FrontRow 2 Review: TV Shows

November 6, 2007   0 Comments
Leopard is hear, and it brings FrontRow 2.0. Most of us are familiar with this interface on the AppleTV. With the menu too one side and a carousel of icons on the other, it picks up where FrontRow 1.x left off.

We installed leopard on a 1.6GHz MacMini which has been set up as a HTPC. Music was store on an external harddrive, along with tv shows and some movies, all managed by iTunes. A healthy sized iPhoto Library lives on the internal drive. On another external we stored other movies, all aliased in folders in the user/~movies folder.

Here are review of TV Shows Section:

TV Shows is now its own top-level menu item, after all they are the iTunes Store's top-selling video items. Previously they were all tucked away under the movies category.

Our test machine contained over 5GB of TV shows. Most were captured through our EyeTV Hybrid, while others were purchased directly from iTunes Store. They are all managed and organized through iTunes, and given the proper meta-data when necessary.

The TV Shows area is extremely simple. Displaying the iTunes Top TV Episodes, in a familiar carrousel rotation, followed by a listing of each show in your collection. Each TV Show grouping is presented with the artwork included in iTunes. For items imported from other sources, the preview is a snapshot from the first frame. Not purchasing all of our shows, we went back and added artwork for consistency. The biggest change we have found here is that FrontRow 2 now knows how to sort TV Shows alphabetically, unlike FrontRow 1.x where the order seemed to be randomly selected by a keno machine.

Entering the TV Show listing, will pull up a complete list of episodes available. These are all sorted by season and episode number in descending order, meaning your most recent episode will be on top. Notably the season subfolders are now missing, which we think is a mistake. Most tv shows will have a run of 2-5 years, resulting in potentially +120 episodes. Everything seems to be loading fine from our library, but when you have that many episodes, you have to wonder if the load times will increase and how difficult will it be to locate individual episodes.

The artwork continues to appear along the left, with aired date, length, episode, season, and description all pulled from iTunes. We also noticed that if a description is not available, it will use the comments section instead. This is important for those of you that rip your TV shows from DVD's and want to get as much metadata in there as possible. TV.com is an excellent source for descriptions, episode numbers etc. The date aired field only seems to appear in iTunes purchased episodes, and we were unable to add this meta data through iTunes.

The one unique feature we found in the TV show area is the ability to change the listing between the show title and the date added. This feature is not very well executed. Sorting my date, brings up a mile long listing of episode titles, from all the different TV shows. They are listed by show name making locating an episode extremely difficult. If Apple allowed us to sort by TV show it would help tame this messy listing.

The TV Show section has taken a predominant position in FrontRow finally. Apple has tackled this section well, providing instant access to your TV Shows. The metadata is the highlight of the experience, allowing you to quickly identify episodes. This is a major step above FrontRow's TV Show management, but there are some areas which need improvement. Not grouping episodes by season, and the top level listing by date should be addressed. Overall we are pleased with the way the TV Show section has been presented.

Labels: FrontRow, Leopard

QuickTime 7.2.1 MIA

November 5, 2007   0 Comments
When Leopard was release it was packaged with a new version of Apple's QuickTime Player. 7.2.1 however is not publicly available for download on Apples Website, leading us to believe that its release, or a higher version is coming around the corner.

Currently Apple's provides QuickTime 7.2, which was specifically built for "Mac OS X v10.3.9 and v10.4.9 or later". Recently we were encountering several issues with a 7.2.1 and iTunes installed on a HTPC. Suspecting a bad QT installation we went to download the latest available to discover it could not be installed on Leopard.

Currently there are now major differences between the two versions that are jumping out at us. There is the obvious user interface changes such the border-less player windows, pro logo change, and leopard compatibility, but the rest of the application seems the same, all the way down to the preferences.

Labels: Leopard, QuickTime

Leopard Review: Screen Sharing

November 3, 2007   0 Comments
HTPC Media Management is tough if you don't utilize a blue tooth keyboard or mouse, and the Apple Remote can only go so far. In the past we suggested utilizing Chicken of the VNC, an free VNC tool, which set up properly gives you access to your HTPC from another system. With Leopards release with over 350 new features, Apple has provided an alternative to Chicken of the VNC, in Screen Sharing. The more popular new features been documented over and over again, while Screen Sharing has seemed to slip under the radar.

