by Liana Lehua
Thank you, iTunes Movie Rentals. As I perused the top ten movie rentals list in the iTunes Store to find a movie I wanted to rent, I came upon The Waitress. Of the top ten, it was the only movie I had not seen. I wasn’t feeling like I wanted to watch the movie on my iPhone or my sixth gen. iPod video and instead wanted to watch it on a television. I don’t have my Mac talking to my television in any way and my AppleTV is on order. So, I employed my Apple Component AV Cable. Being able to truly take my movie rentals with me is a big selling point when considering renting from iTunes or renting from Netflix. I may be on the verge of canceling my Netflix account. I no longer have to take any extra steps to get a movie on to my iPhone. Coupled with the fact that I don’t have to carry dvd’s with me anymore, I am finally understanding how truly brilliant Apple really is. And, this is why “I’m a Mac”.
I have used the Apple av (audio video) cables with my iPhone and my iPod Video to watch legally ripped dvd movies and video podcasts on televisions for months. If you’re like me and you either travel alot or are the nerd in your group of friends who everyone expects to be equipped with any technology needed to satisfy the needs of the group, you need to add this cable to your bag ‘o tricks. Being able to have a real selection of movies to watch in my hotel room with a simple plug and play act via the 30-pin dock connector is reason enough. Your family and friends will react with awe to your being able to play movies on the tv that look relatively small on your iPhone. “How do you do that?” they’ll say, as if you are magically controlling the video resolution and making the pictures move.
If I just want to listen to music, I can use this same av cable to plug in to a home theater system or stereo. Sound quality is as good as the combination of your music’s format, bit rate, receiver, and speakers. If the aforementioned features were not enough, I can charge my iPhone while watching or listening with the included Apple adapter. C’mon, ya’ll. Good stuff. Check it out.
If you have an older television that only support inputs via RCA, check out the Apple Composite AV Cable.
Just to note, the AppleTV software update isn’t out yet (as of 1-21) to make it rental friendly, so you aren’t missing out on anything, Liana, rental-wise..
That cable is the easiest solution to see rentals on a TV.
And if you do want an AV cable to primarily hook it up in hotel rooms, the Composite cable is your best bet. I haven’t been in any hotels recently that have Component inputs. The dive I stayed at in SF for MacWorld didn’t have ANY available inputs.
So I played with the transferring partially viewed movies. I put it on my iPhone to watch at the laundromat. I watched he first hour there. When I got home I transfered it back to my iMac (20″ Au). Two points of interest:
1)It seems to really transfer it entirely onto the iPhone and then entirely back to the Mac. I figured it would just toss some meta data about the playhead location or something. Nope… transfered the entire movie all 1.x Gigs so there was a delay that I wasn’t expecting.
2) I think the videos look remarkably good when scaled up. If I’m not mistaken my 20″ has 1050 horizontal lines while the video is significantly less than that. While I was bummed about the lack of HD (I don’t have an ATV) I have been surprised by how the SD videos look.
Hey Liana:
I just picked up the composite cable recently and have been enjoying watching t.v. shows using the iPhone.
Before that I was hooking up my iBook to the t.v. which was a bit of a hassle.
You don’t even have to use iTunes to sync the videos, but instead, just stream video to your iPhone using Telekinesis. http://code.google.com/p/telekinesis/
I like being able to have my iPhone and the av cables (I carry both) and not having to worry about having my laptop with me. Watching movies in SD is okay for me, because I’m just happy and excited about the ease of use. Better resolution will come. Good call on the composite cables when traveling. If there are any connection options available at all, they will more than likely be composite vs. component.