Mac HDTV Jukebox #1 = Front Row
As my obsession with HD programming grows, I’ve been on the lookout for a way to organize and playback the growing number of legally-obtained HD movies I have in my archive. Unfortunately, Quicktime’s .ts playback is amazingly weak. Nonexistant, actually. So that precludes iTunes, an otherwise-excellent library manager from helping.
And Front Row seemed doomed to the same fate, since (like iTunes) it uses QT to handle video playback. But that’s without the addition of DVD Assist, whose latest version allows one to launch HD files from within Front Row, that then playback via VLC…AC3 signals and all!
The great thing about using this app as my video jukebox is DVD Assist and the way it allows me to keep alises to both VIDEO_TS files (ripped DVDs) and HD files (.ts, in particular). Although they launch in different apps, starting from the same place allows the tightest integration one could ask for between the two file types.
Of course, there’s a downside. While it’s admirable that VLC can playback .ts files, the feature set it offers is weak at best. No jumping forward or back. No bookmarked playback position. The digital audio output has to be manually selected to fully utilize AC3. But it does play the files back consistantly…something no other Mac video app can do.
