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Is anybody else doing this with your apple tv?

x-evil-x

x-evil-x

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jul 13, 2008
5,612
3,290
i have about 300 movies mostly burned and now that theres airplay I'm loading everything i have on dvd to my computer. i have a big enough hard drive and can just click a movie from here and have it play. pretty amazing but its gonna take a while to transfer everything in.
 
x-evil-x said:
i have about 300 movies mostly burned and now that theres airplay I'm loading everything i have on dvd to my computer. i have a big enough hard drive and can just click a movie from here and have it play. pretty amazing but its gonna take a while to transfer everything in.
Click to expand...

Are you asking if people are streaming videos from a hard drive through their Apple TV's?
 
As it is one of the main things that the ATV is for. It would be a bit strange if nobody was doing it.

Edit: Actually, I think you are referring more to actually ripping the DVD's rather than playing them on the Apple TV. In that case, as the previous poster said, many people have been doing this for years now.
 
Last edited:
Yup, I'm currently working through all my TV programs and films, ripping them, tagging them and adding them to iTunes to use with my aTV2
 
I have a Windows home server, 4 x 2TB (raid 5).

I have burned all my DVDs on it, Video_TS format, and burned all of my CD as well. My movie + music collection is now built into my house (literally, I built a in wall home entertainment center.

I stream movies on my JB Apple TV, using XBMC.
 
We need to JB in order to do that, right? Otherwise we need to convert them into quicktime MOV or MP4 and stream them through iTunes?

(I am planning on getting an ATV)
 
gloryunited said:
We need to JB in order to do that, right? Otherwise we need to convert them into quicktime MOV or MP4 and stream them through iTunes?

(I am planning on getting an ATV)
Click to expand...

Yes, if they are not in the right format you need to either convert them or Jailbreak.

Personally, I had originally ripped my DVD's to AVI years ago when I used Windows. When I moved over to the ATV2 last year, I took the opportunity to re-rip as my old AVI's only had one audio track and were not great quality. It was worth it, but I appreciate that not everyone has the originals to go back to.

For those which I didn't have the DVD's I just converted them to MP4. It was a fairly easy process.
 
gloryunited said:
We need to JB in order to do that, right? Otherwise we need to convert them into quicktime MOV or MP4 and stream them through iTunes?

(I am planning on getting an ATV)
Click to expand...

KeithJenner said:
Yes, if they are not in the right format you need to either convert them or Jailbreak.
Click to expand...

There's a compromise solution that will let you do it without jailbreaking.

If you convert the movies to MOV or MP4 (or another iTunes-compatible format) you can leave them on the external storage and still stream them through iTunes, and play them on your Apple TV.
 
Tomorrow said:
There's a compromise solution that will let you do it without jailbreaking.

If you convert the movies to MOV or MP4 (or another iTunes-compatible format) you can leave them on the external storage and still stream them through iTunes, and play them on your Apple TV.
Click to expand...

How is converting movies to an iTunes friendly format and streaming them through iTunes a compromise solution to converting movies to an iTunes friendly format and streaming them through iTunes?
 
hafr said:
How is converting movies to an iTunes friendly format and streaming them through iTunes a compromise solution to converting movies to an iTunes friendly format and streaming them through iTunes?
Click to expand...

I was gonna ask this. :D

And Jailbreaking seems to me like a more efficient route to go. I only need to do it once and then stream whatever I want, instead of spending hours converting. Is there any drawback on JB?
 
hafr said:
How is converting movies to an iTunes friendly format and streaming them through iTunes a compromise solution to converting movies to an iTunes friendly format and streaming them through iTunes?
Click to expand...

:) Beat me to it.

----------
ericrwalker said:
I was under the impression we would see more airplay compatible devices in the future. If so, I would see someone building an airplay program on a computer.
Click to expand...

Yes, you are probably right.

To be honest, I think that the Airvideo route is a bit of a pain. I'd rather convert.
 
hafr said:
How is converting movies to an iTunes friendly format and streaming them through iTunes a compromise solution to converting movies to an iTunes friendly format and streaming them through iTunes?
Click to expand...

I was addressing ericrwalker's use of external storage and gloryunited's question about jailbreaking in order to use it.
 