Since Tiger, the Apple Remote Desktop service was available through your Sharing Preferences. With a Password you were able to connect and control the system with a VNC Application such as Chicken of the VNC or Apple's Remote Desktop. The results were good, but there was a lot of room for improvement. Little things such as refresh rate, screen scaling and a right mouse click, made the VNC interface challenging. Chicken of the VNC was also a very old application, with the last update coming in January of 2004. But for being an open-source free application it was great! Apple Remote Desktop can run all sorts of reports, but was really designed for IT Systems Management.


Leopard's Screen Sharing addresses those issues, and integrates a light weight, viewer right into the operating system. The response time and screen's refresh rate are extremely smooth. I could easily perform a days work through the Screen Sharing window without any issues. A few shortcuts such as screen captures and expose will trigger your local machine. Additionally Screen Sharing is backward compatible with Tiger. If you have the Remote Desktop service running in Tiger, Leopard can control it with Screen Sharing. The best part is that its extremely easy to set up, needing only a few clicks.

How To in 2 Steps

• Enable Remote Desktop / Screen Sharing
  On your remote computer open your sharing preferences. In OS-X Tiger you will enable 'Apple Remote Desktop'. We added a password in the Access Privileges for extra safety. In Leopard you have two options, you can enable Screen Sharing or Remote Management. Remote Management is specifically designed to work with Apple's Remote Desktop, while Screen Sharing is the slimmer version.


• Connecting
  From the 'Shared' panel in an Open Finder window, select your HTPC. A 'Share Screen...' button will now be available under the Connect As button. This will open your remote system in a new window. This window can be scaled smaller to conserve desktop space.

Labels: Leopard, Tips and Tricks

EyeTV NOW compatible with Leopard

October 31, 2007   0 Comments
Elgato was aware of the problems caused with EyeTV and OS-X Leopard, since its release last Friday. Today Elgato has fixed these incompatibilities in EyeTV 2.5.1, but they didn't stop there. A host of new features appeared, many taking advantage of Leopard's core components.


The most notable addition is the iChat Theater playback for video files. You can play your wifi prepared recordings and control them, while giving your chatting with your buddies about the video. Spaces support allows you to jump without loosing your TV shows. Quicklooks is enabled for all your recordings. Coverflow works for your EyeTV Archive.

A few other devices have been added to the compatiability charts including the TerraTec Cinergy S, Piranha, Pinnacle 72e and Logitec LDT.


The free download is available for registered 2.0 user. You may also access this through your Update EyeTV in the applicaiton itself. 50MB Total!

Labels: ElGato, EyeTV, Leopard

EyeTV not compatible with Leopard

October 29, 2007   0 Comments
Reports from our readers and confirmed by Elgato, that EyeTV users have been encountering issues with the Apple Remote and EyeTV 2.5 installed on Leopard. Elgato built and designed EyeTV 2.5 to be compatible with leopard, and had been testing the software with developer builds. With the final 'gold' standard released, several recent changes has made EyeTV not entirely compatible with Leopard.

The good news is Elgato is aware of these issues and are addressing them. An EyeTV update will be available, and free to registered EyeTV2 users.

More information is available through Elgato's Technical FAQ's. Once the update is released, we'll be updating

Labels: ElGato, EyeTV, Leopard

FrontRow 2 Review: Photos

October 27, 2007   2 Comments
Leopard is hear, and it brings FrontRow 2.0. Most of us are familiar with this interface on the AppleTV. With the menu too one side and a carousel of icons on the other, it picks up where FrontRow 1.x left off.

We installed leopard on a 1.6GHz MacMini which has been set up as a HTPC. Music was store on an external harddrive, along with tv shows and some movies, all managed by iTunes. A healthy sized iPhoto Library lives on the internal drive. On another external we stored other movies, all aliased in folders in the user/~movies folder.

