Running iTunes Media on an External Drive

Since cancelling my cable account, I’ve been watching the vast majority of my television over-the-air (recorded on a TiVo), but there are some cable shows I can’t miss (e.g. Mad Men, Futurama, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Doctor Who), so I’ve been buying those from iTunes and watching them on an Apple TV. As a result, I quickly filled up my laptop’s hard drive. I bought a large external drive and moved my iTunes Media folder to it, but there were a few problems. iTunes doesn’t like being launched if the external drive isn’t attached, and if you try to sync an iPhone while the drive isn’t mounted, it’ll think that you have no music in your library and wipe the phone clean. Annoying. Here are the two changes I made to fix this:

1. I connected my iPhone to the computer (with the external drive mounted) and unchecked the box on the summary page in iTunes that makes iTunes automatically launch when that phone is connected. Now it won’t try to sync when it won’t be able to find the media it needs, but I do have to remember to manually press the “sync” button after I plug it in.

2. To keep myself from trying to open iTunes when the drive isn’t attached, I made a simple AppleScript application:

   tell application "iTunes"
       activate
   end tell
   

I saved the script as an application on the external drive, gave it iTunes’s icon and dragged it to my Dock in place of iTunes. If the drive is attached, it’ll speed up and then launch iTunes. If it’s not attached, the Dock won’t be able to find to app, so iTunes won’t load. The result is that I can’t ever accidentally launch iTunes without having the drive with all my files on it mounted.

This problem is likely to get worse as Apple transitions to using only flash memory in its laptops, which is much more expensive in larger storage sizes. Traditional hard drives are just getting to the point where one can fit a terabyte or two into a laptop, which is what you need if you’re going to store video. There’s continuing speculation that Apple will start an iTunes streaming service so that one doesn’t have to store one’s videos locally, but until then, this is the approach I have to use.

Prefer Standard Definition Videos on iPhone 4

The new iPhone 4 can play high definition video, but with a 3.5″ screen, you probably won’t notice the difference. On the “Summary” tab in iTunes you can tell it to sync the standard definition copies of videos if you have them. Anything you buy in iTunes that’s HD comes with an SD copy, too.

Strange Set of TV Shows to Be on Sale Next to Each Other on iTunes

"Exclusive" iTunes Extras

Ars Technica has a piece about iTunes Extras, a new scheme where you get bonus materials with movie downloads like you get with DVDs. A few thoughts:

1. A big pet peeve about DVDs for me is having to bother with animated menus. I really just want to put the disc in, hit play, and, you know, watch the movie. I haven’t bought a movie from iTunes, but I wonder if the extras add this annoying extra step to watching a movie. Surely there’s a way to still be able to get to them that still lets me get straight to the movie, since that’s what I want most of the time.
2. The main point of the above-linked article is that the extras from iTunes are not exclusive, but are also available on the DVDs. But why would I want exclusivity? Exclusive content means I’d have to buy it twice to get all the bonus materials (if I wanted them).

Apple's Hypocritical Move to Block Competitors From Accessing iTunes

Farhad Monjoo, writing for Slate, argues that Apple should allow any mp3 player to sync with iTunes, and I agree. Palm’s decision to make its Pre pretend to be an iPod was interesting but strange. iTunes should sync with any player that plugs into it, but since all the music Apple sells (and any music you load in from a CD) is copy-protection-free, Palm could have written its own sync software that reads anything in the iTunes Media folder. People could keep using iTunes to play music and use another utility to sync their Pre.

iTunes: How to Share Music Between Different Accounts on a Single Computer

For future reference: iTunes: How to Share Music Between Different Accounts on a Single Computer.

Night of the Living Dead and the Public Domain

I happened to notice that The Night of the Living Dead is available on iTunes for $5. This is notable because one, it’s a great flick, two, $5 is cheap, yet three, it’s actually a work in the public domain, and thus obtainable for free from the Internet Archive. Wikipedia explains:

Copyright status

Night of the Living Dead lapsed into the public domain because the original theatrical distributor, the Walter Reade Organization, neglected to place a copyright indication on the prints. In 1968, United States copyright law required a proper notice for a work to maintain a copyright. Image Ten displayed such a notice on the title frames of the film beneath the original title, Night of the Flesh Eaters. The distributor removed the statement when it changed the title. According to George Romero, Walter Reade “ripped us off”. (Wikipedia)

Still, $5 for a copy that’s pre-formatted for an iPod or AppleTV isn’t so much.

