Some Questions before buying ATV 2

[vectorccm]

Hi everybody,

I am planning on buying an ATV2 as my own xmas gift(from me, to me) and I have some questions I can't get the answers.

I read a lot on this forum and it helped so much though.

I wanted to know if i would be able to use the apple tv just like the Airport express. I mean without opening the television(I plan on using it with the optical cable)... What I want is to open the home theater system and just select the songs I want to listen through the iphone 4 remote... Is it possible to do that easily?

My second question has been almost answered by all of you on this forum but I still want to make sure I will be able to transfer my .avi movie collection on my external hard drive to a format that will be use by the Apple Tv and without loosing the video quality.

Thanks to all of you for your help

 

[shakesfist]

I suppose you can with Airplay. Just use an iPod or an iPhone and set whatever you are listening to and send it to the ATV2. Just make sure it is hooked up to receiver or set of speakers. It should also kick it out of sleep as well.

 

[newagemac]

Yes you can do that without needing the television to be on if you use the remote app and have the Apple TV hooked to the receiver with either optical or HDMI. You could even control it with the regular remote using the new VoiceOver functionality that was added in a recent update but an iOS device would be much better. You can also control the music home shared to it directly from your Mac or PC with iTunes and Airplay.

For the .avi files, whether or not you will loose quality depends on what format they were encoded in.

 

[vectorccm]

thank you guys for the answers.

I think I might be going to buy it tonight.

I'll let you know how I appreciate my new toy

 

[jajohns8]

I have been using the Apple TV 2 preset in a nightly build of Handbrake and have had very good results encoding .avi files.

(The latest stable release has this as well, I think.)

 

[iBought]

Can you use the Ovideo app and broadcast avis to your tv with that also, or do you have to change the format with an encoder?