Connect 360 - The best Apple TV alternative?
On Friday, while I was at Viddler HQ fooling around with Rob, I noticed my friend Dan Rubin twittered the following:
“if I ditch cable, buy an AppleTV and only watch shows I’ve BT’d (I’ll pay for movie rentals), I’ll save myself over $600/year (ATV included)”
Allow me, first, to decrypt this message for you. What Dan is saying here is that if he ditched cable television, bought an Apple TV, only watched shows that he download via BitTorrent and movie rentals through the Apple TV, he’d save $600 per year even with the price of the Apple TV taken into consideration.
The part of this post that interested me most was him saying that he’d watch shows that he downloaded via BitTorrent on his TV with the Apple TV. So on my way home from ViddlerHQ, a one and half hour drive from the office to my doorstep, I called Dan and asked if he found an easy way to accomplish this.
From my, albeit very minimal amount of, research I’ve found that getting the Apple TV to play most codecs is no “easy” task. Sure if you like the command line and SSHing into the Apple TV to hack the crap out of it, then it might be right up your alley, but I am always up for the quickest, simplest solution.
That is when Dan told me how he currently solves this problem; Connect 360.
I had seen Connect 360 around the Interwebs before, but I had never given it a spin. This weekend I downloaded the trial, tried it out, and within 10 minutes of using it on my Xbox 360, I bought it.
Connect 360, in as simplest terms as possible, tricks your Xbox 360 into thinking your Macintosh is a Windows PC - and by extension shares your iTunes, iPhoto, and Video libraries to be enjoyed on your TV. It works like a charm too.
My Connect 360 Preference pane.
This simple preference pane is where you adjust your options for Connect 360. From then on it runs as a background process and “just works”.
If you have an Xbox 360 and, like me, have been wanting to jump onto the Apple TV in order to share music, photos, and video to your TV - consider purchasing a copy of Connect 360. I’m really happy I did.
Thanks again Dan.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I had used Connect360 for quite some time, but I found it a pain a times as my 360 would drop the wireless connection to my iMac, etc.
After receiving a gift certificate to my local Apple dealer for a gift, I decided to pick up an AppleTV and I have to say, I watch a lot more downloaded content now than I ever did with my 360. Picked up a piece of software called VisualHub (http://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/) which allows me to convert anything I download to h.264 and automatically imports it into iTunes which then syncs it to my AppleTV. This definitely turned out to be a better option for me. So I guess it really depends on what you’re looking for and how much money you want to spend.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Jeff: Excellent feedback. I don’t have the problem with my wireless dropping out (probably because my Xbox is not connected wirelessly?). But I could see how that could be a headache.
One of the reasons I like Connect 360 so much is because I do not have to convert any of the video I download. It all just works. This saves a huge step for me, especially since I don’t have a lot of computing power to spare.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Thanks for the nod, Colin
@Jeff Smith: I’ve just started playing with VisualHub to solve my “convert things to iPhone” problem, and I’m wondering if there’s a way to automate processing with it? If so, it could be slick to set up a script (Automator?) that automatically converts any .AVI files that appear in a specific watch folder. This would remove the tedium from having to convert everything by hand, which is one of the main downsides of using AppleTV over the Xbox 360.
Of course, I haven’t seen the connection drops you experienced, which would definitely be more than an annoyance.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Indeed, Connect360 is pretty great. Although, the latest major update which added rescanning of your media folders has been a bit of a pain. The CPU usage ramps up to nearly 100% when it’s rescanning, which seems to happen more frequently than I specified in the prefs. But aside from that, I have no complaints with this software.
I had a wireless connection from my iMac in the basement, then my 360 was wired. But it wasn’t enough to allow streaming of HD content. So I’ve had to wire my iMac, which wasn’t a huge deal. As Jeff does for AppleTV, I convert the files via VisualHub to AVI, since the 720p videos are usually encoded as MKV. Every show I watch now is available in HD, which is just great!
When Rivet was released, it touted a few features that Connect360 was lacking. Primarily, rescanning media folders and maintaining directory hierarchy. I emailed the Nullriver guys and asked if they could add said features, and within a week and update was released that did just that. I’m sure others tipped them off as well, but that’s pretty rad that they churned it out so quick. So much for competition.
May 12th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Matt: When I twittered about Connect 360 I was immediately alerted to Rivet. Upon inspection the only thing that I can say it has, that Connect 360 does not, is the ability to share specific directories “as” specific names. Like TV shows, Movies, etc. I’d like to see this in Connect 360, but it isn’t pressing.
Thanks for chiming in!
May 12th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I’m going to drop a note to the Nullriver folks about adding in the option to scan multiple directories for all media types. I bet they’ll add it quickly.
I agree with Matt about the CPU usage when rescanning, it’s a bit insane (and I’m trying to use an old Pismo PowerBook G3 as my media center, so it’s even worse), but since Rivet requires OS X 10.5 (and I’m attempting to use an old G3 that can only run up to 10.4) I’m quite happy to stick with Connect360.
