Front Row versus iTunes

Upgraded my G5 dual 1.8 tower to Leopard. Couldn't wait to use Front Row on the 30" Apple Cinema Display.
Heart-broken to discover that all my movies and tv shows from my iTunes library are practically unwatchable when played through Front Row. The video barely holds itself together, looking as if it were streaming video playing through a slow internet connection, rather than from a file sitting in my internal hard drive's iTunes library.
So why do those same videos play flawlessly in full screen when I play them through iTunes?
It couldn't be the video card... It's an ATI x800, with 256MBs of VRAM.
Could Front Row be such a memory hog that it needs more than the 2.5GBs of RAM I already have just to play video files from my internal drive smoothly?
Could it be that Front Row requires so much processing power that the G5's dual 1.8 processors just aren't fast enough?
Obviously, If the solution is more RAM, my problem can be solved. If it's processing power, I'm screwed.
Does anyone know why Front Row can't play video on my system when iTunes plays it perfectly?
Thanks in advance!

Wow. Good question, Doug. Yes, playing the files through Quicktime full screen produces the same stutter effect. Not as bad as through Front Row, but bad enough to notice. What does that mean?
P.S. Yes, these are all movies & TV shows I bought from the iTunes store. (Lost, Rosemary's Baby, The Office, etc.)

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Front row and itunes turning on when apple tv begins

Why does my computer itunes and front row always turn on my computer when I start watching my apple tv? They play two different things. I start watching the apple tv and then my computer will start blaring my itunes library or will start a movie using front row. How do I stop this from happening?

Welcome to the Apple Community.
Your remote is controlling both devices.
If you don't want to use a remote with your computer the easiest thing to do is just to turn the IR off. (System_Preferences/Security/General)
If you still want to use your computer remote then you must pair your computers remote with the computer AND the Apple TV remote with the Apple TV.
To pair a remote with a device hold down the menu and FF buttons together for six seconds or until you see a chain icon on screen (best take the computer into another room, or turn it off, when you do this)

Front Row and iTunes Radio

Hi,
I found no other forum for my question.
Therefore I post my message here:
I have a brand new iMac G5 20" (build in iSight) and I missing the iTunes radio station in Front Row.
Is this not supported yet?
Sorry for my bad english. I'm from germany
Greetings, Bernd

Hello David,
same problem internet radio and itunes.
Sorry, I mean "internet radio" too and not an real radio
Work around
make a new playlist called radio
Drag the radio linke into it then start front row and
you should see the Radio playlist
Thanx, I will try it.
Greetings, Bernd

Bypassing Front Row's "iTunes cannot play this song" limitation ?

Hi,
This is not an unwanted issue or a bug. Front Row is unable to find songs that are not located within the iTunes default folder.
See here :
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303384
I have a pretty large library (now more than 160 gb) and I had to span it over 2 hd. Playing every song in iTunes first in order for FR to find them afterwards is not an issue. Is there a way to make FR smarter ? somekind of a script or any magic to give me back FR joy ? I obviously had to set my default folder on the new, emptier HD in order to add songs, and then 160gb of music sitting on the old, full HD just became unavailable in FR. This is crazy.
Any idea ?

Well I Reset the location and then changed back into my external hard drive and now the songs seem to be playing fine. Some of the genre changes and some of the album covers seem to have get lost but I guess I can live with that.

Different Playlists in Front ROW and iTunes

Hello
I am new in using Front Row and i have some trouble with it.
When i use the MUSIC playlists then they are not the same playlist as they are in the itunes 9.
For example i have a "BEST OF" playlist. In this playlists are only 5 Star rated songs (about 60 songs) and when i open Front Row than i have in this playlist totally different songs aditionally.
By the way, is there any possibility to check how many songs are in the playlists in FRONT ROW, so i can compare to itunes.
thx for help
Markus

No, you are not dumb. It apparently does not show in Front Row.
Ugh.. I am getting so frustrated with this. Surely someone at Apple wants to be able to play their music videos contiguously from within Front Row...???

Front Row and itunes problem

Just got my new Macbook Pro and migrated my stuff over from my Powermac Quad G5. Problem when I try to run itunes from Front Row saying that my library is empty and no songs could be found. I have re - set the music folder in i-tunes but that hasn't corrected it.....I have around 3000 songs in the library which work ok when I open from the itunes icon.
I photo works just fine, but also getting the server problems when trying to load movie trailers.

Same here. I just got my new MacBook Pro two weeks ago, and I tried to use Front Row this week, and it claims that my iTunes library is empty. However, I have 228 songs, and when I launch iTunes normally, it is fine. Front Row launches iPhoto, movie trailers, and DVDs just fine. Any ideas?
Thanks!

10.6.2 Front Row and iTunes video still stutters

I thought this was going to be fixed. What's really odd is Quicktime X no longer stutters.....
Was the FR stuttering "fixed" for anyone?

