Separating music/movies from iTunes on Apple TV

[pablol]

So I got a 160GB Apple TV and was hoping I could just offload all my music, music videos, and movies in my iTunes collection on my MacBook Pro to the Apple TV, thus freeing up all the hard disk space on my laptop.

It seems that Apple TV has to "sync" with iTunes to keep the music and stuff on there, which means I can't just erase it from my laptop. I have both purchased music from iTunes and my own MP3s I've ripped from my CDs.

Is there not a way to do this or am I missing something?

thx

 

[BaldiMac]

It is possible, but probably not a good idea. How would you back up the Apple TV in case of hard drive failure? I would recommend getting a cheap, used PC or Mac to manage your library if you want to get the files off your MacBook.

Anyway, if you want to risk it, I've read that you can just delete the actual media files from finder, but leave them in iTunes. As long as the music/movies are listed in iTunes, the next sync would not delete them from the AppleTV.

 

[Robbadore64]

How would you back up the Apple TV in case of hard drive failure? I would recommend getting a cheap, used PC or Mac to manage your library if you want to get the files off your MacBook.

I've kind of run into the same thing. Basically I found myself using up all valuable hard disk space up on my iMac just to get videos there JUST to get them on my 160 TV. What I'm doing (as I'm writing this) is moving my entire iTunes library off to a 300 gig USB drive (I actually had this laying around). This will allow me plenty of room (for my needs) to store videos and have them available to sync to TV.

Kind of a ghetto solution for me because it means I'll have to power up the USB drive whenever I want to use iTunes in my office, but I think it could be a good solution for you as you don't want the files on your notebook anyway. I think a USB or Firewire drive matching TV's capacity would be fairly cheap. Much cheaper and less hassle than an extra pc/mac.

Good luck.

 

[MikieMikie]

There are several approaches, but none of them solve your real problem. The AppleTV is still very much like an iPod/iPhone in that it is a satellite device for iTunes, and your iTunes library needs to live in a place other than the satellite.

Sure, you can stop iTunes from erasing the content on your AppleTv the next time you sync. You don't even have to delete the items from your hard drive. You just need to shut down iTunes, find the movies, move them to another location, and then start up iTunes again. If iTunes is running when you move media, it keeps track and adjusts its database so it can find the media. If it isn't running, it loses track of where the media is, and displays that with a "!" when you select the media in Library.

However, let me be yet another person to encourage you to keep your media in (at least) two places. Hard drives are mechanical. They fail.

 

[pablol]

Thanks all, I actually have a 250GB external FW drive that I use now with Backup 3 so back up all my music and movies, etc.

I guess I was hoping if I offloaded all this to Apple TV, I could keep adding stuff by shopping on iTunes direct from Apple TV and then somehow connect my 250GB HD to the Apple TV for further backups, again freeing up my MacBook Pro from all this duplicate HD space.

But I guess that's not what Apple TV was designed to do. I still love it and guess maybe I just need to buy a second external HD and move my iTunes library to that, then use the other for backups.

 

[MikieMikie]

Yeah, that's where most of us live. I have 2 X 500 GB externals for music, films and iPhoto. All of my music is synced to my 160GB TV.

About to look into yahd (yet another hard drive)!

 

[jaileon]

Stop music syncing to Apple TV

Hi Guys, just wondering if you can help me to find the way to stop music files to sync with the ATV. I'm only interested on syncing movies.

 

[Robbadore64]

Hi Guys, just wondering if you can help me to find the way to stop music files to sync with the ATV. I'm only interested on syncing movies.

Should be easy enough, just unselect the 'Sync Music' checkbox under the Music tab.

 

[d.schomburg]

Putting movies on my Apple Tv

I have found out like others that Apple TV has auto backup feature that puts all the shows ou bought on Apple TV on to your computer in whic it is synced with. Well now my hom computer hard disk space is all used up and all of my memory on my Apple tv is open. I tryed to drag over the shows that I want on my apple tv from my itunes but it will not let me am I doing something wrong? I love my Apple tv but what is it worth having all that memory but you can't put shows on it?