Apple TV's pros and big CONS.

[Surf Monkey]

I wouldn't be so sure that Apple will fix it. Smart playlists have NEVER worked completely correctly on iPhone, Apple's flagship product. If they won't put the time into making one of the most useful features of their iTunes ecosystem work on their flagship iTunes client product, what makes you think they'll hop to it and fix play counts over AirPlay?

I'm not holding my breath.

 

[dgalvan123]

Another way to organize movies is through playlists, i picked this idea of from someone else on this forum. I have a playlist for kids movies (so my kids don't browse the grown up pics), a playlist for grown up movies, so I can browse without seeing the kids junk. And you can create playlists for whatever you want. I manually maintain them (not like i am adding movies everyday so it is easy, everytime i add a movie i decide which playlists to add it to). Never tried but maybe you can automate the playlists in itunes?

. . .

On the home movies side i set them up as a tv show and it works really well. The are all part of the tv show called 'Home Movies', and each year is a season, you can set the season to 2010, 2009, ... and it works well. I put the episode number/trade number as the month the video was created and it sorts them pretty well. I find this to be a great way to organize home movies.

Have you tried these methods with the 2nd Generation Apple TV? Because I have and as far as I can tell, neither works. Playlists of MOVIES are not displayed on my ATV2, and setting them up my home movies as "TV Shows" with different seasons/years etc doesn't work either. I mean, you can certainly group them that way in iTunes, but the Apple TV 2 will still show all your home movies in one big long list, or else separated by different "genres" only.

I've seen other posts on these forums and on the apple.com forums from people who have an ATV 1 and an ATV2, and they say that this strategy DOES work on the ATV1 and DOES NOT work on the ATV2.

So for now it's just grouping by Genres for me.

 

[From A Buick 8]

Have you tried these methods with the 2nd Generation Apple TV? Because I have and as far as I can tell, neither works. Playlists of MOVIES are not displayed on my ATV2, and setting them up my home movies as "TV Shows" with different seasons/years etc doesn't work either. I mean, you can certainly group them that way in iTunes, but the Apple TV 2 will still show all your home movies in one big long list, or else separated by different "genres" only.

I've seen other posts on these forums and on the apple.com forums from people who have an ATV 1 and an ATV2, and they say that this strategy DOES work on the ATV1 and DOES NOT work on the ATV2.

So for now it's just grouping by Genres for me.

I forget the exact setting on the new ATV but you have to "turn on" its ability to use the playlist.

I am currently doing this, I have my movies grouped under several playlist and the all show up on the ATV.

 

[KeriJane]

I got an Apple TV the other day.
Here's the Pros and Cons so far:

Pros:
Easy installation and setup... with one possible exception.
It works really well with an Airport Extreme.
Small, Silent, Inconspicuous.
Nice remote.
Somehow, it makes really poor YouTube videos look good on a big screen.
A neat way to play Internet Radio on the TV while using the computer for something else.

Cons:
There is no "Space" character in the onscreen keyboard for the Home Sharing setup. So, if your Apple ID has a space in it you are out of luck.
The necessity of having an Apple ID and iTunes to access your computer.


I am amazed at how good YouTube looks on this thing. I uploaded a really bad quality video from a 20 year old tape and it looks better on the ATV2 than on the VCR! How is this possible? Amazing.

It's certainly worth the $99.
It should be very handy if company wants to see a movie I don't have... tap tap, (ka-ching!) there it is!

Have Fun,
Keri

 

[pedz]

Have you tried these methods with the 2nd Generation Apple TV? Because I have and as far as I can tell, neither works. Playlists of MOVIES are not displayed on my ATV2, and setting them up my home movies as "TV Shows" with different seasons/years etc doesn't work either. I mean, you can certainly group them that way in iTunes, but the Apple TV 2 will still show all your home movies in one big long list, or else separated by different "genres" only.

I've seen other posts on these forums and on the apple.com forums from people who have an ATV 1 and an ATV2, and they say that this strategy DOES work on the ATV1 and DOES NOT work on the ATV2.

So for now it's just grouping by Genres for me.

As the other reply states, I believe it is under general settings. By default it is set to only show playlists for music. Change it to music and movies and it will work.

For the home movies there is a bug in the new atv, it shows a row for each season of a show, it shouldn't show each individual video though, just one row per year. Keep in mind if there is only one episode for a season then it will show that episode instead of the year (it can be confusing). This is an annoying bug,but a row per year isn't the end of the world because most people think this will get fixed in an update. I still think this is the best way to organize home movies, I would switch to an inferior approach just because of a temporary (hopefully) bug.

Peter

 

[Andy-Howell]

Potentially an App drive Apple TV could be enormously useful and popular. Here is the UK we can't use Netflix and as such a lot of functionality is lost.

A BBC iPlayer app would be a big bonus and many other services that currently stream to iphone could be up and running quickly.

The BBC are a key driver and I guess there wouldn't be that much work in adapting current technologies.