May 12th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
@Dan Rubin: excellent call on the scripting idea. I’ve been wondering that myself, just haven’t had time to sit down and actually work on it. It would be great to whip up an AppleScript and tie it into a folder action.
May 12th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I just cannot for the life of me get Connect360 to work with my Xbox and my Mac Mini/MacBook Pro. I can’t listen to music (MP3s, M4As, etc.) or watch any type of movie from my Xbox. I even went crazy and encoded a DVD rip (a few of them actually) in multiple different formats with Handbrake, but to no avail. I must be doing something wrong…
May 12th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
For the record, Nullriver has the same thing for the PS3 called MediaLink. I have both the Connect360/Xbox360 and Medialink/PS3 setup at home and the PS3 makes a much better streaming media player. It plays pretty much all the formats the 360 does (besides WMV, but who has those?), but the PS3 interface is like 10x faster than the 360’s. The 360’s blade/dashboard is dog slow and can get frustrating at times, but it could be because I’m spoiled by the PS3’s (and PSP’s for that matter) UI.
So if you plan to buy a next gen system primarily for playing media, I’d recommend the PS3 (+ it has bluray). The 360 is definitely the better gaming machine (at the moment) and has a much better online/social presence. The only thing the 360 has over the PS3 in the media department is the large library of rentals and downloadable content, which is actually a pretty big plus if you don’t mind spending the money.
May 12th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Mark Jardine: Thanks for the tip(s). I knew that Nullriver had a few products, one of which also helps you encode your videos, and some of them are good companions to Connect 360.
I don’t have a PS3 but I have seen the menu system and I agree with you, it is really fast in comparison to the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360’s HUD is slow for everything though, even accepting game invites. Either way, for $20USD I’m a really happy camper.
Patrick Haney: I’m surprised that you’re having issues. Have you tried just a straight up .MOV file? Sometime really simple with default codecs that, maybe you record yourself with iMovie or something? What type of error are you getting?
Maybe someone from Nullriver can help Patrick out?
May 12th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
It looks like someone has already coded up an Automator workflow for VisualHub for those that are interested: http://moourl.com/aivzs
May 12th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Jeff Smith: Nice hunting. Thanks for posting that here for us.
May 12th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Its a great product and i wouldn’t fault it but its something that i wouldn’t consider purchasing. The main problem is that i only connect my xbox to the webz when i need to. I’m to cheap to fork out for the price-tag-hefty wifi adapter. Instead i run a lan cable across the corridor and put it back when i’m finished. So i think an Apple tv is for me, but its a great idea when it comes alternatives.
May 12th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
I dropped the $20 on Connect 360 after you mentioned it the other day. I tried Rivet a few weeks ago, and the connection was always flaky, and my 360 is hooked up to my Airport Extreme with ethernet.
So far Connect 360 has worked flawlessly. I really wish it could see videos in places other than iTunes or my Movies folder. The majority of my video files are on an external drive. I tried putting both an alias and a symbolic link to my movies in my Movies folder, and neither one worked. I emailed Nullriver about this, so maybe they’ll add the feature sooner or later.
So far though, it’s $20 well spent.
May 12th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
@Jeff Smith: Nice find, checking it out later…
@James Bayliss: I use my 360 wired at the moment, but an alternative is to get a cheaper wireless extender with an Ethernet port on it, and just run a short wire from that to the 360. That said, even if you buy the expensive MSFT wi-fi adapter, it’s still less expensive than an AppleTV, and you have one-less item to manage/worry about.
And yes, even *I* can’t believe I’m favoring a MSFT product to an Apple one. Strange days…
May 12th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Chris Coleman: Go into Settings and click Movies. Change the movies Folder to include any directory, including one on another drive, that you store your video in. That is what I did, and it works great.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:08 am
I don’t know how I missed that. Still, I think it could be improved. You can only choose one place for movies. I’d like to see the option to choose multiple locations. That would be super.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Connect360: great app and makes watching media on 360 such an easy process.
The only problem I find is I can not watch movies or media without looking out the window to see if there really is a helicopter landing in the garden! It’s the 360 that lets the side down, just so damn noisy.
My first 360 was never this loud but since the red ring experience; admit it you have all had one, or known some one who has, the replacement box is even louder.
I’ve tried MediaLink for the PS3 but the caching does not appear to be as good and it is forever dropping frames.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Adam: I’ve been fortunate on the “ring of death” front - but yes, the Xbox 360 is loud.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
@Adam
Are you using the PS3’s wireless connection? I always get dropped frames with 802.11g regardless of the platform. Both my PS3 and 360 are hard-wired (ethernet) to an 802.11n base station and I make sure I stream from an n-supported computer. I’m able to stream HD content with no dropped frames on either system.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
How do I make my Mac discover my 360 or the other way around. My Mac shows what I want to share to my 360 but does not connect. Can someone tell me step by step on how to connect to my 360 with Connect360. I just do not know what I am doing wrong.