advice needed

[123macca66]

i am keen to purchase a apple tv, but have a couple of questions.

1. i would ideally like to have the option to store my files on both the atv and a nas drive. can i do this, does atv flash give me this option?

2. if i use atv flash do i still need itunes running on another computer or can i "drag and drop" the files into atv?

3. i currently use tversity and xbox360 to stream my media, but would gladly appreciate any advice/knowledge from other users as to what is my best route.

i use a pc and vista.

thanks

jon

 

[spice weasel]

1. You can store your files on any drive you like - NAS, internal drive, or an external drive. If you want to keep files on your ATV as well, then just sync those files. That way, you won't have to have to have a computer on and iTunes running in order to use your ATV. Keep in mind though that even the 160 gig model is going to feel very cramped very quickly, and you will therefore have to stream some content some of the time (or juggle what you sync).

2. If you hack your ATV and run something like Boxee then you can stream your files from sources other than your iTunes library. There are plenty of reasons why you would want to hack the ATV, but this by itself doesn't seem to be a good one to me, since it's no extra bother to keep iTunes on if you have to have the host computer running anyway.

3. Everything you need to stream/sync content from your computer to your ATV is built into iTunes and the ATV. No reason to use any other software, unless you want to hack it to play other file formats.

 

[tom1971]

You can decide if you still want to use itunes or not when hacking your aTV.
Both is possible.

 

[123macca66]

thanks to for the quick replies.

i only thought of "hacking" atv so as i could play my avi and dvix files. i have quite a few.

 

[ab2650]

i only thought of "hacking" atv so as i could play my avi and dvix files. i have quite a few.

In my opinion, you would be much happier with a hacked aTV to play those DivX files. If you wanted to "stay stock" you would be in for a world of (time consuming) hurt re-encoding all those videos.

Keep in mind that things don't always work perfectly with patched aTVs, almost every software update breaks something, and many things are done in a non-intuitive way... But being able to stream DivX files off a NAS unit is a beautiful thing.

 

[123macca66]

Thanks,

I've been looking at different ways to flash the atv and whilst I appreciate there are freebies out there. Is atvflash worth the payment and is it the best?

 

[ab2650]

Is atvflash worth the payment and is it the best?

To me $50 is pretty steep for someone who built an installer off other people's hard work. You can get "pretty much" the same thing with atvusb-creator for free...

Be advised I've never tried ATVflash so I can't comment on it's quality. I've also found that the NitoTV install with atvusb-creator doesn't seem to work with my OS 2.3 ATV; I couldn't get AFP or SMB to mount properly. Maybe it's NitoTV, maybe it's atvusb-creator, maybe it's just me.

Edit: But Boxee and XBMC work perfectly (with atvusb-creator)

 

[bigkeef]

It is a shame we have to consider 'hacking' ATV to get things like boxee on it.

It is also a shame that Apple (jobs) seems to still view it a a hobby product!

It could have been a real competitor to Sky et al. I love it apart from lack of content and flexibility.

sigh

 

[ab2650]

It is a shame we have to consider 'hacking' ATV to get things like boxee on it.

It is also a shame that Apple (jobs) seems to still view it a a hobby product!

It could have been a real competitor to Sky et al. I love it apart from lack of content and flexibility.

sigh

It certainly is a shame that (for me at least) it isn't a useful device until it's hacked... I'm not too sold on Boxee yet, but my three requirements would be easy for Apple (to legitimately) implement:
1) Stream music and videos from non-itunes sources (networked AFP or SMB volumes)
2) More codec support (DivX mostly)
3) Be able to "sync" content without having it on a local machine (i.e., "Manually Manage Content" option for iPods and iPhones).

Silly, but the biggest reason I hacked it is that my music is already on the NAS... And I don't want my computer to be on every time I play music. C'mon Apple!