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NAS follow up

Yes, but its done through iTunes - as long as the file is compatible (AppleTV will not play AVI or mkv files) and its in iTunes it does not matter where you have it stored. AppleTV will play it as long as iTunes is opened and iTunes knows were to find the file (I have my libraries on external hard drives).

Well, I've been able to accomplish this with my mac mini setup by simply placing symbolic links (aka alias, or ln -s for the unix geeks) in the movies directory of the mac mini that points to the external nas share on my gigabit network. It works flawlessly with Perian installed (for mkv, avi files).

In essence, I am trying to replicate the same thing, but with AppleTV2. Anyone have any thoughts if this is doable? Or do I need to hack it with some sort of awkward hack?
 
Well, I've been able to accomplish this with my mac mini setup by simply placing symbolic links (aka alias, or ln -s for the unix geeks) in the movies directory of the mac mini that points to the external nas share on my gigabit network. It works flawlessly with Perian installed (for mkv, avi files).

In essence, I am trying to replicate the same thing, but with AppleTV2. Anyone have any thoughts if this is doable? Or do I need to hack it with some sort of awkward hack?

To play any video file on AppleTV other than the specified MPEG-4/H.264 you have to hack it.
 
So, before updating I copied my perian codec, as well as the related a52codec to /Users/frontrow/Library/Quicktime, and it seems to have survived the update - various Xvids and whatnot saved with appletvfooler and brought into iTunes still play. However, no audio on files with AC3 audio - they play, just no audio.

So, has anyone pulled the drive from a 2.0 appletv yet and tried just placing the quicktime components in the /Library/Quicktime folder? Does it work like it used to?
 
Really? That's odd.

Then again there really isn't a lot of good Blu-ray movies out there. One of my friends got a Blu-ray player a few months ago and they're saying that they've already gone through the "good" movies on Netflix.

Is your friend effin' kidding?

Spider-man series, Die Hard series, Pirates of the Caribbean series, The Rock, Rent, Gone in 60 Seconds, Pearl Harbor, King Arthur, Troy, Wyatt Earp, the Harry Potter movies, Casino Royale......

Netflix says they have 500 Blu-ray titles on there. Either your friend goes through movies fast or he/she is really picky.

Apple is going to have to include Blu-ray Disc drives on their computers soon. That whole idea of downloading everything is nice and all, but most BD movies come on 50GB discs. That means the 500GB hard drive you just bought at Best Buy will hold between 10 and 20 movies (pretending that half that space is taken up by special features). They would also take hours to download.
 
Is 3:10 to Yuma an HD rental? It's next in my Netflix que, but if I can rent it in HD off my Apple TV (which should be here Friday!), I'm going to take it out.
 
Really? That's odd.

Then again there really isn't a lot of good Blu-ray movies out there. One of my friends got a Blu-ray player a few months ago and they're saying that they've already gone through the "good" movies on Netflix.

Apple does have a good initial offering of movies, considering that they have to prepare them themselves. I wonder what their process is.

Eclectic is an understatement. And it is odd what they have decided to put on HD. I wonder how the decisions were made? Very odd.
 
Eclectic is an understatement. And it is odd what they have decided to put on HD. I wonder how the decisions were made? Very odd.

Who is "they"? If you mean Apple, Apple doesn't get to decide what the studios are willing to put on iTunes.
 
How does the AirTunes integration work?? is that to or from the aTV? it seems reduntant, but cool none the less...can you stream audio to a airport express? the apple site also said something about streaming cover art and titles...to where?

Also, will 1080p only be truly that if the movie is encoded that way from the movie house?
 
re: Streaming Radio Stations

Anyway to keep the Streaming Radio Stations playlist on the Apple TV? Everytime I shut down my laptop, the playlist is removed even thought it keeps playing.
 
Is your friend effin' kidding?

Spider-man series, Die Hard series, Pirates of the Caribbean series, The Rock, Rent, Gone in 60 Seconds, Pearl Harbor, King Arthur, Troy, Wyatt Earp, the Harry Potter movies, Casino Royale......

