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Can you put an external Hard Drive on the Apple Tv 2nd Gen

A

antman2295

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 30, 2010
366
1
Can you put an external Hard Drive on the Apple Tv 2nd Gen? I was wondering if you could plug it in, through the USB port? Also through the new jail breaks, can you record tv shows to it? Thanks for your help, and if you know anything about what you can do with a jail broken Apple Tv 2 please feel free to post :).

Thanks so much for your time!
 
No, because the USB port on the ATV2 is a "device" USB, not a "host" port like on a computer. And you cannot connect to "device" USB ports together and make it work.
 
You can plug an External HD into an AirPort Extreme via its USB port. And use it to store your streaming iTunes media.
 
Is there anyway to trick it, so you would be able too? Since I don't have an Air Port Extreme :(
 
pasipple said:
You can plug an External HD into an AirPort Extreme via its USB port. And use it to store your streaming iTunes media.
Click to expand...

But you'd still need a computer to stream the iTunes media tot the ATV, right?
(USB HDD -> Airport Extreme -> Mac -> ATV)
 
What we need is an external HD running iTunes somehow -- like an old outdated G4 Mac mini. Hmmmm
 
That is not what I am talking about. The G4 mini would just run iTunes to feed content to an ATV2. The ATV2 would play the content for the big screen. The G4 mini is small, quiet and plenty fast for this simple task.
 
Do you currently own a Mac Mini G4? That should work fine. If you were planning to purchase a used Mac Mini G4, i would just tell you to get a Core2Duo and connect that directly to the TV.
 
Last edited:
slipper said:
Do you currently own a Mac Mini G4? That should work fine. If you were planning to purchase a used Mac Mini G4, i would just tell you to get a Core2Duo and connect that directly to the TV.
Click to expand...

Comparing the atv interface to front row is a bit miss leading. I have both situations running and I hate front row now. Its just not as sweet to use.

Though getting an early mac mini as the server is a fair suggestion. G4 or otherwise.
 
Needs to be a Core2duo version of mac mini in order to run Itunes 10.0.1. Old G4 models will not run the newer versions of iTunes and as such don't work with the ATV2 since you can't setup homeshare.
 
Markusp said:
Needs to be a Core2duo version of mac mini in order to run Itunes 10.0.1. Old G4 models will not run the newer versions of iTunes and as such don't work with the ATV2 since you can't setup homeshare.
Click to expand...

Then how is my G4 iMac running 10.1? As long as the computer is running Leopard, it can run iTunes 10.1.
 
Markusp said:
Needs to be a Core2duo version of mac mini in order to run Itunes 10.0.1. Old G4 models will not run the newer versions of iTunes and as such don't work with the ATV2 since you can't setup homeshare.
Click to expand...

you couldn't be more wrong.
i have a G4 mac mini running leopard with itunes 10.1 (with 2 appletv's connected to it).
 
In theory, all we need is a new home-sharing plug-in. In the same way most NAS units have a built-in iTunes server to stream music to iTunes clients from the NAS, there could be a similar Apple Home-Sharing server that you set up with iTunes then, when you save your sharing options, the NAS takes over and can serve up music/video to compatible systems without iTunes running.

It wouldn't surprise me if something like this debuted on the next gen Time-Capsule/Airport Extreme (via an airdisk).
 
One thing I'm toying with is to get an old PC running WinXP and run one of the virtualization solutions on it - Virtual Box, or VMWare Player for example, then run multiple XP VMs each with their own iTunes instance running in them, and have them all share the same media library. That way you could have multiple "Home Sharing" servers on your home LAN.
 
Use to be itunes servers runnin which you could have standalone but it's all broke now :(
 
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