Many UK broadcaster already make services available through Virgin's broadband services and the like.

The problem is that broadcaster and content companies are likely to tread carefully with a view to not upsetting those who are currently distributing content for them.

If I knew Apps were coming in the new year I'd buy one of these things. But at the moment, I'll wait. There's just not enough content and the rental pricing is not really keen enough yet.

 

[dgalvan123]

As the other reply states, I believe it is under general settings. By default it is set to only show playlists for music. Change it to music and movies and it will work.

Thanks for this tip! You were right: on the ATV2, go to Settings --> Audio & Video, and set "Show Playlists" to "All" (by default it is set to "music only").

Now, when I go to Computers --> Movies on the ATV2, I see my playlists of movies. Now I can group them into different years (one smart playlist for all 2010 movies, one for all 2009 movies, etc.). It would be nice to be able to group them into subfolders inside of this, though. Basically, this is just like grouping them by "genres": you get one level of organization (the genre can be all, 2010 movies, a particular event, or whatever), but you can't subdivide further than that. Might not be an issue for most people, but I have a 6 month old son so we have tons of home movies and I'd love to be able to group them into different events INSIDE the 2010 folder, instead of only being able to group them on one level of organization.

Tried the TV show thing (make home movies "tv shows" with different years being different seasons, etc) before on the ATV2 and it didn't work.

 

[Omne666]

Thanks for this tip! You were right: on the ATV2, go to Settings --> Audio & Video, and set "Show Playlists" to "All" (by default it is set to "music only").

Now, when I go to Computers --> Movies on the ATV2, I see my playlists of movies. Now I can group them into different years (one smart playlist for all 2010 movies, one for all 2009 movies, etc.). It would be nice to be able to group them into subfolders inside of this, though. Basically, this is just like grouping them by "genres": you get one level of organization (the genre can be all, 2010 movies, a particular event, or whatever), but you can't subdivide further than that. Might not be an issue for most people, but I have a 6 month old son so we have tons of home movies and I'd love to be able to group them into different events INSIDE the 2010 folder, instead of only being able to group them on one level of organization.

Actually, I have a solution for you on this....an accidental one, but a solution none the less.
In iTunes, because back in version whichever, you could only have a certain number of playlists, that when they brought in folders, I grouped my playlists into two main folders...Movies, and Music. Within them I then placed appropriate playlists. By Actors, Years, special groupings that meant something to my wife )...like Chick Flicks) etc
Since I got my atv2, Ive noticed that the folder itself is classed as a playlist and shows ALL the movies within the playlists inside it.
So, if you create a Folder for 2010 movies, manually drop them into it, then create smart playlists or whatever WITHIN that folder, you'll end with a main list of 2010 movies, PLUS the sub divisions your after.

I say this because this is how mines working at the moment. Of course, if they ever fix atv2 to behave like atv1, this will need adjusting to your needs.

Play around with the folder/playlist stuff in iTunes. I have in my Movies folder a Stars folder which contains smart playlists based on actors, smart playlists based on year of release and many more.
Its a quick and easy play to adjust this setup and you can check your results on your atv2 at will.

 

[Scarpad]

Why in the world did you buy an AppleTV?

So that I can play on my tv all the media I've encoded to play on my Ipad and Macbook.

 

[dgalvan123]

Actually, I have a solution for you on this....an accidental one, but a solution none the less.
In iTunes, because back in version whichever, you could only have a certain number of playlists, that when they brought in folders, I grouped my playlists into two main folders...Movies, and Music. Within them I then placed appropriate playlists. By Actors, Years, special groupings that meant something to my wife )...like Chick Flicks) etc
Since I got my atv2, Ive noticed that the folder itself is classed as a playlist and shows ALL the movies within the playlists inside it.
So, if you create a Folder for 2010 movies, manually drop them into it, then create smart playlists or whatever WITHIN that folder, you'll end with a main list of 2010 movies, PLUS the sub divisions your after.

I say this because this is how mines working at the moment. Of course, if they ever fix atv2 to behave like atv1, this will need adjusting to your needs.

Play around with the folder/playlist stuff in iTunes. I have in my Movies folder a Stars folder which contains smart playlists based on actors, smart playlists based on year of release and many more.
Its a quick and easy play to adjust this setup and you can check your results on your atv2 at will.

Thanks for this! I'll try it tonight. Yeah, all I really want is to have a structure that goes year_folder-->event_folder--->event movies. This sounds like it would do it.

Though, honestly, what I'd really prefer is for the appleTV2 to see the movies in my iphoto library the same way it sees the photos in my iphoto library. Then I wouldn't have to take the extra step of dragging my iphoto movies into itunes and organizing them there. I can check a box in iTunes and make my whole iPhoto library visible to apple tv. . . except for the movies. I don't get why they restricted it this way, since all apple TV should need is the path to the location of the movie (assuming its in the right file format, which mine are).