Rip Blu-ray Guide

Now that you have ripped your Blu-ray movies to a hard drive, hopefully as MKV files, you might be wondering how am I going to watch this on a TV?  There are several options for streaming movies to an HDTV, with the cheapest being the Roku XD and the AppleTV.  The problem though is finding such a box that supports 1080p MKV files (forget ISO files for now).  Yes, I am looking at you Roku.  Apple is a snob like that.  Roku should know better.

While I would love to play MKV files over an Apple TV, it just is not happening.  You would need to convert everything to mp4, which is possible using Handbrake, but a pain just the same.  My recommendation is a Boxee, which runs about $200.  Yes it is more expensive, but it can do just about everything an AppleTv can, except for buying moveis from iTunes.

Here is a screenshot of the movie interface. Simple and clean.

The product sepecifications are as follows:

• Dimensions (LxWxH): 4.5″ x 4.5″ x 4.6″
• Language Support: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
• Network Protocol Support: IPV4, ARP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, DHCP Client, DNS Client, DDNS Client, HTTP Server, Samba Client, RTP/RTMP, VPN: PPTP, DLNA 1.5 (DMP)
• Wireless: 802.11n/g/b
• Ports: HDMI 1.3, 10/100 Fast Ethernet, 2x USB 2.0, Optical Audio (S/PDIF), Analog Audio (RCA L/R)
• Memory Card Support: SD, SDHC up to 32GB, MMC
• Audio Formats: MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AIF/AIFF, AC3/AAC, OGG, FLAC, Dolby Digital/Dolby True HD
• Video Formats: Adobe Flash 10.1, FLV/On2 VP6 (FLV/FV4/M4V), H.264 AVC (TS/AVI/MKV/MOV/M2TS/MP4), VC-1 (TS/AVI/MKV/WMV), MPEG-1 (DAT/MPG/MPEG), MPEG-2 (MPG/MPEG/VOB/TS/TP/ISO/IFO), MPEG-4 (MP4/AVI/MOV), DivX 3/4/5/6 (AVI/MKV), Xvid (AVI/MKV), WMV9 (WMV/ASF/DVR-MS)
• Image Formats: JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF
• Playlist Formats: M3U, PLS, WPL
• Subtitle Formats: SRT, SUB, SSA, SMI, ASS
• Supported Resolutions: H.264: 1080p at 30 fps, 1080i at 60 fps; WMV9/VC-1: 1080p at 30 fps, 1080i at 60 fps; MPEG4: 1080p at 30 fps, 1080i at 60 fps; MPEG2: 1080p at 30 fps, 1080i at 60 fps
• Two-Sided RF Remote: with 4-way navigation and full QWERTY keypad