Netflix says they have 500 Blu-ray titles on there. Either your friend goes through movies fast or he/she is really picky.

Apple is going to have to include Blu-ray Disc drives on their computers soon. That whole idea of downloading everything is nice and all, but most BD movies come on 50GB discs. That means the 500GB hard drive you just bought at Best Buy will hold between 10 and 20 movies (pretending that half that space is taken up by special features). They would also take hours to download.
Just finished watching my first HD movie rental on Apple TV, waited a couple of minutes (not sure how many, because after I ordered the first movie I ordered a second, not realizing that it change the order of my queue) and then I was able to watch it. I quickly ran to to the my receiver (it's in my basement) to confirm that the movie was in fact in Dolby Digital and it was. Overall this was an excellent experience for me.

Now that's talk about my friend with the Blu-Ray. Yes, they do see a lot of movies (I go to the movies with her once a week). The movies that you mention aren't exactly her tastes (she never saw the Pirates of the Caribbean), but come on now. Gone in 60 Seconds, Pearl Harbor, The Rock? For starters, they're old movies and they're not that good. Just because a movie has been re-released on Blu-Ray doesn't make it a good movie.

Now as for the bonus crap. Yes, I'm calling it crap. When I first got a DVD player I watched the bonus material, looked for the Easter Eggs, watched the bloopers, watched the directors cut and the unrated version and so on. But you know what I've come to the conclusion that a majority of that stuff is just filler. The only bonus feature that I recommend to people is the bonus disc that comes with Citizen Cane, Battle over Citizen Kane. As for the commentary tracks go, the only ones I've found interesting are the Kevin Smith ones. Yeah, I also think the Star Wars bonus stuff is cool, but then again I'm a Star Wars mark.

Of all the people that I know that buy DVDs, I know only one person who fully explores the content. The rest just watch the movie and that's it.

So why am I saying this, well, basically I think the majority of people out there would rather buy a 9.99 HD movie or rent it without the bonus crap, which would cut the size of the file down.

When I built my home theater last summer, the sales man tried hard to get me to spend over $1,000 for a Pioneer Elite Blu-ray player (most of my components a Pioneer Elite, including my 50" Pioneer Elite Plasma) and I said no. Instead I opted for an Apple TV and I have to say that it was the best $400 (I think that's how much it cost back then) I spent. When I show off my set up I show video streaming of DVDs from Mac Pro to the Apple TV and even my A/V Gadget head friends can't believe how good the picture is (my TV does the upscaling of the DVDs) and compare it to their Blu-Ray movies. Then I show off all of the free content I get, via Podcasts and they can't believe it.

The missing piece for me was the Dolby Digital and now that here, I'm ready to start phase 2 of my home theater project.

God I didn't mean to ramble on like that. It's just that the Apple TV is one of my favorite toys of 2007, like it better than my iPhone. It really changes my TV viewing experience. I only wish that it had an onscreen clock, well there's always Take 3.
 
Absolutely mind blowing! I don't think alot of people have ever understood the potential of this device! Today's upgrade just blew the doors off of a plethera of devices!

I've loved my aTV since day one, when I bought it, but know with the direct downloads and air tunes streaming this is just golden. I'm I PC guy, but check this out:

Right now, I am sharing my collection of 24k songs over my n-network from my desktop to my tiny Samsung Q1. I have my aTV hooked up to my HD projector and a Bose system. Because I can now use multiple speakers AND CONTROL THE VOLUME, I can now light up all of my sytems game room, office, bedroom, livingroom for a fraction of the cost of any comperable system Sonos, Bose-link, etc. Because I have all of my music on a dedicated server and can stream that back to my Q1 or my OQO and then stream that out to multiple speaker syatems I can walk around with a tiny touchscreen PC and control all of my music, volume and all from one location!!!!!

I am completely geeking out people!!! :D:D:D:D

Huzzah!!!!

And that's just a side benefit! I haven't even touched on the freedom I now have with the 118 dvd's I've ripped! I've never been this happy about my media/gadgets ever!!! Whoooooo hoooooooo!

