Can I Copy Movies From My PC to Apple TV Hard Disk?

[SpikeHK]

I guess kind of a newbie question, thanks in advance for your patience.

I'm contemplating buying the new Apple TV 4k when it comes out in May. (Possibly pair it with my HomePods for audio output, maybe pick up the AirPods Max as well.)

Currently I have a Windows PC and I use Plex for viewing films from my PC on my TV.

That doesn't work for 4K films. My PC simply isn't fast enough to stream them without a lot of pauses for buffering. So I have an Android TV box that I can plug USB disks into and then view the films using VLC.

I plan to buy an MBP once the new ones with the M1X or M2 chip come out, reportedly in the second half of this year. Until then, is it possible for me to copy a movie, perhaps via WiFi, from my PC to the Apple TV's hard disk and play directly from there (perhaps using VLC)?

Thanks.

 

[darthbane2k]

Other than using VLC you cannot download any media to Apple TV for offline playback. Everything is streamed. So yes you can achieve this via VLC but it’s rather clunky

 

[Beerstalker]

I have been asking for this ability ever since they came out with the 4th Gen and added storage back in. I would love to be able to sync movies to it like you can the iPad and iPhone so I can take it with me to our hunting cabin where we have no cell service/internet and watch movies using it. Instead I am stuck taking a Blu-Ray player and movies back and forth every year.

I've tried the lightning to HDMI adapter, with movies loaded on my iPad, but it always seems to have issues. It also is a pain to have to get up and grab the ipad to pause/rewind in the middle of the movie if we need to. Would be much nicer to just use an AppleTV and remote.

 

[Boyd01]

I don't think that is possible, but it actually was on the early version(s) of the AppleTV. However, if you are bringing your laptop, you could put your video into iTunes (assuming we're talking about Windows), turn on home sharing and access it on the Apple TV with the Computers app.

I have a over 2tb of media on a Mac Mini that I use an iTunes server like this. However, the big "gotcha" with this scheme is that (in my experience), the Apple TV won't work with home sharing if you don't have an internet connection - even if it is all content you're ripped yourself and the ATV is hardwired on ethernet. For some reason, the ATV needs to "call home".

 

[darthbane2k]

one option would be to load the movies up on your iPhone / Mac / iPad and airplay to the Apple TV

 

[SpikeHK]

I have been asking for this ability ever since they came out with the 4th Gen and added storage back in. I would love to be able to sync movies to it like you can the iPad and iPhone so I can take it with me to our hunting cabin where we have no cell service/internet and watch movies using it. Instead I am stuck taking a Blu-Ray player and movies back and forth every year.

I've tried the lightning to HDMI adapter, with movies loaded on my iPad, but it always seems to have issues. It also is a pain to have to get up and grab the ipad to pause/rewind in the middle of the movie if we need to. Would be much nicer to just use an AppleTV and remote.

That's very interesting and something I didn't think of. If I could get the movie on my iPad then I could Airplay it over to the Apple TV, at least in theory, no? What were the issues you ran into?

 

[SpikeHK]

one option would be to load the movies up on your iPhone / Mac / iPad and airplay to the Apple TV

I had not thought of that but you're right, I could certainly try that, especially now that the iPads have a USB-C connector, thanks!

 

[Audit13]

Full 4k rips occupy a lot of space unless they are heavily compressed to fit into an iPad or iPhone. HD rips would be much easier to work with.

 

[priitv8]

Full 4k rips occupy a lot of space unless they are heavily compressed to fit into an iPad or iPhone. HD rips would be much easier to work with.

Working with full rips from the optical media means, that you'd be seeing files close to the media's full capacity. For HD it means 30-50GB for UHD 50-100GB. So even aTV with 64GB flash would fit 2 movies at best.

 

[Audit13]

Working with full rips from the optical media means, that you'd be seeing files close to the media's full capacity. For HD it means 30-50GB for UHD 50-100GB. So even aTV with 64GB flash would fit 2 movies at best.

I referenced HD rips because they are easier to compress than h.265 rips.

 

[Beerstalker]

I have not tried airplaying movies from an iPhone/iPad to the AppleTV directly. I just tried the lightning to HDMI adapter like this. I had lots of problems with it not working at all, or glitching out in the middle of a movie and either getting audio/video out of sync, or losing video completely. A lot of times I had to stop playing, exit the app, disconnect the adapter, and start all over again etc. Now a bunch of the apps have even started blocking it altogether so you can't use it to show their content on a TV for some reason.

