new here...need someone to check my math

[EvilC5]

so I have been a lurker for a while trying to educate myself on the quirks of the apple world....

so heres my plan....:
I want to be able to share my audio and video library on 2 tv's and 4 speakers....
heres my gear:
24 Imac
17 Mackbook pro
AEBS
2 AP Express
2 160gb apple tv's
2 iTouch's
1 Iphone

so last week I decided to add a 2nd apple tv in hopes of sharing the content on both apple tv's without the need to have a computer on. at 1st it appeard as if this was going to work. when I set the new atv up, I used my laptop to configure it....so from my remote app on my iphone, I could see the same content on both apple tv's even though I had not done a sync on the new ATV. I thought cool....problem solved.

then my goal was to move my itunes library off my laptop to an external usb drive connected to my AEBS and free up ~100gb on my laptop. I ran into the slow transfer problem and finally read it was mainly due to the fact that the usb drive connected to the AEBS was too i/o intensive to copy large amounts of data...so scrap that idea, and this is where I ran into problems...

so I add all of my movies to my imac to sync to the new ATV, then I can no longer see the same content on both ATV's, I assume because I paired the new ATV with the imac where the old one is paired with my macbook.

so now it appears the only answer to my issue is keep content on one, and stream to the other, which defeats my idea of having to keep a computer on. but the wake on demand feature seems to be a good workaround, but im sure the wife wont care for her system to be tied up at times....

so, is this the best solution, or if I use the patchstick and add boxee or some of the other options, can the 2 ATV's share content between each other alone?


thanks in advance!

 

[tommylotto]

Keep all your content on your iMac or an hard drive directly connected to your iMac. Under the Energy Saver control panel you can set it never to go to sleep and the display to go to sleep after a few minutes.

 

[iowamensan]

personally, if it were me and I was wanting to share my content between 2 Apple TVs and not leave one of my primary machines on for some reason, I would try to find an old Mac you could have all your content on and just stream to both Apple TV's and not worry about syncing or managing content in multiple places. That's what I do, I have an old PowerMac G4 in my basement running with 2.5 TB of external storage streaming wireless G to my Apple TV in the living room upstairs. It doesn't even have a monitor on it - I use screen sharing or VNC if I need to do anything with it.
I know it still involves leaving a computer on, but IMHO it is the best solution.

 

[Omne666]

I've had Synced content on an aTV and my server iMac has crashed/locked up, and the aTV has continued to work fine. Why not Sync your content to both aTVs, then u should be fine. Your mac can then be turned off at will.

Anyone care to correct me here? I think thats how it works.

 

[dynaflash]

I've had Synced content on an aTV and my server iMac has crashed/locked up, and the aTV has continued to work fine. Why not Sync your content to both aTVs, then u should be fine. Your mac can then be turned off at will.

Anyone care to correct me here? I think thats how it works.

Nope, that is a big advantage of synced content. sync it up and the pc can crash, be turned off ... whatever and it does not affect the atvs since they are independent when content is synced. New atv is a slave to the pc. Bit of a difference from syncing.

 

[EvilC5]

Keep all your content on your iMac or an hard drive directly connected to your iMac. Under the Energy Saver control panel you can set it never to go to sleep and the display to go to sleep after a few minutes.

that would be great if I could get away with leaving the wifes computer logged in 24/7 under h er account and she wouldnt break it....but if theres a better way to do it, I will exhaust those options first.

personally, if it were me and I was wanting to share my content between 2 Apple TVs and not leave one of my primary machines on for some reason, I would try to find an old Mac you could have all your content on and just stream to both Apple TV's and not worry about syncing or managing content in multiple places. That's what I do, I have an old PowerMac G4 in my basement running with 2.5 TB of external storage streaming wireless G to my Apple TV in the living room upstairs. It doesn't even have a monitor on it - I use screen sharing or VNC if I need to do anything with it.
I know it still involves leaving a computer on, but IMHO it is the best solution.

actually considered getting a new mini mac and doing just this, its about the same price as a Synology NAS (with iTunes server built in), and would give me more options (and more toys.... )

I've had Synced content on an aTV and my server iMac has crashed/locked up, and the aTV has continued to work fine. Why not Sync your content to both aTVs, then u should be fine. Your mac can then be turned off at will.

Anyone care to correct me here? I think thats how it works.

my goal was to keep music on one, and video on the other. my airtunes setup gets glitchy around 5pm every day and I cant figure out why (yet), and I use outdoor speakers connected to my stereo in my living room, so to stop this from being an issue, I put the apple tv in the place of my airport Express and DVD/CD player.


my total goal is to pack up/sell my cd/dvd collection (minus the rare and hard to find) and come up with a out of the box streaming solution without too much hacking or tweaking.

thanks for the thoughts!