I bought a song on aTV, played it and watched it sync to my smart "added today" / "jazz" playlists and in turn on to my 160gb classic without lifting a finger!!!

It's like I've been waiting for this day my since I bought my fist CD!!!
 
Just watched "Transformers" in HD...starts VERY soon after downloading...

I have to say, the quality was very good. Comparable to VOD from Comcast, which is great since I'm now going to return the HD DVR and enable my new Tivo Series 3 HD DVR, which CANNOT handle VOD.

Anyway, for all of you concerned about "start time" of an HD rental as compared to the instantaneous start of VOD (Video On Demand) from your cable provider, the movie started in less than 2-3 minutes. In fact, the progress bar had just bumped up to 2% complete and the Apple TV then popped up a message advising me that it was ready to start watching!

So, no great delay on the download versus start time, and this is DEFINITELY an acceptable replacement for Cable VOD (assuming the selection increases). The only downside is that the cable provider also offers TONS of free movies. THAT won't be happening through Apple!
 
How does the AirTunes integration work?? is that to or from the aTV? it seems reduntant, but cool none the less...can you stream audio to a airport express? the apple site also said something about streaming cover art and titles...to where?

The album art and titles pop up on your aTV screen much like they do when your running iTunes with the visualizer full screen. That is, in the bottom left hand corner. It streams from you computer library to aTV, it treats the aTV like any other airport express, which is what I have going on in my family/living room.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be able to group multiple speakers with my airport extreme. In otherwords, my computer+aTV= OK. my computer+aTV+BOSE [the name of my airport extreme]= NO GO. It says it can't combine/do you want to switch to BOSE. I'm expecting this not to apply to multiple aTVs.
 
Thanks Kevin!!!

In 1.0/1.1 you can't set a remote library as the default, you basically switch to the remote library and you see its contents in the main menu. To see your local content, you need to go back to sources and switch back to :apple:tv.

This would not survive a reboot.

In 2.0, you don't have to switch your context completely. You basically either pick "My Movies" or "Shared Movies".

You always have easy access to local or shared content from the main menu.

Kevin

QUOTE=mensrea;4818245]The question I have is will I have to 'reconnect' each time I choose shared media? If so it'll be fairly nightmarish for me. :( If it will stay connected and monitor my shared lib. then wonderful, that makes sense; if not, I'll be reluctent to dive into take 2.[/QUOTE]

Awww! Bummer. :( Thanks for the info, guess I'll have to decide if the inconvenience is worth the improvements. As both my music and video collections grow, that subset distinction won't matter much. Today they are about 250 gbs; my movies alone will double that by the time I'm done ripping. Given your connections, maybe you can put a bee in someone's bonnet that reconnecting all the time might not be the best solution going forward. If I've got a terabyte on the device then no prob.

People were asking you [Earlier in this Thread] what changes were made Kevin, and unless I miss my guess this must be one of them based upon your initial answer to my query and what I see today. :D:D

Since they are all combined and I do not have to connect all the time as I feared, I'm guessing my request did not fall on deaf ears. If so, thank you so much!!!!

I will be buying two more now!!! :D:D:D
 
People were asking you [Earlier in this Thread] what changes were made Kevin, and unless I miss my guess this must be one of them based upon your initial answer to my query and what I see today. :D:D

Since they are all combined and I do not have to connect all the time as I feared, I'm guessing my request did not fall on deaf ears. If so, thank you so much!!!!

I will be buying two more now!!! :D:D:D

?

If you mean was this a change since MacWorld, the answer is no. I'm not sure I'm following you...

Kevin
 
I would like to see enhanced browsing of your own movie under "My Movies"
Either by genre or like the iTunes rental section. Let us choose under settings how we want to view our movies.

1008appletv.png


If it was broken down each row by genre (action & adventure, comedy, HD, NEW and so on) and we could browse through them just like in the rental store? I think this be very handy for us with very large collections of movies.

Also maybe bumping the My Movies, My Music, My TV Shows to the top selection instead of the bottom. It's kinda making it harder now for us to look at our own content...
 
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