Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

never considered HD movie storage option

P

paolo.sereni

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 6, 2008
7
0
I've been spending the last weeks trying to get the best solution for hd movie storage for my apple tv.

Here is what I found:

  1. Open ATV and replace internal hdd
  2. ssh ATV and connect external hdd (though it still requires opening ATV)
  3. sharing new iTunes library from external hdd through AEBS between ATV and my iMac or MBA (never considered option)

The only problems that I see in the last option are:

  1. would it be possible to share a library in my TV from an external hdd connected through AEBS
  2. would it be possible to save in different formats than mp4 and still open them in the ATV
  3. would the 5ghz n wi fi streaming of my AEBS solve the usual choppy streaming for HD movies?


Any guests? opinion? suggestions?
 
I am not quite sure what you try to do, but you can get an external HD to work on the aTV without opening it.
There is also the possibility to use the external USB harddrive to sync with itunes.
 
tom1971 said:
I am not quite sure what you try to do, but you can get an external HD to work on the aTV without opening it.
There is also the possibility to use the external USB harddrive to sync with itunes.
Click to expand...

Hi Tom, Thanks for your reply. I'll try to explain better. This is what I have:

  • iMac 2.4 Ghz
  • Apple TV ver.2 not hacked
  • Airport Extreme Base Station set up as bridge
  • 140 GB Lacie HDD (that will be soon replaced)
  • MBA 1.8 ghz

Ideally this is what I'd like to do is:

  1. use the iMac as the download center for my movies as it will stay 24/7 on
  2. directly transfer the files/torrents directly to my external hdd by creating a download folder in that hdd so as I don't need to move files from iMac to hdd once downloads are completed
  3. stream them or (if not possible) read them (if possible through usb connection) in my ATV

Potential problems that I encountered:

  • downloading at a decent download speed (I know it is not really relevant to the thread but I already open NAT ports and set up vuze but still download under 10 kbits/sec)
  • server connection interrupted between external hdd (connected to AEBS) and iMac MBA
  • decoding other than h.264 or mp4 on ATV as I would like to stream also mkv and other files without having to encode them with handbrake

In particular I wouldn't know how to see content in my external hdd via streaming.
Is it seamless as it is on my iMac through shared iTunes libraries?
Do I have to create another library in my hdd?
Can I put different codec movies in that library and hack the ATV to make it read those files?

Any help guiding me step by step would be highly appreciated.
 
NightStorm said:
I have no problems streaming 1280x720p24 h.264 content to my AppleTV via my 802.11n 5Ghz network.
Click to expand...

Neither do I... in fact I can stream to all three ATV units at once with no problems (all three are on a dedicated 5Ghz N router channel) at all from a network server plugged in via ethernet to the router itself.
 
paolo.sereni said:
Hi Tom, Thanks for your reply. I'll try to explain better. This is what I have:
  1. use the iMac as the download center for my movies as it will stay 24/7 on
  2. directly transfer the files/torrents directly to my external hdd by creating a download folder in that hdd so as I don't need to move files from iMac to hdd once downloads are completed
  3. stream them or (if not possible) read them (if possible through usb connection) in my ATV

Potential problems that I encountered:

  • downloading at a decent download speed (I know it is not really relevant to the thread but I already open NAT ports and set up vuze but still download under 10 kbits/sec)
  • server connection interrupted between external hdd (connected to AEBS) and iMac MBA
  • decoding other than h.264 or mp4 on ATV as I would like to stream also mkv and other files without having to encode them with handbrake

In particular I wouldn't know how to see content in my external hdd via streaming.
Is it seamless as it is on my iMac through shared iTunes libraries?
Do I have to create another library in my hdd?
Can I put different codec movies in that library and hack the ATV to make it read those files?

Any help guiding me step by step would be highly appreciated.
Click to expand...

The beauty of iTunes is that you can tell it to add content (not copy it from it's current location, just add the content to the iTunes library) from any local storage area including an external hard disk.

This is how I do it on an XP laptop that has 4TB of external storage attached via USB. I simply create different folders/volumes on the external drives and name them something appropriate (MUSIC, MOVIES, TV, etc.) and then I tell iTunes to 'add the folder' for each.

iTunes puts them all in a single listing regardless of where they physically reside and they are all immediately available to your ATV unit(s).

I download from iTunes some, rip a ton of bluray and dvd content on my own, and also get some television content via bittorrent sometimes that I play through Boxee. All of it works great and pretty seemlessly... and my kids can essentially access all the content we have from any of our ATV units simply and easily...

Good luck!
 
Did you forget one tiny step?

You can't add any torrent directly to iTunes. 99.99% are either .avi files or .MKV files which will need to be converted to .m4v via Handbrake first.
 
I don't use torrents - far too slow! I use news groups, plus theres a ton of Apple TV specific stuff which means I don't have to go through the pain of conversion :D

pac
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back