Tomorrow said:
I was addressing ericrwalker's use of external storage and gloryunited's question about jailbreaking in order to use it.
Click to expand...

Not even after explaining it does it make any sense... But hey, to each his own ;)
 
I have ATV and ATV2 streaming everything around 4TB in total iTunes Library, just finishing the last of my 700DVD ripping and Encoding. Once I am done, it will be nice, but going forward I will only have to rip new DVD's and since I switched from a 2010 Mini to 2011, I just have to attach a USB DVD Drive in order to rip them.

Pretty stoked that I am on the final stretch since I started in June, just a long process and only two movies I can not do anything with Fool's Gold and All I want for Christmas, no matter what I do, I can rip them, but they never encode using HB.
 
x-evil-x said:
i have about 300 movies mostly burned and now that theres airplay I'm loading everything i have on dvd to my computer. i have a big enough hard drive and can just click a movie from here and have it play. pretty amazing but its gonna take a while to transfer everything in.
Click to expand...

Yep! Atv2 prompted me to start doing this with my collection as well. It's really awesome..
 
i thought airplay is a new feature for macs? had no idea that its been around that long haven't heard much about it till recently.
 
Wicked1 said:
I have ATV and ATV2 streaming everything around 4TB in total iTunes Library, just finishing the last of my 700DVD ripping and Encoding. Once I am done, it will be nice, but going forward I will only have to rip new DVD's and since I switched from a 2010 Mini to 2011, I just have to attach a USB DVD Drive in order to rip them.

Pretty stoked that I am on the final stretch since I started in June, just a long process and only two movies I can not do anything with Fool's Gold and All I want for Christmas, no matter what I do, I can rip them, but they never encode using HB.
Click to expand...

Boy, I wish I was like you! I started ripping my CDs last year into MP3 format and then learned about FLAC and Apple lossless formats. That meant starting all over again, throwing out all the MP3s and once again ripping 35,000 songs into FLAC. Once in FLAC I also converted them into Apple Lossless so they would play in iTunes and on my iPhone.

I started in June on my DVD and TV show collections into MKV format and then encoding with HandBreak. Instead of watching a few to make sure everything was working OK I just converted everything. Well, the movies were OK, but all the TV shows had their menus ripped away by HandBreak. So now I am just wrapping up re-ripping my 100+ TV shows (with multiple years for some of the shows) into the ISO format so I can stil use the menus.

Never say you are almost done because you may just change your mind and start all over again....
 
x-evil-x said:
i thought airplay is a new feature for macs? had no idea that its been around that long haven't heard much about it till recently.
Click to expand...

Airplay has nothing to do with the origins of streaming from iTunes on your computer to an AppleTV. the original appleTV had the streaming function (actually you could save it locally on the hdd) and then 2nd generation expanded upon the streaming. It now uses Home Sharing as the primary streaming service. While you can use airplay from your computer to the aTV, that requires starting it on the computer and then sending it to the aTV. With the Home Sharing built into the aTV, you can call it up from the comfort of your couch using the remote.
 
jmhays said:
Boy, I wish I was like you! I started ripping my CDs last year into MP3 format and then learned about FLAC and Apple lossless formats. That meant starting all over again, throwing out all the MP3s and once again ripping 35,000 songs into FLAC. Once in FLAC I also converted them into Apple Lossless so they would play in iTunes and on my iPhone.

I started in June on my DVD and TV show collections into MKV format and then encoding with HandBreak. Instead of watching a few to make sure everything was working OK I just converted everything. Well, the movies were OK, but all the TV shows had their menus ripped away by HandBreak. So now I am just wrapping up re-ripping my 100+ TV shows (with multiple years for some of the shows) into the ISO format so I can stil use the menus.

Never say you are almost done because you may just change your mind and start all over again....
Click to expand...

Just curious what are you using the menu's for and how are you going to play them on the ATV (JB i assume)
 
Been ripping dvd's with hb since 2006 or so well, whenever the first iPod 5G with video came out. Trust me, its a self fulfilling prophecy ... once you start you go back and redo the first ones with better settings and features. I kinda consider it more of a sport. ;)
 
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