Here are review of Photos Section:

With most HTPC applications out there, Photo managment is always seems to get the shaft. Here we get to see the most uninspiring designs and layouts. FrontRow 2 is no exception, but it does take steps to boost itself above most HTPC applications.

We gave our test a health collection of photos, spanning many years and over 5GB of images to browse. These are all located and managed by iPhoto 7.0. We have several events, several Smart Albums, and dumb Albums to test with.

First entering the Photos area, you are presented with several menu options. The first option was shared, followed by photos, and two standard filters, "Last Month", and "Last Import." The two filters display their images quickly, as if all 1253 pictures were already preloaded. This was incredibly impressive considering how it was to display pictures in Tiger's FrontRow. The Shared option quickly connects to shared albums out there as well, and we are on a G network. The Photos, we expected to be an unfiltered list of all the photos, but we were surprised to find the list of events to browse through. Following those menu options you have your Smart Albums and Dumb Albums, listed in the same order as in iPhoto. Once again the images appeared almost immediately. Playing the album brings up the familiar music and fading transitions from one photo to another.

Its certain that FrontRow 2 has improved its interaction with iPhoto. The quickness in the photo access is simply amazing, and the high-res images are stunning. We would of like to see an alternative way of viewing photos, perhaps in a grid view. Skipping from picture to picture in the slide show is still slow, which makes finding single photos in large albums a daunting task. Our only other request would be instead of listing all the Albums on the main screen use a sub menu, and bring Events to the main menu.

Labels: FrontRow, Leopard

CenterStage dropping Tiger support?

October 25, 2007   0 Comments
The CenterStage Project, one of the first, and most promising HTPC projects for the Macintosh is considering dropping Tiger (10.4) support once they get their hands on Leopards developer tools. The move is a logical, with Leopard including all new core-animation, core-data, and other tools. It would be foolish for them to ignore these new enhancements that would better their application.

EntertainMac is always a supporter of using the latest and greatest technologies behind. The switch should speed up development of the application, to where we could see a final product sooner then later. But we also believe that this will cut out a large portion of the early MacHTPC users out there. Those with G4's slower then 867MHz, and with less than 512mb of RAM will be immediately be dropped. Centerstage was nice, as it wasn't restrictive on which systems you could use it on.

Whats your opinion? The project has posted the question on their message boards and are looking for your input.

Labels: CenterStage, Leopard

Oct 26th - Leopard Release Day

October 16, 2007   0 Comments
Apple has announced that Leopard will infact be released on October 26th at 6:00PM. Within the last week there have been rumors flying that leopard would hit the selves soon, just nobody could confirm it. You may already pre-order leopard from Amazon and now you may do it through Apple as well. $129 for a single user license and $199 for the family pack.

Ten days and counting...
We hate waiting to, so here are a few suggestions to kill the 10 days until OS-X Leopard's release.

• Day 1: Qualify your system requirements. Make sure you meet the new 10.5 Standard.
• Day 2: Rip DVD's - FrontRow2 will play video_ts folders, meaning you don't need to rip your movies as mp4 anymore!
• Day 3: Backup... This is going to be a huge update, so make sure you have everything backed up or run the risk of loss.
• Day 4: Devise a way to get Leopard installed on a G3 B&W... you would be ubercool.
• Day 5: Break out your camping gear. Shop for non-perishable food.
• Day 6: Purchase an external harddrive. TimeMachine requires an additional drive if you want to make backups.
• Day 7: Find yourself a comfy spot on the sidewalk infront of the Apple Store. Set up camp.
• Day 8: Start making excuses to why your missing a halloween party to install an operating system.
• Day 9: Invite the local new to video you infront of the Apple Store. Tell him you've been a die hard fan since 2005, and show off bounty from the last time you waited in an Apple line.
• Day 10: Buy OS-X, Cheer, Turn Cartwheels, and Go home to be the first to install it. Spend the next 24 hrs writing reviews and complaining about 'missing features'

With 350+ new features, this will be one of the most anticipated releases in Apple OS history. We'll see you inline!

Labels: Apple, FrontRow, Leopard