Lightning Digital AV Adapter - Lightning to HDMI

The Lightning Digital AV Adapter mirrors what you see on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod so you can enjoy it on your widescreen TV or another HDMI-compatible display.

www.apple.com

I think when the AppleTV 2nd or 3rd gen first came out you weren't able to airplay directly from an iPhone/iPad without a router in betweeen. We don't have internet at the hunting cabin so we don't have a router there, and I didn't want to have to bring one and set it up along with an AppleTV to get this to work. I was just easier to bring a Blu-Ray player.

I think the ability to AirPlay directly from an iPhone/iPad to an AppleTV was added later on and I have never tried it. The other issue with this is the others would need me to be there with my iPhone/iPad in order to watch a movie (none of the others have them on their devices). With the Blu-Ray player they can put a movie in and watch it on their own. The same would be true if I could sync movies to the internal storage on the AppleTV and they could just play it from there.

The first gen Apple TV had a hard drive and you were able to download movies to it just like we want. But that was taken away when they came out with the 2nd gen that was streaming only with no storage, and remained that way with the 3rd gen. When they 4th gen came out with 32GB/64GB storage built in I really hoped they would allow it again, but here we are years later and still nothing.

Heck, even if Apple doesn't want to do it themselves, how about letting Amazon, Disney+, Netflix, etc. allow you to download movies/shows in their apps for offline viewing like you can on iPads/iPhones. That would probably be good enough for me, but it would be nice to be able to download some of my 400+ iTunes movies too.

 

[Boyd01]

Maybe just get a used Mini, put your movies into iTunes (or the TV app) and connect it to the TV? Up through 2012 (?) they had an IR receiver and will work with remotes.

It's true that you could use airplay but, used in the fashion, the Apple TV is just a dumb device with the limitations you mentioned.

 

[SpikeHK]

Full 4k rips occupy a lot of space unless they are heavily compressed to fit into an iPad or iPhone. HD rips would be much easier to work with.

Yes, this is true (of course). I have no trouble streaming 1080p from my PC to the TV via Plex. It starts to fall apart with 4K, just can't handle it. The size of the 4K rips depends on the codecs used, anywhere from 20 gig to close to 100 gig. I always seem to have at least 50 gig free on my iPad. Tomorrow I'll try hooking a USB drive to the iPad with a USB-C hub and see how that works out.

 

[SpikeHK]

Maybe just get a used Mini, put your movies into iTunes (or the TV app) and connect it to the TV? Up through 2012 (?) they had an IR receiver and will work with remotes.

It's true that you could use airplay but, used in the fashion, the Apple TV is just a dumb device with the limitations you mentioned.

I did consider the used Mini route. The problem with that is that it wouldn't last as long. At some point Apple will come up with an OS or a new version of AirPlay that won't install on older boxes, as they always seem to do. And also my current laptop is closing in on 4 years old so it's due for replacement soon.

 

[priitv8]

I referenced HD rips because they are easier to compress than h.265 rips.

That is true. With Intel Coffee Lake and newer, 10-bit H.265 can also be encoded in hardware, but Apple VideoToolbox does not support 10-bit H.265 yet. A pity.

 

[Audit13]

Yes, this is true (of course). I have no trouble streaming 1080p from my PC to the TV via Plex. It starts to fall apart with 4K, just can't handle it. The size of the 4K rips depends on the codecs used, anywhere from 20 gig to close to 100 gig. I always seem to have at least 50 gig free on my iPad. Tomorrow I'll try hooking a USB drive to the iPad with a USB-C hub and see how that works out.

I gave up streaming rips to my Apple TV using all methods because I found it simpler to connect a usb hard drive to my Windows 10 HTPC. I rip my personal 4k discs and don't want to use any compression.

 

[HDFan]

Yes, this is true (of course). I have no trouble streaming 1080p from my PC to the TV via Plex. It starts to fall apart with 4K, just can't handle it.

Have you tried using the infuse client? Set it up with SMB so you are only using your PC as a file server.

 

[SpikeHK]

Have you tried using the infuse client? Set it up with SMB so you are only using your PC as a file server.

No, I never heard for Infuse till you mentioned it. I was wondering what it would give me that Plex doesn't and I see the line about "airplay + google cast" so it could be worth a try, thanks.

 

[HDFan]

I was wondering what it would give me that Plex doesn't and I see the line about "airplay + google cast" so it could be worth a try,

There are a lot of Plex/Infuse comparison posts. Plex is more powerful, Infuse simpler to setup and use and Infuse has its own player so support DTS-MA. Not sure about what your "airplay + google cast" comment is referring to.

 

[plinden]

That doesn't work for 4K films. My PC simply isn't fast enough to stream them without a lot of pauses for buffering. So I have an Android TV box that I can plug USB disks into and then view the films using VLC.

Are you sure it's your PC that's the problem? If you're using WiFi with 4k there is a good chance that's the reason for the buffering.

If you are using wired ethernet from your Plex server to your player, can you make any changes to your player settings to enable direct play, ie ensuring there's no transcoding on the server?