Further Clarification
Front Row will not play my HD content. Plays the .mp4 content fine, in fact plays it better over my wireless network than iTunes does over wireless but iTunes will not play .mp4 content now (10.6.2) without stutter even when loaded on the MAC HDD.
I have not used Front Row before because I always used iTunes with iPod Touch as the remote so I don't know if this has always been a limitation with Front Row. Still prefer the iTunes method but the bulk of my content is .mp4 format.
I'll probably go back to 10.5 so don't upgrade to Snow Leopard if you have mixed iTunes movie/TV content.

Front row (with itunes 10) does not show moves from shared library

I have two computers. My office computer contains all of my iTunes content, running iTunes 10. I have a mac mini connected to my television, and my intent is to use Front Row to access the shared library from the office computer. The problem is, when using front Row only a small number of my TV shows and none of my movies appear. I have checked the sharing settings on the source computer.

Exact same problem here.
It has been working fine doing this for years, then around a month ago after no changes to either machine that I know of, about half the content vanished when viewing a shared library.
I seem to have also worsened the issue by trashing and rebuilding the iTunes library from scratch. Since at least before doing this I had some of my Movies and TV shows show, but not all, now I seem to have a tiny amount of movies and none of the TV shows listed.
Checking on the source computer in front row shows all of them present as expected. Completely baffled by this. None of them are showing under odd sections (Say in Music rather than TV Shows) either so I know the meta-data isn't at fault.

Front Row poor iTunes compatibility

Hi - hoping someone can shed some light on this.
I have an iMac (Latest OS and fully updated) running iTunes. All works great. My iTunes library is shared.
I also have a Mac-Mini which I use as a media centre under my HDTV. (Latest OS and fully updated). On this I run eye-TV, no known issues and use Front Row to access my iTunes Library on my iMac above.
I also have an Apple TV- again, accessing the iTunes Library on my iMac.
*The Issue* - I have a problem whereby Front Row does not seem to play the movies very well at all from my Mac-Mini. For example, I have a movie file,which I created, in iMovie 8 and shared to iTunes - This created a movie 106MB in size - 3.58 minutes long.
The movie plays great on the iMac where its stored.
The movie plays great on the Apple TV. Streamed from iTunes (Not synched)
The movie struggles on the Mac Mini with Front Row. It keeps buffering and pausing.
The symptoms appear on a number of movies played through Front Row. Some that have been ripped from my own DVD's and anything above 40 or 50MB created in iMovie 8.
Would love to hear from anyone with an answer or explanation. (Note, I have tried using both wired (GigaBit) and wireless networks. I do not not believe this is network bandwidth related. Infact my Apple TV is wireless and works perfectly.
Note - iTunes and Front Row are the current and up to date versions as is my OS. (I believe there was a patch to resolve such issues in previous versions.)
Thanks in advance

Looking at the picture on the bottom of that other discussion board, I have the exact same problem. All that font stuff you mentioned to work around the problem is a bit intimidating, so I'll just live with the occasional bug. And if I close and open up the program, it's fixed anyway. I just hate seeing a brand new pristine computer not act quite so pristine.
But thanks.

How can I stop my apple tv remote from affecting my laptop? It turns on Front Row and iTunes.

Every time I use the remote to my apple tv it interferes with my macbook and starts the Front Row application or change the volume or make iTunes start playing. Even if I am standing away from the laptop with my body between the lap top and the apple tv using the remote this happens. It drives me insane and makes me want to throw my laptop out the window. Truly, this is making me crazy.

Hi All,
I have a problem... my SETTINGS / SECURITY/ GENERAL tab does not have an option for IR?
I'm on a macbook pro 10.7.5
My options are:
A login password has been set for this user
Require password for sleep & Screensaver
Show a messsage when screen saver is locked
Disable Automatic Login (this is checked)
Allow application downloads from:
Mac App Store
mac App store & identified developers
Anywhere ( this is checked)
HELP! My remote just keeps playing itunes on my macbook pro when i'm trying to change the channels on Apple TV. Argh!
Any ideas?
Thank you!

What is the best older version of iTunes for Front Row?

Can anyone share some opinions please on which older version of itunes I should download that has the least amount of bugs when using "front row" (I currently have 9.0.3 and Mac OS X 10.5.8)? . Also, should I download the regular version or the 64-bit version? What's the difference/advantage between the two?
Many-many thanks in advance.

