Appple TV As Mediua Center

[carfac]

Currently I am using Windows 7 Media Center to run my Living Rooom TV. Works pretty good.

So I was wondering if this might work better for me. I have all my movies and music on a NAS downstairs, and I could hook an Apple TV in hard-wire. Music is already in iTunes, so that is not a problem. I keep my movies in folders titles with film title, with the videos ripped into Video_TS folders (VOB).

Is this gonna work? Also, we do occasionally like to watch shows on the Internest like Nova- we go to PBS.ORG in Firefox and just watch the video stream. Can we do anything similar to this on an Appple TV?

Thanks!

 

[yetieater]

Yes, you could do it, but you would need to jailbreak your ATV in order to view your VOBs. You could import all of your video content into iTunes if you didn't want to jailbreak. Someone else would be better qualified to answer the question about watching NOVA streams. I'm fairly certain that there is an Addon for that in XBMC.

 

[craigsharp]

In my house we use PLEX on our ATV2... It works great for the content we have... In addition to PLEX i also have setup SickBeard and SABNzbd! Works amazingly well!!! Suits my families needs!

 

[carfac]

Can't play Video_ts file in itunes. I just tryed. Is there a different way?

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I will take a look at PLEX- I guess this is a jailbreak thing?

 

[urkel]

NAS. video_ts. PBS. Managed video folders. I have no idea why people are recommending the AppleTV when you already have a functional Media Center going. Sure, you "can" get some of the stuff listed accomplished but it requires jail breaking and a lot of compromises.

MCE is better optimized for your setup and since it's a real computer then you have the full Internet to get to PBS or whatever. You can always try Plex for Windows or Boxee also if you just want to get away from Media Center but personally my workflow suffered when I dumped MCE for a Roku and AppleTV. I even got a Mac Mini for a media center and it still wasn't as good as my old XP media center box so don't jump into anything crazy without looking for an internal solution.

 

[maturola]

Agreed with previous poster, if you already got the PC on the TV, just download Plex, you will love it.

If what you want is to move the PC away, then I would recommend the AppleTV2 (Jailbroken) + Plex, it works perfect. If you want to get rod of the computer completely, then AppleTV2 (Jailbroken) + XBMC (it will read files directly from your NAS).

 

[craigsharp]

It also really depends if your current computer has a TV Tuner or not... I had my windows 7 Professional machine sitting in a spare bedroom that did nothing but record tv shows from cable and OTA Antenna... Worked great! Dropped cable but still have Antenna and that machine eventually died... instead of fixing I went with SickBeard SABNzbd and Plex on my ATV2... Works GREAT!! as far as playing the vob files... plex will not. but xbmc will... You could convert all your files using Handbrake and then use metacow or something similar to add tags and import into iTunes...