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schaffmatt - Jun 1, 2007 - 6:22 am

for imac and my ipod: is there a "for dummies" way to SIMPLY
download movies from the internet; and to download DVD's to the ipod??
thanks
Canadian macophile

stottm - Jun 1, 2007 - 7:51 am

Downloading commercial movies from the Internet is difficult and illegal. There are bittorrent peer to peer networks that publish movies and television shows but they take forever to download and you risk getting sued by the MPAA and/or the copywrite owners. It takes a long time to download, you frequently only get incomplete or corrupted downloads. It also takes a long time to burn to DVD or reformat for the iPod. Dual Layer 8GB DVD's are not cheap and if you use the DVD-R 4.7 GB discs you have to compress the video and you lose quality when you do that.

I have a TiVo and just to copy 3 one hour long TV shows to my Mac from the TiVo took hours as each file was 1.7GB's in size. I then had to convert the proprietary .TIVO files which are MPEG2 with DRM to standard MPEG4. It took like 8 hours to get that far. I still had to edit out the commercials with iMovie and burn to DVD which took a few more hours. Doing the same to downloaded movies and then converting for an iPod takes a long time as well. Movies are potentially up to 8GB's in size and need to be copied, unlocked, converted and compressed for the iPod. The download speed from my TiVo to my Mac was at 54Gbps which is many times faster then the Internet.

There are some OS X software packages to accomplish the task; although they are easier then Windows or Linux software it still takes a really long time to rip a DVD and then convert it to MPEG4 and to make it iPod compatible. A high end multi-core MacPro would process the data faster but it's really expensive compared to an iMac.

Some useful tools:

- MacTheRipper - http://www.mactheripper.org/
Forum: http://www.ripdifferent.com/phpbb2/viewforum.php?f=26
May not work on all movies, there is a beta that's much better but you
have to donate at the forum via paypal to get it.

- HandBrake - http://handbrake.m0k.org/
Includes AppleTV & iPod Support

- Roxio Popcorn - Makes burning to DVD and compression extremely simple
http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/po.../overview.html

- TiVo Decode Manager - http://tdm.sourceforge.net/
No need to buy Toast with included TiVo2Go software as this works fine.

- Bit Torrent OS X client - http://www.bitsonwheels.com/
http://thepiratebay.org/

Just be advised, your IP address and other information about you is not encrypted when you use BitTorrent so don't think you are hiding when you download illegal content. Do so at your own risk. I use BitTorrent all the time but only for legal downloads like Linux ISO images, etc.

Bottom line: To download movies from the Internet and prepare them for burning to DVD and/or putting them on an iPod is extremely time consuming even with a fast Internet connection. It's not very practical at all.

The legal and "easy" way is to get iTunes, buy the movies and TV shows you want and put them on a video ipod or play them on the iMac and a big screen TV with AppleTV. It's easy, painless, legal, and affordable.

Speaking of iTunes, they just released the new version with DRM free EMI music. However, it still embeds your AppleID and other personal information inside the AAC downloaded files so don't upload them to the Internet.

schaffmatt - Jun 1, 2007 - 8:29 am

Thank you so much; my problem is that itunes d
oesn't have movies in Canada; probably never will!

stottm - Jun 1, 2007 - 9:33 am

Just remember, the USA and Canada have many trade relationships and it would not be hard for Hollywood to reach out and touch you... :-(

Just be careful downloading movies. Better to rent them and copy them using MacTheRipper - http://www.zip.ca/ is the Canadian equivalent to NetFlix in the USA.