I am right up there with iTunes biggest proponents, and try and to recruit anyone who will listen...
I've got about 75 "complete season" Television DVDs, and it was really time consuming to decide which series and episode I wanted to watch by pulling out a box, reading each episode summary that came with the DVD, then take it out of the box, insert it, view it, put it back etc. etc....all for one episode!
Then I heard about adding video files to iTunes and viewing them via Front Row (or iTunes)...couldn't wait to try it. Was totally won over by Front Row's little opening fanfare and the look of the table of contents/episode screen etc. Every feature worked fine.
Since downloading 9.0.3 (from either 9.0 or 9.1) however, I inherited that scrolling issue were it skips and jumps to the last TV Show played or occasionally a random episode, and keeps reverting to that one as well. With my previous version, that scrolling issue appeared, but only several times in about a 3 month daily viewing period then stopped doing that altogether. With that version of iTunes, it seemed to stop after I held the up and down buttons on the remote and let it rapidly scroll up and down (from top to bottom) throughout that particular series. That doesn't work now, and even scrolling up and down/back and fourth, full speed ahead, I can see it semi-pause for a split second on a specific episode. This now became constant problem.
Now a newer problem. I had some misc. TV shows that were catalogued in iTunes as Misc., which front row correctly displayed as such and were properly filed in it's own iTunes folder. I tried to rename that folder, and since then, the iTunes window displays the new name correctly, but Front Row doesn't. I tried dragging that folder to the desktop, creating a new one in the iTunes folder, then dragging those desktop files (sans folder) into the new one and it's still back to square one! I've got about 840 TV shows, with 145 GB of free space remaining.
Again, thanks all for your help.

Front Row not authenticated but iTunes is?

I've got a Mac Mini that is pulling it's library from my Mac G4. I have it so that an alias of the library file on my Mac Mini is pointing to the Library file on my G4 (which holds all my music on a software RAID array) through the network. This was working fine for about a month. Then I did a software update on my Mac Mini (which is hooked up to my stereo and TV), and now ALL my tunes (including MP3s) cannot be played through Front Row. It tells me that I have to quit Front Row, load iTunes and authenticate the song through iTunes. But iTunes doesn't have any problem playing the music! Most of these files (95%) are MP3s anyway with no DRM!!! So, I am totally confused. Any ideas?
Again, I can play the songs without any problems by using iTunes. But if I try using Front Row (much more convenient with the remote and all!!), then I get this annoying error which forces me to quit and go straight through iTunes. Both systems have the latest OS updates.
MDD G4 + Intel Duo Core Mac Mini Mac OS X (10.4.7) Flux Capacitor installed in both

I've pretty similar problem. I've a music library in Buffalo TeraStation. TeraStation is mounted and visible to Mac Mini, which is hooked to my stereo.
Most of the music was originally in the WMA Lossless. Recently I've converted them to Apple Lossless. Some music is also in lossy AAC and MP3. All music plays well with iTunes, but not with Front Row. Odd enough, I can authorize songs from iTunes one by one. They will play then with Front Row, but Front Row will forgot it later.
The primary reason to buy Mac Mini was to create a neat interface for my music collection through Mini/Front Row/Remote Controller, so I'm obviously very keen on finding a solution as well.

Front Row No updating Itunes

I have a strange problem in Front Row and ITunes. When I watch a new video in from my library in Front Row the little blue ball showing a new items goes away but when I open ITunes it’s still there. If I go back in to Front Row it’s gone.
I have had a look around and I can’t find anything about this. Can anyone help?
ITunes 8.1 and Front Row 2.1.7

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "rebuilt the iTunes library"? I have the same problem with Front Row and iTunes not being in sync when tracking which shows I've watched, and it's really annoying. They only seem to stay in sync if iTunes is already running when I launch Front Row, which is often not that case.
Thanks!

Front Row tiger problem [only works when iTunes already open]

Ok this has never happened before and don't know why its started to happen;
When I open up front row and go to movies,playlists or artists etc and click select, the little circling buffer symbol comes up and stays there. Nothing happens so I just have to force quit out of it.
But, if I already have iTunes open, and then open up front row, and can select and play anything from within front row.
Before I was always able to open front row without itunes already being open.
Then only thing that I thought could be contributing was that a few days ago I installed you control: tunes which is an iTunes controller that stays in the menu bar.
But even if i have this running or not, the problem with front row still persists.
I've repaired any permissions I had but still no luck.
Any suggestions??
running MacBook C2D 2.16GHz with OS 10.4.11
thanks, b.

I apologise but there IS a new .plist file in ~/user/library/preferences. Still no fix though.
I'm assuming its the first link I need because the second one is for leopard.
When I try and install the .pkg I get an alert that says:
'This software update requires a Macintosh with a built in IR receiver running Mac OS X 10.4.5'. I am running 10.4.11 and my apple remote is working just fine???
I had Remote Buddy installed, thinkng that that may be causing the problem, but after uninstalling that, the problem still persists.
Message was edited by: b_sheridan

No "itunes top movie" in my front row

I cannot find the "itunes top movie" option in the movie section of Front row, anyone can give me some suggestion how can i find out that option please?
I already updated the front row and itunes.
ITunes 8.1 and Front Row 2.1.7
Thx for any help!!!!!

Douglas McLaughlin wrote:
The top movies are based on the country of your selection for the iTunes store.
Actually, the top movies/music of Front Row 2 are not related to iTunes at all. I think the store is derived from the IP address initiating the request to Apple's servers.
To fix your problem, open a Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities), paste the following command:
*defaults delete com.apple.frontrow MusicStoreFrontID && killall "Front Row"*
then hit enter. Now, you can relaunch Front Row and you should have your top movies restored.
Also, as Douglas noted, you must have a working internet connection for this content to be available.

Front Row versus iTunes

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