Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPod Family, iTS, Video, How-tos
Automatically Download and Convert Shows for your iPod
I hope Apple reads this post, as last night's Lost episode still isn't up on the iTMS, and here's exactly why that is a problem for them: Hackaday has a tutorial up, showing you how to automatically download and convert TV for your iPod. With this setup, you can grab a show off of bittorrent and have it converted to the proper setup. Start it running at night before you go to bed and wake up in the morning with Lost ready to go on your morning commute without having to spend $1.99 or wait for the iTMS to release the video several hours later in the day.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brian said 11:46AM on 10-20-2005
That is a great workflow that they demonstrated.
As far as the shows not being on immediately the next morning, my guess is that it is not that big of a deal to most people. People that are that urgent about watching it...usually just watch it on TV. I would say the biggest draw to TV shows on the iTMS are for people who want to go back and see the show later on. For instance, I would happily pay $2 for some of my favorite Seinfield episodes that showed over the years. I would love to go thru an archive. Shows like that are a bit harder to get on the torrent sites.
Another example is that I just found out an old friend of mine was on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition last year. I didn't get to see it. I'd love to pay a few bucks to download that.
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HowdyDoody said 12:08PM on 10-20-2005
I recorded Lost last night with my Elgato EyeTV unit. Got up this morning, cut out the commercials in about 2-3 minutes, began an export to a custom MPEG4 I set up then took my morning shower. By the time I was done, the show was ready to be loaded onto the iPod, in a better quality than iTMS offers.
I also converted all of the current HDTV rips that I downloaded of Rome last night. They look incredibly great on the iPod.
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Berko said 12:17PM on 10-20-2005
The problem with the HAD tutorial is that the Videora software is PC only. Anyone know of a similar program for Mac? That's been my biggest peeve about downloading from torrent sites: the variety of formats/codecs. VLC is great, but I generally prefer QT especially now that QTPro has the export to iPod option. I am all about automation though, so if anyone has some suggestions on these problems, I'm all ears. Drop a contact on my blog.
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William Bright said 12:22PM on 10-20-2005
I'd love to see a PC tutorial of ripping your DVDs to your iPod video too...
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Tom said 12:25PM on 10-20-2005
Appreciate the hack-a-day link, but... Oh. My. God. Are we going to have to hear this same thing on TUAW every single Monday and Thursday after the two big shows? Seriously, please give it a rest.
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Kristoffer Segerlind said 12:28PM on 10-20-2005
I belive that iTMS releases the LOST episode around 24 hours after the show was on tv, or else they could have said that the show would be up at iTMS four or five hours after the TV show has been shown on tv.
But I can't download any tv shows or even music videos because I live in Sweden were none of the things are available, just music...
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Jacob Varghese said 12:43PM on 10-20-2005
I don't think this is a big deal to Apple - at least in the short term. In the short term (1-3 years), their goal is to sell more Ipods. If there is an EASY way for people to grab video content from their TVs and convert it into iPod-friendly files, then that will increase demand for new iPods. The money is in iPods now, not in the content. Eventually, the content will be able to generate more revenue for them. Even on the music side, Apple barely makes any money from selling music on iTunes.
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dirt said 12:55PM on 10-20-2005
Jacob> Well said! I agree with you 100%.
Here is a great analysis written on Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000150063278/
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BLAH, You're an idiot said 1:23PM on 10-20-2005
Are you an idiot ? Everyday after LOST, Where's LOST ? LOST, still isn't posted ? WTF ? And every time you'll come back and say... OH, It's 4pm there it is... what a surprise!!! They've done it, what 3 times like that... Get F*cking used to it...
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Chris said 2:27PM on 10-20-2005
The real question is when are the ipod formatted shows going to start poping up on torrent sites?
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Sy said 2:32PM on 10-20-2005
#10 I have scanned torrent sites and indeed, ipod formatted videos have already popped up.
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Cyberwhore said 1:41AM on 10-21-2005
Try and download the torrent version of lost @ 350MB or so and see how long *actually* it takes to download.
You might then stop complaining that the iTunes store is 24 hours behind.
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