Apple TV using external iTunes library?

[radek1mac]

Here is a task. I have huge CD collection and want to rip them off in Apple Loseless and play via Apple TV hooked up to my Linn Kisto System.
At the moment I play them wirelessly via Apple TV, but my iMac hard drive is only 250GB plus sounds keeps dropping (tried everything).
I have worked out that my collection will take about 4T and I found great external drive - Iomega UltraMax Plus Hard Drive 4TB.
Now - If I connect this drive to iMac and rip the Cds off (placing iTunes library on external drive), is there any way that after I can plug the hard drive to Apple TV usb (after hacking it) and play music from there?
Any thoughts?

 

[basesloaded190]

Here is a task. I have huge CD collection and want to rip them off in Apple Loseless and play via Apple TV hooked up to my Linn Kisto System.
At the moment I play them wirelessly via Apple TV, but my iMac hard drive is only 250GB plus sounds keeps dropping (tried everything).
I have worked out that my collection will take about 4T and I found great external drive - Iomega UltraMax Plus Hard Drive 4TB.
Now - If I connect this drive to iMac and rip the Cds off (placing iTunes library on external drive), is there any way that after I can plug the hard drive to Apple TV usb (after hacking it) and play music from there?
Any thoughts?

After hacking? Yes. Without hacking you are out of luck. There a lot of different ones out there. Either search in these forums or do a quick google search and you will find what your looking for

 

[Abraxsis]

Couldnt you just hook the 4TB drive to your iMac and stream them to the ATV via iTunes? That is what I do with my massive media collection, everything is Option dropped into iTunes and streamed wirelessly to the ATV.

 

[Bevz]

Couldnt you just hook the 4TB drive to your iMac and stream them to the ATV via iTunes? That is what I do with my massive media collection, everything is Option dropped into iTunes and streamed wirelessly to the ATV.

This is basically what i do, except i have the iTunes library actually held on the external as well as the media... Never had a problem with it.

 

[radek1mac]

This is basically what i do, except i have the iTunes library actually held on the external as well as the media... Never had a problem with it.

That is what I do at the moment, but experiencing too many drop outs.
Even though I play via Apple TV and my library is on my iMac. The network is very strong and fast at my house (Up to 50meg, Time Capsule etc) and when it plays it is amazing, but when it keeps dropping it is very annoying..

 

[Bevz]

That is what I do at the moment, but experiencing too many drop outs.
Even though I play via Apple TV and my library is on my iMac. The network is very strong and fast at my house (Up to 50meg, Time Capsule etc) and when it plays it is amazing, but when it keeps dropping it is very annoying..

Is it the wireless connection between iTunes and ATV that's dropping or are you wired? I had wireless dropout for ages when i first had the ATV, so i decided to take a risk and replace my old Zoom X6 with the Apple Airport Extreme. It was a lot better straight away, but still dropped out oddly from time to time, i found out it was my washing machine; every time it went into a spin cycle, ATV dropped connection (i know, it sounds odd, but it definitely was doing it!), i changed the channel and it cured it... btw - i did try changing channel on my Zoom router but it made no difference, but made a big difference on the Airport Extreme.
Now, however i've switched to pure N (5Ghz) on my home network and ATV hasn't dropped out at all since then (over a month).

The ATV is a little flakey with it's connection to iTunes, but with me, it made no difference if i was using an internal drive or an external one.

BTW - i've got aTVFlash now which will allow me to use the USB socket on the ATV to connect a bigger drive and use it as the primary storage to replace the internal one; i've not tried it out yet though, but reading the forums a lot of people seem to have done this is avoid streaming and it's worked really well for them! As soon as i save up some pennies, i'll get a 1TB external and give that a go!

 

[radek1mac]

Is it the wireless connection between iTunes and ATV that's dropping or are you wired? I had wireless dropout for ages when i first had the ATV, so i decided to take a risk and replace my old Zoom X6 with the Apple Airport Extreme. It was a lot better straight away, but still dropped out oddly from time to time, i found out it was my washing machine; every time it went into a spin cycle, ATV dropped connection (i know, it sounds odd, but it definitely was doing it!), i changed the channel and it cured it... btw - i did try changing channel on my Zoom router but it made no difference, but made a big difference on the Airport Extreme.
Now, however i've switched to pure N (5Ghz) on my home network and ATV hasn't dropped out at all since then (over a month).

The ATV is a little flakey with it's connection to iTunes, but with me, it made no difference if i was using an internal drive or an external one.

BTW - i've got aTVFlash now which will allow me to use the USB socket on the ATV to connect a bigger drive and use it as the primary storage to replace the internal one; i've not tried it out yet though, but reading the forums a lot of people seem to have done this is avoid streaming and it's worked really well for them! As soon as i save up some pennies, i'll get a 1TB external and give that a go!

