Independent filmmaker Scott Dacko recently used an Apple TV to power the New York premiere of his film The Insurgents. “As far as I know, we’re the first people to have ever done this,” Dacko said. “And it looked great.” The theater hosting the premiere, Cobble Hill Cinemas in Brooklyn, didn’t have a tape deck to play his film from — instead, The Register explains, it traditionally screens movies from film. Faced with the possibility of paying up to $1000 for a week’s rental of a tape-based setup, Dacko instead used Apple’s Final Cut Pro to output his film in the iTunes-friendly H.264 video format, and purchased an Apple TV for $299 to power a projector the theater had on hand. “That’s less than half what I’d pay someone just to put my movie on an HDCam tape,” he said. Dacko plans to continue using the device to screen his films, simply toting it from venue to venue. “I wish I had thought of this before,” Dacko said. “I could just create multiple versions of my movie on Apple TV – in every possible aspect ratio and format. All the theater would have to do is plug it in.”
Charles Starrett was a senior editor at iLounge. He's been covering the iPod, iPhone, and iPad since their inception. He has written numerous articles and reviews, and his work has been featured in multiple publications.