Evaluation of using the MacBook to view your HD movies (on TV)

A couple of weeks ago I got a MacBook. The MacBook can be bought with a DVI-plug so that you can hook it up to your TV or bigger monitor.

We all know that Apple delivers great content in iTunes so that you can watch HD movies on your Mac and with the correct cables also on a TV. I use a Windows system right now to play movies on my TV, but I ran into quite some issues with iTunes. The videos get sluggish and if you play the very same content on a Mac it jut looks better and fluent. The problem seems to be the graphics card and the compression of the movie files…

However, the big question mark for me were a couple of things:

• Can I hook up my 5.1/7.1 sound system?
• Can I play BluRay movies or BluRay movie streams?

The first question is pretty quickly answered. However, you need to google to get a reply. You can switch your audio output to "digital" which allows you to hook up an optical toslink cable to the MacBook. Yes, the very same plug that you normally use with a well known headphone jack. The important thing is that Apple uses a mini-Toslink plug, so you need an adaptor plug that allows you to plug in a "normal" toslink cable that almost every TV or stereo uses these days. Thus, you need to order an additional adaptor and can get digital  audio, which I did today….

Now to the big problem. If you play DVD content on your MacBook you can listen to the audio on the speakers. Surprisingly, this works with any DVD. DVDs have mostly 5.1 audio which is either in DTS or AC3 format. Still, it works. However, if you create a mp4-video file with embedded AC3 audio with 6 channels (aka 5.1) you will not be able to hear anything over the speakers of your MacBook. Well, that is what I thought at first. As I dug deeper, I found out that not the hardware was the problem, the software was. If you download a different application to play the movie file, the 5.1 audio stream will just be played nicely on your MacBook stereo speakers.

I have not  tried so far to use Quicktime and deliver the audio using my stereo. I cannot make Quicktime play the audio over the internal speakers though. This has only been possible with other software products like XBMC Media Center, for example.

Furthermore, I found absolutely no way to play a BluRay movie on my MacBook. I simply could not find any software that plays BluRay movies. The only thing I could do was create a custom BluRay disk stream on my Windows system using an Image Writer, added 5.1 audio and converted that using Handbrake to a mp4 file with AC3 audio.

I will keep you posted on my findings which software combination works out best if I get the necessary cables to hook up my system.

Note: The Windows PC system is not able to play the mp4 with AC3 content at all. Quicktime needs a plugin which is not available afaik.