If you're like me, then you're using a Mac to power your home theater system. As it is, I've got it connected via DVI to a projector in my living room. I am using a ATI Remote Wonder to control it all and I invite friends over to see movies. The problem is that when I watch movies, I rarely want to see the trailers that come with the movie - those are trailers about what is to be released on DVD, I want my home cinema to be a real cinema, so I want the same trailers they show at the cinemas!
Well, that's easy, since Apple offers high-quality trailers on their site (http://www.apple.com/trailers) which you can download (alt-click on the movie links for example). So, I download a couple of trailers from Apple and place them in my special ~/Movies/Trailers/ folder. Then I launch DVD Player.app and set up my DVD as I want it. I have it set to always resume playing from last position. So I set it up, select subtitles and audi option and then I quit the app just as the movie is about to start (chapter one).
Now we're all set. When my friends come over and the screen is down and the room is dimmed, I press a button on my ATI Remote which executes the AppleScript below:
tell application "QuickTime Player"
launch
activate
stop every movie
close every movie
end tell
tell application "Finder"
set trailers to every file in folder "Users:sandman:Movies:Trailers"
end tell
repeat with a in trailers
tell application "QuickTime Player"
open a
enter full screen display 4
present movie 1 scale screen mode normal display 4
try
repeat
if done of movie 1 is true then
exit repeat
else
delay 3
end if
end repeat
close movie 1 saving no
end try
exit full screen display 4
end tell
end repeat
tell application "DVD Player"
activate
set viewer position to {3584, 256, 486, 4976}
set viewer full screen to true
end tell
Some comments:Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20041023112152426