New Apple TV advice please?

[boomish]

I've ordered a new ATV (40GB) and have been searchign through the threads dicoverign what it can do, I just have a few questions on the best setup.

I want to use it to watch movies as well as browse our pics, I have a G5 as my main home machine which is always on & has 2 1TB drives in for photo's, downloads and movie storage, this is hooked by ethernet as the ATV will be, I wondered if I could stream movies to the ATV or should I do the eSata expansion thing to host a large drive?
I have some movie downloads but I also want to rip our DVD collection, can handbrake do this? it seems to be ok for images but not protected DVD's
Last thing, I have a 50" plasma & want to view as best as I can withought taking up loads of HD space, any suggestons on what's best to rip to?

ok very last thing I noticed there are a few HD-x264 movies I can grab but their quite big :4-9GB are these any good for ATV or a waste of space, I think I read ATV can go to 720 but not 1080 so I suppose as long as their 720 they should be great.

Thanks for any info, be a real help as I know so little about the ATV, I can't wait to get it.

PS I got the info on Metx, I hope to have all our collection like some on here save the kids loosing or scratching the DVD's.

 

[tronic72]

I've ordered a new ATV (40GB) and have been searchign through the threads dicoverign what it can do, I just have a few questions on the best setup.

I want to use it to watch movies as well as browse our pics, I have a G5 as my main home machine which is always on & has 2 1TB drives in for photo's, downloads and movie storage, this is hooked by ethernet as the ATV will be, I wondered if I could stream movies to the ATV or should I do the eSata expansion thing to host a large drive?
I have some movie downloads but I also want to rip our DVD collection, can handbrake do this? it seems to be ok for images but not protected DVD's
Last thing, I have a 50" plasma & want to view as best as I can withought taking up loads of HD space, any suggestons on what's best to rip to?

ok very last thing I noticed there are a few HD-x264 movies I can grab but their quite big :4-9GB are these any good for ATV or a waste of space, I think I read ATV can go to 720 but not 1080 so I suppose as long as their 720 they should be great.

Thanks for any info, be a real help as I know so little about the ATV, I can't wait to get it.

PS I got the info on Metx, I hope to have all our collection like some on here save the kids loosing or scratching the DVD's.

All your iTunes media will stream perfectly. I have a 160 GB ATV and don't bother syncing anything because the streaming works so well. We watch:
• TV Shows
• Movies
• iPhotos
• Pod Casts
• Music

I use both Handbrake and Visual Hub for modifying media to work on my Apple TV. They are both very good and now support 5.1 surround.

As far as HD media goes. My advice is to have a look and see how it looks. I think you'll be pretty amazed at how good movies created by Handbrake & VH look. I use the standard ATV settings on Hankbrake which creates movies between 1.5 and 2.5 GB in size. Quality is brilliant. H.264 is always the way to go. Takes a lot longer to create but the files are always smaller and the quality is miles ahead of any other format.

Hope this helps.

I love my ATV

 

[fivepoint]

I've ordered a new ATV (40GB) and have been searchign through the threads dicoverign what it can do, I just have a few questions on the best setup.

I want to use it to watch movies as well as browse our pics, I have a G5 as my main home machine which is always on & has 2 1TB drives in for photo's, downloads and movie storage, this is hooked by ethernet as the ATV will be, I wondered if I could stream movies to the ATV or should I do the eSata expansion thing to host a large drive?

I use a "G" network mostly, and it streams content brilliantly. Plenty fast. Fast-forwarding and rewinding through content can be a bear, but other than that... top notch. The only reason I could see putting in a large HD is if you travel a lot and take the AppleTV with you to watch stuff on the road.

I have some movie downloads but I also want to rip our DVD collection, can handbrake do this? it seems to be ok for images but not protected DVD's
Last thing, I have a 50" plasma & want to view as best as I can withought taking up loads of HD space, any suggestons on what's best to rip to?

I've used Handbrake to do 100% of my videos. All of mine are copyrighted DVDs. I have only had ONE TIME where I think Handbrake couldn't do the job. I also have a HD 50" Plasma. I would suggest you rip everything using the AppleTV preset on Handbrake. I use the "double-pass" setting as well, but since you only have a G5, you might want to skip this step. It takes twice as long. I think you will be very impressed with how these videos look on your plasma. I never knew DVDs could look so good!

ok very last thing I noticed there are a few HD-x264 movies I can grab but their quite big :4-9GB are these any good for ATV or a waste of space, I think I read ATV can go to 720 but not 1080 so I suppose as long as their 720 they should be great.

Thanks for any info, be a real help as I know so little about the ATV, I can't wait to get it.

PS I got the info on Metx, I hope to have all our collection like some on here save the kids loosing or scratching the DVD's.

Please tell me... where can you "grab these H.264 movies in HD. I've been looking for a good source to download this kind of stuff, but haven't found a good one yet. They should look GREAT on the AppleTV if they're 1080i or less.

P.S. MetaX is your friend. Learn to use it well, and you'll be very happy with the results.

 

[boomish]

Many Thanks for the replies guys, cool, now I'm really happy I went the ATV route before a HTPC , I have a 8 core intel Mac too so I'll use that for the ripping then I use the mac for my work but recently replaced my home office PC with my old G5 and it's such a boon to have them networkign so well, dunno why I never did this sooner.

Glad it can stream, now to leanr how to rip and tag and put them in iTunes, my ATV turns up on Monday, so preparing now.