Rouxbe Online Cooking School Blog

If you ever needed an excuse to get yourself a shiny new video iPod or even a sleek new AppleTV, now you have one: Rouxbe!

With Rouxbe’s new video recipes for download you can take them with you on your iPod, which on its own is kind of interesting. But the more useful thing is that you can plug your video iPod into a TV… a TV in the kitchen that is, and follow along. So, the main objective of this post is to present some alternatives that are out there to get the Rouxbe recipes off of your video iPod, and into your kitchen (TV or otherwise). Now, if you like short blog posts that don’t have commercial information and no links to ecommerce sites, then you may want to stop reading here. But trust me this is just information that I have gathered for you, to let you know what is out there.

You can watch the Rouxbe video collections for download on a TV if you have a video iPod. What you’ll need in the most basic terms is a video iPod, some Rouxbe videos for the iPod, a TV with video-in, and a way to plug the video iPod into the TV. I say “a way to plug…” because the good news is that there are many ways you can plug your video iPod into a TV. Here I’ll describe a couple and list some others that I haven’t tried:

[Camcorder Cable]
If you have a camcorder there is good chance you already have one of these cables. On one end it’s a minijack male plug with 4 segments, and on the other end it has 3 RCA (white, yellow and red) male plugs. Apple would want you to believe that this cable would not work with your video iPod, but in fact it does work. Using this cable has a little secret, though. The secret is… (drum roll please) to plug the red cable to the video-in on your TV, then the white and yellow to the audio-in plugs. Yep, that’s it. The video signal is actually sent over the red cable opposite to the typical, and standard, yellow cable. If you don’t have one of these camcorder cables, you can get one from any electronics store for about $15 or so.

[Apple iPod AV Cable]
Now, if you want the official fancy cable that is specifically designed for your video iPod (which is pretty much the same as above, it just has that Apple look) you can get the “Apple iPod AV Cable” which is a bit more expensive than a no-brand camcorder cable. The main difference, apart from the nice Apple design, is that the colours (yellow, white and red) of the cables match the colours of the plugs on the back of your TV. This one runs for about $20.

[Apple iPod AV Connection Kit]
This kit offers a good value for the buck because it not only contains the cables to plug your iPod to a TV, but it also includes some other goodies like a dock with an IR remote control, a power supply and an extra USB cable for the computer. I got one of these kits and it works well. The remote is the same Apple IR remote as in the AppleTV and any newer Mac with remote control; so it’s really easy to use and tiny. The major drawback I found with the Apple IR remote is that you cannot navigate the iPod menu with it. The way it works is that you navigate your iPod menu with the click wheel on the iPod, select a movie, and play that on the TV. Once the recipe or drill-down movie is playing, then you can pause/play, FF, REW, and change volume with the remote. One thing you can do, though, is create a playlist or smart playlist in iTunes, and then jump between clips using the IR remote. In that case, you still don’t access the iPod menu, but you can jump from movie to movie using the remote without having to go to the iPod.

[Apple TV]
This is the ultimate device to play Rouxbe and any other iTunes content on your TV. I got one for testing our video recipes for download and what it does, it does very well. Apple sells this device telling you that is specifically for HDTVs and they list some TVs “that work with the Apple TV”. The good news is that the Apple TV works with other TVs that are not widescreen or even HD for that matter. If you have a recent LCD TV, chances are that it has component-in. This is the input where you get a red, blue and green RCA cables plus the L and R RCAs inputs for audio. If you have a TV with component-in, then you can set the Apple TV to work with it. In my case, I’ve got a Sharp 21″ LCD TV that can downsample HD to be displayed in the small 4×3 screen, and it just looks amazing.

The way the Apple TV works is by managing all your media on your computer with iTunes, and then it just syncs up to the Apple TV. All our video recipes for download (both iPod and HD versions) work just fine on the Apple TV. Playing our recipes on the Apple TV is a true joy. The reason is that the cover art looks really nice and the quality, specially of the HD recipes, is very high.

These are some other options out there that I myself have not tried, but look interesting:

[Kensington Dock for iPod]
Dock your iPod, plug it to the TV and control it with the included remote control.

[Philips Portortable DVD Player with iPod docking]
You can dock your iPod on this DVD player and see the videos on the built in LCD screen.

[iHome Under-Counter iPod Player]
Install this device in the kitchen, and it looks like you can play your Rouxbe recipes right on the iPod screen and get the sound through the external speakers.

[Gpx iPod Undercabinet Unit]
Same as above.

If you have an questions, let me know, I’d be more than happy to help.

Francesco