Apple | The Alien World

Mar 11

Home Media Automation – Part 2

Posted in: How to

In my last post, I showed how to use Apple TV & iTunes to see all you movies on you LCD and listen all your music on your home theater. Wireless played an important role for syncing the media, but you can also use wired connection.

Now let’s take this a step further. There was time when there were no remote controls, for time you have to change the channel or volume we had to go up to the TV or music system. Those days are long gone. So in your home media automation, you will definitely not like to go up to your computer to change the media. The good thing will be if you can get a remote for your computer as well. Even better will be the ability to use your remote across rooms/walls, such that you can increase & decrease the volume of your system or change the song from a different room.

Adding a new remote to your Apple TV

Steps to follow:

Download “Remote Control” application for iTunes store and install it on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Open Remote Control app on your iPhone/iPod and go to settings. Select “Add Library”.
Open your Apple TV settings. Under that go to Remotes. Enter the pin as you see on your iPod/iPhone.
Again, select ‘add library’ on Remote App on iPod/iPhone.
Open iTunes, you will see your phone or iPod name in the left bar. Enter your 4 digit pin as displayed on the Remote app in iTunes.

You are ready to go. You iPod Touch or iPhone now acts as a remote. By using your iPod Touch or iPhone, you can now control your media, sitting in a different room.

Adding new media library to your Remote App in iPod Touch or iPhone

Controlling your Apple TV from iPod Touch or iPhone

Controlling songs playing on iTunes on your computer

Feb 10

Home Media Automation – Part 1

Posted in: How to

Gadgets are men’s best friends, aren’t we all fond of them! We, men, always want simplicity in life. Somethings are in your hands, of which you can be proud of. Automating your home media is one way to achieve it.

Sexy and expensive home theater system are for the rich, but that should not mean that other should be deprived of it.

Here are list key requirements for home automation -

Most likely you have tons of mp3, photos, & movies on your computer.
You have a home theater system connected to your LCD.

Basic expectations -

Play music on home theater (probably 5.1 channel system)
Watch your movies & photos on your bigger LCD screen

Value add -

Able to control your media with a remote, irrespective of source & target

The solution here is only specific to Apple products, but you can look for other alternatives if you are not an apple fan.

Prerequisites Television and Apple TV

Tons of media
iTunes on your computer
Apple TV
LCD TV
iPhone or iPod Touch or iPad (Optional)
Wireless Router

Once you have all the prerequisites, all that you need is to configure them to work together.

The first thing to start with is setting up your Apple TV. AppleTV has an internal storage of up to 160 GB, so it can store your media from computer. It has ability to sync itself over the wire or wireless. I prefer wireless, after all who wants to see wires running between the system tv. I have given the sound output of Apple Tv to my home theater and Video output to my LCD

After setting up AppleTV, you should be able to see it in iTunes. One of the very interesting thing now you will notice is that at the bottom right of iTunes you will have multiple speaker option. You can now choose which speaker you want the output to – computer or apple tv. This is how you can listen to your favorite songs on the much better home theater system. Note that you can not stream video this way. But there is a solution to that too.

Now, the catch is that AppleTV can only play MP4 videos, but the good thing is that MP4’s are better then AVI’s in quality and you even get High Definition (HD) videos.

As I said earlier, Apple TV has up to 160 GB of storage space, you can store all your media on it. But in care you have much more, then this is not the suggested approach. Instead configure your AppleTV to stream all kinds of media from your computer rather than storing it.

On Apple TV, go to Settings—> Computers, select “Add shared iTunes library’, proceed as per instructions.

Once you have done this, you shall be able to see all you media [movies & music] listing in Apple TV.

Your are now ready to play all you mp4 & mp3 on your computer on your LCD, without copying your media on a CD or USB drive.

Dec 28

Conversation between God & Eve

Posted in: Humor

“God, I have a problem”

“What is the problem, Eve?”

“I know that you created me and provided this beautiful garden and all of these wonderful animals, as well as the hilarious comedic snake, but I’m just not happy”

“And why is that Eve?”

“God, I am lonely and bored, and I’m sick to death of apples!”

“Well, Eve, in that case I have solution. I shall create a man for you.”

“Man? What is that God?”

“A flawed, base creature, with many bad traits. He’ll lie, cheat, and be vain. He will be witless and will revel in childish things. He’ll be bigger than you and will like fighting hunting and killing things. He won’t be to smart, so he will need your advice to think properly. He will have a very limited emotional capacity and will need to be trained. He will look silly when he is aroused, but since you’ve been complaining, I’ll create him in such a way that he will satisfy your physical needs. And you most certainly will never be bored again!”

“Sounds great” says Eve, with ironically raised eyebrows, “but what’s the catch, God?”

“Well… you can have him on one condition.”

“And what’s that God?”

“As I said, he’ll be proud, arrogant and self-admiring… so you’ll have to let him believe I made him first. And it will have to be our little secret. You know, woman to woman.”

________________________________________________________

Published in THE TIMES UK (under Global Village, A weekly posting from cyberspace – date unknown), but to me this has been passed by a good friend in office, she believes that this is true.