Apple TV play DVD from laptop?

We play DVD's on our television using the Apple AV Cable for iBook. Works perfectly. We solve our Region 1 and 2 problem in this manner....all Region 2 DVD's play on the laptop.

Hope this helps!

K

According to the Apple TV specs, it only plays MP4 and h.264 video. There is no support for DVD video. The work around is to rip the DVD to your hard drive and then use Hand Brake to re-encode to one of the supported codecs.

This limited format support is a deal breaker for me. I already have TB's of video in other formats like video_ts folders ripped from DVDs, DivX, MPEG1, MPEG2, and WMV. There are competing products that cost less money that can play all those formats.

On Feb 28, 2007, at 7:31 PM, NeilP wrote:

> According to the Apple TV specs, it only plays MP4 and h.264 video.
> There is no support for DVD video. The work around is to rip the
> DVD to your hard drive and then use Hand Brake to re-encode to one
> of the supported codecs.

Handbrake can convert a DVD straight to MP4, no need to copy the
DVD's contents to the hard drive first.

> This limited format support is a deal breaker for me. I already
> have TB's of video in other formats like video_ts folders ripped
> from DVDs, DivX, MPEG1, MPEG2, and WMV. There are competing
> products that cost less money that can play all those formats.

What are the competing products? The features of Apple TV that I find
enticing are on-TV interface with remote control and wireless access
to an existing computer elsewhere in my home. I have very little
video on my computer but I also don't have a stereo so I'm interested
in Apple TV bringing access to iTunes in my living room. If I had an
easy way to watch downloaded video on my TV, I expect I would have
more video on my computer.

On Feb 28, 2007, at 6:31 PM, NeilP wrote:

> According to the Apple TV specs, it only plays MP4 and h.264 video.
> There is no support for DVD video. The work around is to rip the
> DVD to your hard drive and then use Hand Brake to re-encode to one
> of the supported codecs.

Isn't Apple primarily positioning the Apple TV as a front end living
room component for iTunes? Thus, it seems fitting to me that it can
access codes supported directly in iTunes, even if, eventually, the
Library resides on a network drive plugged into a USB port on an
AppleTV.

>
> This limited format support is a deal breaker for me. I already
> have TB's of video in other formats like video_ts folders ripped
> from DVDs, DivX, MPEG1, MPEG2, and WMV. There are competing
> products that cost less money that can play all those formats.

Conversion of DVD to h264/mp4 is a fast growing cottage industry. I
use products like MPEG StreamClip and VisualHub daily, and find them
quite easy to automate and use effectively to transfer/convert DVD to
multiple formats. Besides, there are already so many existing ways to
present a commercial DVD, even wirelessly through some systems. The
future is streaming, wireless, video content, like the radio or TV
used to be. The difference is that with so much quantity, we still
want some means of intercepting and organizing the content, for which
a computer running something like iTunes is still ideally suited. But
that is beginning to change, as well. What Apple hasn't shown us is
how the next version of iTunes will be dramatically improved to be a
'best fit' solution in this new entertainment flow. Certainly its
interface needs reworking, along with its moniker.

Jeffrey