Hi Bevz
Well that the dilemma.
I am going to hack my appleTV today with aTVFlash to be able to benefit from larger capacity. Getting 4TB Iomega. But if I attach it to AppleTV I will be able to sync only 250GB as its my iMac capacity. My classical collection will take around 3TB easily. So I was wondering if there is a way of moving all my AAC files to 4TB external drive using iMac and once all is done plug it in to AppleTV. And no drop outs. I am using N version of wireless via Time Capsule. And it keeps dropping, which drives me mad.
Another option is to attach 4TB to iMac and use powerline AV network using power sockets, but it only handle up to 200mbps, and my network is 50 meg....so dilemmas

 

[tom1971]

Here is a task. I have huge CD collection and want to rip them off in Apple Loseless and play via Apple TV hooked up to my Linn Kisto System.
At the moment I play them wirelessly via Apple TV, but my iMac hard drive is only 250GB plus sounds keeps dropping (tried everything).
I have worked out that my collection will take about 4T and I found great external drive - Iomega UltraMax Plus Hard Drive 4TB.
Now - If I connect this drive to iMac and rip the Cds off (placing iTunes library on external drive), is there any way that after I can plug the hard drive to Apple TV usb (after hacking it) and play music from there?
Any thoughts?

The patchstick.ca solution (better, more flexible and less expensive than atvflash) will allow you to use your external harddrive to be synced with iTunes.

 

[Bevz]

Hi Bevz
Well that the dilemma.
I am going to hack my appleTV today with aTVFlash to be able to benefit from larger capacity. Getting 4TB Iomega. But if I attach it to AppleTV I will be able to sync only 250GB as its my iMac capacity. My classical collection will take around 3TB easily. So I was wondering if there is a way of moving all my AAC files to 4TB external drive using iMac and once all is done plug it in to AppleTV. And no drop outs. I am using N version of wireless via Time Capsule. And it keeps dropping, which drives me mad.
Another option is to attach 4TB to iMac and use powerline AV network using power sockets, but it only handle up to 200mbps, and my network is 50 meg....so dilemmas

mmm... Your basic problem is that ATV is built to sync/stream from an instance of iTunes...

If you attach the 4TB drive to your iMac, you are stuck trying to figure out why your machine is dropping out... Have you thought of a wired setup (normal LAN cable rather than running through your power sockets)? I've thought of this myself, running a LAN up through my attic and back down to my ATV in the frontroom, but luckily my drop outs were fixed by the Airport Extreme...

The only other thing i can think of is attach the 4TB drive to your ATV as a secondary drive; ATVflash has the option of using the USB drive attached to it either as a primary (i.e. direct replacement for the internal drive - and therefore to be synced with iTunes), but also has the option of just attaching a normal second drive; the second drive would NOT be synced with iTunes but can be accessed with other software that ATVFlash installs... I'm thinking of NitoTV or XBMX/Boxee... I think any of these programs once installed can access all "local" media on your ATV which will include any files you've got sat on the drive in the USB slot of ATV....

Check out the ATVFlash Wiki...
http://wiki.atvflash.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

 

[radek1mac]

mmm... Your basic problem is that ATV is built to sync/stream from an instance of iTunes...

If you attach the 4TB drive to your iMac, you are stuck trying to figure out why your machine is dropping out... Have you thought of a wired setup (normal LAN cable rather than running through your power sockets)? I've thought of this myself, running a LAN up through my attic and back down to my ATV in the frontroom, but luckily my drop outs were fixed by the Airport Extreme...

The only other thing i can think of is attach the 4TB drive to your ATV as a secondary drive; ATVflash has the option of using the USB drive attached to it either as a primary (i.e. direct replacement for the internal drive - and therefore to be synced with iTunes), but also has the option of just attaching a normal second drive; the second drive would NOT be synced with iTunes but can be accessed with other software that ATVFlash installs... I'm thinking of NitoTV or XBMX/Boxee... I think any of these programs once installed can access all "local" media on your ATV which will include any files you've got sat on the drive in the USB slot of ATV....

Check out the ATVFlash Wiki...
http://wiki.atvflash.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

I found the solution.... I think. XBMX can play iTunes files so am going to rip all the CDs using iMac and when its done plug it to Apple TV. Done

 

[Bevz]

I found the solution.... I think. XBMX can play iTunes files so am going to rip all the CDs using iMac and when its done plug it to Apple TV. Done

Excellent. Good luck!

 

[rayward]

Regarding the drop-out issue, if you have an older Mac (and by "older", maybe not much older than two years old), it won't support the wake on wi-fi capabilities of Snow Leopard.

When I upgraded to SL, it reset the power management controls, so that my CPU would sleep after three hours. SL and the ATV thought they could wake the CPU, but they couldn't, so the ATV was dropped. Once I figured this out, I set my CPU to be always on, and haven't had another drop-out.