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Is this a workable solution? Laptop to serve ATV?

O

Ol!ver

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 2, 2005
526
0
OK, I'll give you the situation and you tell me the best solution:

I've just bought me an Apple TV, and I want a way to be able to hold all my movies, music and TV shows somewhere nice and quiet. At the moment I'm keeping most of it on my desktop machine, but it's too noisy and power consuming to leave on 24/7. I've got a spare Toshiba laptop that's doing nothing so I'm thinking of using that to share the media. I'll need a nice large driver though, and I was thinking some kind of NAS device would be best, that way I could access it from the desktop too.

Looking for 500GB or 1TB depending on price, and it must be quiet and safe to stick under the bed/in a cupboard out of the way.

This sound about right? The laptop's an old P4M 1.7GHz with 768MB of RAM so I'm thinking it'll do the job fine.
 
Last I checked you can sync things between your computer and the AppleTV. If you then set your computer to sleep (but wake on network access) then if you want to get something more, a simple attempt to connect to the library will turn it back on to get what you want.

Beyond that, you are better getting a regular external hard drive for the laptop, as iTunes can sometimes be fussy with NAS drives being a storage medium. Also, make sure the cabinet is well ventilated, as the laptop and hard drive will put off a lot of heat.

Also, simply share the drive in Windows to make it accessible from the desktop.

TEG
 
I'm dealing with this now (and have been for about a year). I have a laptop with 120 or 160gb hard drive.. whatever it is it doesn't house my visual media. What I have done (which is annoying) is set up my 750gb external drive to have a seperate iTunes library (have to hold option whenever i open itunes). This external iTunes library is ONLY for tv shows and movies. The iTunes on my laptop drive is ONLY for music.
What I've done is opened the external iTunes library and connected my Apple TV to that library. It prevents me from being able to stream music because if I try to set up my laptop iTunes library it negates the external one.
It is annoying because if I want to stream anything I have to make sure my external hard drive is connected and that the external iTunes library is opened... kind of defeats the purpose of having a laptop if you need to be tethered to the USB.
I'm also looking into having a NAS set-up as the solution but have yet to really make the move. It's hard to stomach the near $1000 cost by the time you get the hard drives and everything (even if you can get it set-up for $600-700 it's still a steep initial cost when the external USB drive kind of works).
I'm open to other suggestions but I can't imagine there being an easier way at the moment without having to invest a considerable amount of money... depending on the size of your library you might want to look at the 500gb laptop drives that Western Digital started shipping. My music is about 100gb and video is fast approaching 600gb so they are of no use to me but if you have under 500gb and won't be surpassing that amount in the near future then getting one of those drives would be ideal.
 
I'm not positive but I don't think it works that way. I think I have it right, but it's possible I only know some of the info.
My understanding is that the appletv doesn't connect to the iTunes server. What the iTunes server will allow you to do is connect the iTunes on your computer to it and then you can connect the apple tv to your computer's iTunes... it sucks, but you still need a computer to connect to the apple tv
 
JonHimself said:
I'm not positive but I don't think it works that way. I think I have it right, but it's possible I only know some of the info.
My understanding is that the appletv doesn't connect to the iTunes server. What the iTunes server will allow you to do is connect the iTunes on your computer to it and then you can connect the apple tv to your computer's iTunes... it sucks, but you still need a computer to connect to the apple tv
Click to expand...

Yeah I had a nagging doubt about that. Looking like me old laptop and a large NAS is the way to go.
 
If your media is contained in the iTunes library, you can move the whole library to an external HD and either connect it to your laptop OR to your ATV (USB patch required)/
If your media is NOT in itunes (avi, mpg etc.) you can just connect your USB HD to ATV withhout moving the library.

PM me for more info.
 
I got a buffalo NAS 1tb RAID server, it's only 240 at newegg w/free shipping. It has an itunes server built in, but it only shows up as a share in itunes, cannot be used directly w/appltev. I have it in raid1 config, so only 500gb avail, but i got redundancy, no re-ripping movies for me! I run it on a mac mini using windows :( and gave it its own drive letter as opposed to using it via nas. you can add storage via two rear usb ports, but only connects via ethernet.
 
tom1971 said:
If your media is contained in the iTunes library, you can move the whole library to an external HD and either connect it to your laptop OR to your ATV (USB patch required)/
If your media is NOT in itunes (avi, mpg etc.) you can just connect your USB HD to ATV withhout moving the library.

PM me for more info.
Click to expand...


You can connect it directly to the ATV ?
 
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