Project Runway Episodes (Barely) Online

Staci D. Kramer reports that Lifetime will not offer Project Runway on iTunes. You can watch it on Lifetime’s website starting two days after it airs, but that’s it. This quote by Lifetime Digital’s Dan Suratt shows, characteristically, that Lifetime still thinks of the internet as a nuisance that detracts from their real business of television: “I think what it really goes to is we firmly believe in the power of our site to drive people to our channel and that’s what we use it for.” Because clearly everyone gets Lifetime. And wants to watch your show on Thursday nights, and certainly would make time in their schedules if only they saw a glimpse of it online. Because while you can’t stop the internet, you can funnel traffic to your site where at least you can limit the damage. Forget Hulu, which offers a nice user experience with lots of shows from different networks. Forget iTunes, where people will actually pay you to download a show. Just build a site and force people who don’t want to/can’t watch Lifetime to watch your show on a tiny computer screen instead of their nice, big TVs.

So yeah, I’m bitter. I really like Project Runway. I have an Apple TV and prefer watching shows on my TV instead of my laptop enough that I’ll (gasp) actually pay for episodes, yet they don’t want my money.

HD Movie comparisons

HD Movie comparisons

Side-by-side, you can see the difference between Apple TV, cable, and Blu-Ray videos, even though they’re all billed as “HD”.

iTunes Script to Download Available Purchases

iTunes Script to Download Available Purchases

If you subscribe to a season pass of a show in iTunes, you can set Mail to run this script whenever you get an email that a new episode is available. It’ll have iTunes download the episode and then delete the message.

How to Purchase TV Shows, Movies, Music, and Music Videos on Apple TV

How to Purchase TV Shows, Movies, Music, and Music Videos on Apple TV

Researching Apple TV. Important to note: It seems like Apple TV will automatically download new episodes of a season pass you’ve purchased, but only if you purchase it from the Apple TV, not from your computer.

News Corp. says it's sticking with iTunes

News Corp. says it’s sticking with iTunes

NBC Will Not Renew ITunes Contract - New York Times

NBC Will Not Renew ITunes Contract - New York Times

NBC Universal and Apple were unable to come to an agreement on pricing, leading to the a withdrawal that highlights escalating tensions between Apple and media companies.

iTunes Store To Stop Selling NBC Television Shows

iTunes Store To Stop Selling NBC Television Shows

Juno DVD to Include iTunes File

Nifty. The two-disc edition of Juno will include a “digital copy” ready for iTunes, iPods, iPhones, etc. No reason iTunes can’t just let you rip DVDs like you can CDs, of course.

New iTunes Syncing Option

The newest version of iTunes has finally added the video syncing option it should have had all along: “Sync x least recent unwatched”. Previously if you downloaded an entire season of a show, it would only sync the newest episodes, meaning you’d end up watching the whole show backwards.

"iTunes"

In the tiny way that such things can, it bothers me that the button on my iPhone that lets me listen to music is called “iPod” instead of “iTunes”. An “iPod” is a thing you hold in your hand, “iTunes” is a program that plays music. If I want to run the music program on my iPhone, I should be launching the music program, right?

The new iPod touch (and soon the iPhone) lets you buy music online. The button for doing that is labeled “iTunes”, but it’s just the store, not the whole program.

So now the program that’s called “iTunes” on your computer is a program that lets you play music (and videos), lets you buy music, and lets you sync stuff to your iPod/iPhone. The program that’s called “iTunes” one your iPod is just a store. Somehow this naming bothers me. iTunes is more than just the store, but Apple seems to want people to think it’s just that. But really you can use it without ever entering the store or buying any music. Most people have much more music that they’ve ripped from CDs than they’ve bought from the store.

News Corp Sticking with iTunes

News Corp. (Fox) will be keeping its shows on iTunes. I actually agree with president Peter Chernin’s barb, But let me say this, we’re the ones who should determine what the fair price for our product is, not Apple. It is weird for a store to be dictating prices of the products it sells. The problem, of course, is that there’s no chance a TV network would establish a reasonable price. Really the market would settle this just fine, if not for multi-year exclusive contracts, DRM, and technology barriers preventing online stores from really competing head-to-head.

Apple's PR for the People

What amazes me whenever Apple takes a stand regarding its model for iTunes (everything costs the same, you own the song/video) is that it always manages to come out with the appearance that it’s doing this all for you, the consumer. Of course, it’s not hard to appear to be the one looking out for the little guy when you’re standing next to record companies and network executives.

Apple to NBC

“Apple to NBC: Go Fuck Yourselves, You Greedy Morons”, says Daring Fireball regarding this press, release simply titled, iTunes Store To Stop Selling NBC Television Shows. $4.99 an episode?!