Excuse my ignorance - stream or copy?

[lindmar]

I've got about 90 dvd's ripped from my old xbmc setup. I'd like to add them to my AppleTV but I'm wondering, once I convert to mp4 do I have to copy to the appletv or can I just stream from iTunes?

I've got them all on a couple of big HD's which obviously my ATV does not have the needed space.

Thanks

 

[iceman17]

You can just stream from itunes. I like to copy some of the DVDs that we watch frequently on to the Apple TV hard drive and stream the rest. It works great.

 

[sandman42]

If the movies are in your iTunes library and are in a format that is compatible with the TV, it will sync what it can and stream the rest. I have a similar situation (more content than the capacity of my TV, though not quite so many movies), and I have my settings set to sync. In practice there's no significant difference between movies that are sync'ed and those that are streamed. All the movies are listed on the TV, you just select the one you want and the system just takes care of it. The downside is that in order for streaming to work though your computer has to be on and iTunes has to be running. If your computer (or iTunes) is shut down you'll only have access to sync'ed content. Streaming works so well though that if you're willing to have your computer on all the time you wouldn't need to sync anything.

 

[marcusgee]

I keep the kids' movies synced to the TV so it's easier for them to scroll through and watch what they want, without me having to keep iTunes up and running all the time. When the wife and I want to watch something more grown up, I stream. Makes sense, as I have WAY more movies than my 160GB TV can hold, but more than enough room for the kid stuff!

 

[techfreak85]

you can do either.