Apple trailers on Windows MC?

Mr. Flibble

Anyone know is there a plugin available for windows media center which allow you to play the movie trailers from apples website?

kaisersose77

The mymovies plugin lets you watch trailers ( lets you search for films ) but doesnt support apple ones.

8T8

Apples H.264 trailers can be decoded with the proper codecs installed.

You need ffdshow + Haali Media Splitter installed.

You can force WMP to open the .mov files in WMP or MPC and it will play the file perfectly fine but other Apple codecs in the .mov container will not play (unless you use Media Player Classic) but MCE uses WMP. However that only makes them playable in Windows directshow players you still have to download the file.

This thread here on the The Green Button links to some program that seems to automate the downloading of trailers and a plugin for MCE to recognise some of the extensions used by Apple like M4A, AAC, MP4 etc. bit the .MOV kind.

If the trailers fail to show rename them from .MOV to .MP4 and they should appear with the Tag plugin above installed.

Edit: That app is actually rather nifty it will auto download all the latest trailers for you it takes a little while for it to get started but it will show what movie it is downloading and the total left after a few minutes so you can have it run in the background.

Edit: That app actually auto renames the .mov to .mp4 which takes another step out of the process so very handy plus you can pick what resolution to download 480, 720, 1080p

So with all that taken into account install ffdshow + haali, install tag plugin, create a Apple trailer folder and set MCE to monitor it and then start the auto down loader and leave it do it's work (tested in XP & Vista MCE working fine).

(The reason for the Tag plugin is that although MCE can play unsupported containers like MP4 it can be odd in how it shows them to you which the WMP Tag plugin thankfully corrects so it is treated like a regular file, MCE is tied to WMP you see)

SavageNL

I made a plugin to see the apple trailers without the need for some program to download them:
http://weem.xs4all.nl/trailers/

It doesn't take the HD movies, but it tries to show the highest quality non HD one.

Installation:
http://weem.xs4all.nl/trailers/Apple%20Trailers.zip
Unpack it in "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories\Media Center\Media Center Programs"

Then you should see the Apple icon in your programs menu with the plugin.

Using the back button on your remote will exit the program (it won't go back 1 page), if you are watching a trailer and you choose the same category you can proceed where you were.

It doesn't load all trailers, but it should be able to show most of them.

Mr. Flibble

Cool SavageNL, I'll try it out.

I tried that program 8T8, it does what it claims alright but I am looking for a method to stream them. Downloading Apple's whole collection (and surely they have more than the 150 or so that program gets...) seems like overkill.