it here at their sourceforge download center.

Apple is announcing another major studio to its iTunes Store. MGM will now be offering titles from its catalog to be purchased for download. Today "Dances With Wolves", "The Great Train Robery", "Rocky", "Ronin" and my personal favorite "Mad Max"

MGM is one of the most prestigious studios with over 208 Academy Award films in its collection.

“It’s exciting to be bringing so many amazing films from our catalog to iTunes,” said Douglas A. Lee, MGM’s executive vice president of Worldwide Digital Media. “We have an unrivaled movie library and are looking forward to adding even more films in the future so users can take their favorite movies with them wherever they go.”

To date Apple has sold over 2 Million moves through the iTunes store.

With hacks by the dozen being release almost on a daily basis, and more drama then a soap opera, the AppleTV has been uncloaked as a MacNano of sorts. However recently, hackers have discovered their newly installed code disappearing overnight. Claims were the Apple Toothfairy came in and robbed them of their precious code.

The boys over at EnGadget contacted Apple regarding this Backdoor; which they received a word from Apple that all of these claims are false. Apple does not have a back door into your machine, and their policy is, you buy the box, you own the box. Just be mindful of that warranty.

A few other devices out there will reset themselves if tampered with. AppleTV may just be 'fixing' the parts of the OS that they see as 'damaged'.

El Gato has will be introducing a new innovative hardware converter for you to quickly and easily convert your video to H.264 beautiful. Recognizing that software has its limitations, El Gato's Turbo.264 will quickly export videos to your iPod and Apple TV at 640x480 and 320x240 varieties. Currently converting files is 100% software based. This hardware converter will cut down your conversion times for your EyeTV recorded TV Shows, Movies, and perhaps torrents that you have downloaded for your HTPC.

Roughly the same size as a standard USB stick, the turbo.264 will integrate with EyeTV and also provide a drag-and-drop application for conversion on the fly. Utilizing QuickTime's export ability allows the Turbo.264 anything that QuickTime can play. This includes XviD, DIVX, WMV, etc.

Turbo.264 will be available in April at $99 USD. Personally I can't wait to get my hands on this one. The majority of my HTPC content is from EyeTV and the export process can be improved upon.

Is Apple rolling out the welcome mat for XviD? Probably not. XviD has made it to the QuickTime Components listing over at QuickTime's resources page. Xvid of course is one of the more popular video compression formats out there, with most torrents coming in this variety.

We believe that the adding of Xvid was simply based on the codecs popularity, and the immediate AppleTV hack to support the format. With this codec you can now properly export your XviD movies to a more Apple friendly M4V format.

Whoever updated the site, forgot to change the logo to point to XviD's site rather than DIVX!

Steve Jobs made a bold statement regarding how he would allow non-DRM music in iTMs if the record lables allowed it. Today with EMI's announcement, DRM-Free music will be made available through the iTunes Music Store.

The DRM-Free music is meant to compliment the DRM content in iTunes. Versions of both types will be available for download, however at different price ranges and different qualities. DRM-Free downloads will be available at a higher quality for $1.29. The standard DRM'd versions will be available at $.99, and for those iTMS users who already have the DRM'd verisions can upgrade to the non-DRM version for 30¢. Its nice to have options.

"Selling digital music DRM-free is the right step forward for the music industry," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "EMI has been a great partner for iTunes and is once again leading the industry as the first major music company to offer its entire digital catalogue DRM-free."

If you wish to view/listen to the announcement EMI has made it available as a podcast, pdf, wmv, and realaudio.