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Can ATV work when isolated from of iMac?

G

GilesM

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 17, 2008
323
0
I am thinking of buying Apple TV.
I have two iMac's on a ethernet LAN in the office, but I wanted to get all my iTunes and movies to my TV which is downstairs.

I do not want to extend my LAN downstairs, nor do I want any wireless connections.

If I buy Apple TV can I add it to my LAN upstairs to sync with iTunes and movies and then take it downstairs and have it work from it's internal disk only?
When new data is added to iTunes, just take the unit back on to my LAN and make a sync, will that work?

Will the ATV function OK if it is isolated from the iMac?
 
That should work fine. You choose which items you want to have stored on the AppleTV's internal storage, once you've sync'd, all your chosen content will be on the AppleTV. Then you just need to plug it into your TV.
 
Thank you !
So I guess you could say that it is just like an ipod, you sync what you like and take it away.
fantastic, thank you.

One more question if I may, as this is an apple product, does it follow that files can be larger than 4 GB and are not limited to this size as we find on FAT 32 drives?
 
just bear in mind storage space. The max ATV you can get is 160g. Not very big. Also, without using wireless, none of the live itunes stuff will work. No movie rentals, podcasts downloads, tv show downloads...you tube..etc

Howver, You could rent and buy on the itunes store and sycn directly when you hook it up to you PC.

One thing you will not be able to do at all is rent HD movies. HD movies will only store on an ATV HD and they don't use itunes at all. In other words, you need the ATV hooked up directly to the internet to rent HD movies.

Hope this helps.
 
dmm219 said:
j
Howver, You could rent and buy on the itunes store and sycn directly when you hook it up to you PC.
Click to expand...

Actually you can't even do this. While it would sync to the ATV when you try to view it on the ATV it will fail because ATV will attempt to connect to iTunes to validate that you are still within the rental time window.
 
VTMac said:
Actually you can't even do this. While it would sync to the ATV when you try to view it on the ATV it will fail because ATV will attempt to connect to iTunes to validate that you are still within the rental time window.
Click to expand...

it will if you put boxee on it.
 
So, I could use ATV for purchased items, CD rips and DVD rips, but not rental items from iTunes.
Is that a reasonable summary?
 
You can rent directly from AppleTV, without your Mac to be on.
 
I see, well you have given me lots to think about !
I think first of all I will rip a file to the Apple TV setting and see how it looks, and importantly how big the file will be.

Does it matter with ATV if the file is over 4GB or not ?
 
The easiest thing....

Why isolate the appleTV? You say you don't want wireless, but all you have to do on one of your iMacs (with a built in Airport card) is turn on internet sharing in system preferences, and share your connection "from ethernet" to "computers using Airport". Go to your AppleTV, set it up to connect wirelessly, and you are all set. This way, you won't have to configure a wireless router, but have full syncing/streaming and availability of all :apple:TV functionality. This will save you trips with your back and forth carrying your :apple:TV to move files to it.

Also, you can turn internet sharing on and off from the iMac whenever you want, to connect/disconnect the aTV from the network.

I don't know the answer to your 4GB question.
 
GilesM said:
I see, well you have given me lots to think about !
I think first of all I will rip a file to the Apple TV setting and see how it looks, and importantly how big the file will be.

Does it matter with ATV if the file is over 4GB or not ?
Click to expand...
Whilst the file system can support files over 4GB, AppleTV doesn't support the playback of files over 4GB. Only 64Bit MP4's can be greater then 4GB and AppleTV doesn't support 64Bit MP4s.
 
Really! I had no idea I could do that!
This has just about sold me on the idea of ATV.

I just did a test rip of a movie via handbrake and at reasonable quality a 100 minute movie came out at 1.5 Gb so I guess my question regarding the file sizes is answered.

So i can use the airport card in one of my iMacs to sync to the ATV. Great.
I am so convinced now !

Thank you all.
 
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