Apple TV and time capsule?

[Bones3010]

Hi there... It's my first post so I'm hoping this won't be too dumb a question ;-)

Anyway, I just got a 40gb ATV last week with plans to really only stream all the time rather than sync. Even so, my PC (yes, sorry, but it's a PC) lacks the storage capacity I need to rip all my DVDs. I was looking in to the 2tb time capsule drives for both compatibility and networking possibilities. My question is: is there any way to get the ATV and time capsule to work independently of iTunes and my PC and essentially stream content even when the computer is on? If not, is there ANY way to accomplish this and run streaming to ATV wihout iTunes?

If not, then I may as well save $250 and buy a generic 2tb drive, yes?

Part of the reason I was looking to do this is to maybe kill two birds with one stone and fix the other issue I have when the ATV loses connection with my library randomly and I have to go up/down stairs to restart iTunes on the computer... That one has me baffled since I have a very strong signal.

Thoughts/ideas? ...thanks in advance!

-Rob

 

[marcusgee]

Good thought, but...

I'm afraid you always have to have iTunes running in order to stream to your ATV. That's the disadvantage to the 40GB version--you can't get near as much content to run on it independently of iTunes.

You can, however, hook up an external USB drive to the ATV and use it for content--although the ATV does not support this out of the box. You'd have to hack the device. If you Google it, you should be able to find instructions (though I'm not sure of the availability of hacks for the current version of the ATV software).

 

[Bones3010]

Bummer... I'd love a solution that could have all my media on a drive that's independent of my PC. I've heard of hacks to the ATV that allow for much larger drives but not sure how large a drive you could actually install. Anyone know? ...I have doubts anything as large as a TB drive would be doable but that would be nice.

Thanks for the input!

-Rob

 

[dynaflash]

Bummer... I'd love a solution that could have all my media on a drive that's independent of my PC. I've heard of hacks to the ATV that allow for much larger drives but not sure how large a drive you could actually install. Anyone know? ...I have doubts anything as large as a TB drive would be doable but that would be nice.

Thanks for the input!

-Rob

Using eSata I have a 500 GB and a 1 TB atv. Basically can run as big of a drive as exists with an esata interface. Internally I think its up to 500GB now afaik.

 

[Bones3010]

Hmmm... Maybe I'll consider doing that hack eventually. Too bad there aren't internal TB drives available yet.

Being new to this kind of thing, can anyone direct me to a how-to written for newbies like myself for the hard drive hack? Is it easy to do?

Thanks again!

 

[richorlin]

Using eSata I have a 500 GB and a 1 TB atv. Basically can run as big of a drive as exists with an esata interface. Internally I think its up to 500GB now afaik.

Not true. I have a 750gb usb external drive hooked up to my ATV.
You can use ATVFlash ot ATV-USBCreator to hack to ATV. I'm using ATVFlash and the only thing I installed is Nito TV (which gives you the external USB drive) and Boxee.

 

[Munki60]

Not happy with Hack

Hi,

I bought an aTv a few weeks ago. I completed the hack and was able to use the USB port for my external hard drive. Everything worked exactly as it said in the hack tutorial. I used NitoTv to access my hard drive with all my movies and music videos. Really didn't like it. None of my previous itunes synced vidoes would show pictures, and it doesn't have the smooth running, shuffle videos etc that you get from Itunes, and it just didn't feel right.

My plan is to buy a 2TB time capsule, have all my entertainment files on it, and have ghost files in my Itunes, then just stream to aTv. I don't know if this will actually work, but it sounds good in my head.

I haven't had any problems watching movies/tv shows downloaded from the internet. I use Vuze to download high definition tv shows, and Vuze converts it for apple tv, doesn't take long at all. You can also drag existing files you want converted for aTv to Vuze to convert, again doesn't take long at all.

I think using aTv the way Apple intended it to be used is the best way. If there is a new software update in September that unlocks the USB port for an external hard drive, and allows you to sync from that, then all the better. At the minute this way suits me.

 

[dynaflash]

Not true. I have a 750gb usb external drive hooked up to my ATV.
You can use ATVFlash ot ATV-USBCreator to hack to ATV. I'm using ATVFlash and the only thing I installed is Nito TV (which gives you the external USB drive) and Boxee.

Well, of course its true, I said *internally* the biggest was 500GB. You are using an external from you're post I believe.

 

[Tup]

My plan is to buy a 2TB time capsule, have all my entertainment files on it, and have ghost files in my Itunes, then just stream to aTv. I don't know if this will actually work, but it sounds good in my head.

I think I have a similar setup, not exactly sure what you mean by ghost files but in my setup the files are located on the TC and appear in iTunes as normal on the MacBook..

Plan to get a mini or something I can leave on so that I don't have to turn on MacBook to stream movies

 

[Munki60]

not exactly sure what you mean by ghost files

Maybe they're not called that, i read about it on a blog some time ago. You sync your apple tv to itunes, and then copy the files from the itunes folder on your macbook to the time capsule, leaving the tracks on itunes. When apple tv sync with itunes it doesn't know the files have been moved, and doesn't delete them from apple tv. Not sure how exactly it works. I didn't think much of it at the time, and can't find the blog now to research more.

I may have taken it up wrong, but i think thats what it said.

 

[marcusgee]

My plan is to buy a 2TB time capsule, have all my entertainment files on it, and have ghost files in my Itunes, then just stream to aTv. I don't know if this will actually work, but it sounds good in my head.

I tried this approach with my 1TB Time Capsule, and it worked okay. The only problem is that the TC would spin down into a power save mode after a certain period of inactivity, and I'd have to wake it up by navigating to it with Finder and opening one of the folders. For some reason, iTunes would not wake up the TC when I tried to play one of my movie files--so the ATV would give me an error that the file couldn't be played.

For that reason, I started using an external USB drive plugged into my iMac to store my video files, and just use the TC for backup. Whenever I want to stream from iTunes to the ATV, I just fire the USB drive up. Works a lot better than my previous setup.

 

[Munki60]

For that reason, I started using an external USB drive plugged into my iMac to store my video files, and just use the TC for backup. Whenever I want to stream from iTunes to the ATV, I just fire the USB drive up. Works a lot better than my previous setup.

Thanks for that. Thats do-able now, rather than waiting to save for a time capsule, cheers.