Some advice on enabling direct play on an Apple TV 4K - https://monstermusings.com/2019/06/10/direct-play-settings-for-plex-on-the-apple-tv-4k/

Another possibility is to transcode your video to be optimized for your player before copying to your Plex library. That would mean you lose some quality, but if you're transcoding on the fly you're losing quality anyway.

Edit: incidentally, people have used Plex Server on a Raspberry Pi 4 for 4k playback - direct play - and supposedly it works well, albeit over 1Gb ethernet, which is why I'm not convinced your PC is the bottleneck.

 

[SpikeHK]

There are a lot of Plex/Infuse comparison posts. Plex is more powerful, Infuse simpler to setup and use and Infuse has its own player so support DTS-MA. Not sure about what your "airplay + google cast" comment is referring to.

It's a feature of Infuse Pro. "Stream videos to the big screen, with surround sound and subtitles, via AirPlay and Google Cast."

 

[SpikeHK]

Are you sure it's your PC that's the problem? If you're using WiFi with 4k there is a good chance that's the reason for the buffering.

If you are using wired ethernet from your Plex server to your player, can you make any changes to your player settings to enable direct play, ie ensuring there's no transcoding on the server?

Some advice on enabling direct play on an Apple TV 4K - https://monstermusings.com/2019/06/10/direct-play-settings-for-plex-on-the-apple-tv-4k/

Another possibility is to transcode your video to be optimized for your player before copying to your Plex library. That would mean you lose some quality, but if you're transcoding on the fly you're losing quality anyway.

Edit: incidentally, people have used Plex Server on a Raspberry Pi 4 for 4k playback - direct play - and supposedly it works well, albeit over 1Gb ethernet, which is why I'm not convinced your PC is the bottleneck.

To be honest, I forget the steps I took to determine that the issue was my laptop's GPU as it was a couple of years ago, but I did come away feeling relatively confident that was the reason.

In theory (at least) my wifi network should be fast enough to support 4K streaming and it's not practical for me to connect to the router (or my TV) via wired ethernet. I have an AC1200 class router, an external WiFi antenna for the laptop, and I'm connected on the 5GHz channel.

For the time being my Android TV box is a reasonable solution for watching 4K rips, but it's older and has a few idiosyncrasies. I'll revisit all of this when the next MBP's are released as I'm 99.9% certain to get one of those.

 

[plinden]

To be honest, I forget the steps I took to determine that the issue was my laptop's GPU as it was a couple of years ago, but I did come away feeling relatively confident that was the reason.

In theory (at least) my wifi network should be fast enough to support 4K streaming and it's not practical for me to connect to the router (or my TV) via wired ethernet. I have an AC1200 class router, an external WiFi antenna for the laptop, and I'm connected on the 5GHz channel.

For the time being my Android TV box is a reasonable solution for watching 4K rips, but it's older and has a few idiosyncrasies. I'll revisit all of this when the next MBP's are released as I'm 99.9% certain to get one of those.

It seems then that your player is requesting that the Plex server transcode the video.

There’s a couple of things I’d try. Try the Infuse player as mentioned previously. It just uses Plex as a file server so there’s no transcoding on the server, and apparently gets better 4K playback. I don’t have any 4K content myself so I don’t have any direct experience.

And how about experimenting with a raspberry pi? I use one as a Plex server. I have an external usb powered hard drive for the content, and it sits beside my router and main TV, attached with ethernet, and powered by the TV’s USB port. It delivers 1080p over WiFi to the tv in the basement without buffering. Ethernet to the router cuts out one step from using WiFi.

 

[SpikeHK]

It seems then that your player is requesting that the Plex server transcode the video.

There’s a couple of things I’d try. Try the Infuse player as mentioned previously. It just uses Plex as a file server so there’s no transcoding on the server, and apparently gets better 4K playback. I don’t have any 4K content myself so I don’t have any direct experience.

And how about experimenting with a raspberry pi? I use one as a Plex server. I have an external usb powered hard drive for the content, and it sits beside my router and main TV, attached with ethernet, and powered by the TV’s USB port. It delivers 1080p over WiFi to the tv in the basement without buffering.

The thing is, right now I don't feel like messing with a Raspberry Pi as long as my Android box continues to work for the time being. And I'm hoping once I upgrade to the MBP, that would resolve the issue once and for all. If not, yep, I could try going down that route.

 

[HDFan]

It's a feature of Infuse Pro. "Stream videos to the big screen, with surround sound and subtitles, via AirPlay and Google Cast."

Think that this is referring to streaming from the Infuse IOS app to a TV that supports AirPlay or Google cast. Since we have an Apple TV here you could just stream to it, or run the Infuse app natively.