Will I run into a problem???

[oursfan]

I am planning on purchasing an TV very soon and want to know if I will need to change the way I store and stream my iTunes music and movies before I go out and buy this thing.

Here is the deal... I currently am running on a Powerbook G4 and have all of my iTunes content on an external hard drive that I have hooked up to my Airport Extreme Base Station. My iTunes library pulls from this hard drive wirelessly over my home network. When I get the TV, will this be a problem? Will there be too much wireless streaming going on? Essentially, when I stream something on the TV it will be be accessing my computer wirelessly and from there my computer will be pulling the music or video wirelessly from the hard drive that is connected to the Base Station. Then, the computer will be sending that video or music file back to the TV wirelessly. Is that confusing?

I just want to make sure I will be able to do this before I go out and by an TV. I plan on getting a new iMac sometime over the next year or so, but in the meantime, I would love to go ahead and get the TV.

Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 

[wmealer]

I have read that this causes a problem for some. You're right, too much streaming going on. Having your external plugged directly into your mac would be a more ideal configuration (streaming-wise, anyway). Not so convenient for a PowerBook owner, however.

For instance, I have my iMac hard-wired to my external storage, and my router. This way, my content only makes one trip over the airwaves to the AppleTV.

 

[oursfan]

Thanks for the quick reply. I was thinking that it may be to much streaming, but thought I would ask around to see if anyone has any experience with the same set-up that I have as far as the hard drive plugged into the network and not the actual machine that is running iTunes.

Has anyone ever tried this? and if so, how was the streaming quality? I have way too much video content to fit onto the TV hard drive and do not really want to have to hack it once I get it to add extra storage.

 

[Jestered]

That is exactly how I have been using my AppleTV for months now. I have no problems at all. There are many people that are using the same setup. The only dif for me is that I have a MBP so I am streaming over a true n network, where you will be streaming over g.

 

[oursfan]

Great. So you think I will be alright keeping things the way I have them now and leaving the hard drive on my wireless network? I eventually will be upgrading to a new iMac, but until then I will try things like I have them.

 

[cohibadad]

I had my library connected wirelessly. I couldn't stream and sync was very slow. This was pre Leopard and wireless performance has improved quite a bit since then for some reason at my house. It was N back then so should have been fine. Bottom line. You might not get the performance you want with that setup. The other thing was that while syncing it seemed to choke the bandwidth for the house so internet speed dramatically reduced. This doesn't happen streaming off the internal HD of my mac wirelessly to either of my TVs now.

 

[sandman42]

Essentially, when I stream something on the TV it will be be accessing my computer wirelessly and from there my computer will be pulling the music or video wirelessly from the hard drive that is connected to the Base Station. Then, the computer will be sending that video or music file back to the TV wirelessly.

Actually, I think it's slightly worse than this, as the 'computer to TV' leg of the journey will also pass through the Base Station, which is the hub of the wireless system, rather than going from the computer to the TV directly. In other words, the TV will call the data from the computer via the AEBS, then the computer will pull the data from the HD via the AEBS, then the computer will send (stream) the data to the TV via the AEBS.

This definitely seems to have caused some people trouble, and if you think about how the data is being routed it's easy to see why, but it may be largely dependent on their operating environment, like how good their signal strength is at one or more of the devices, and how much interference there is, etc.

 

[Yvan256]

Apple really needs to allow the TV to access libraries directly without iTunes. And to store iTunes libraries on an external drive too (i.e. again without iTunes) so that many computers may share the same library.

Currently you need to have a computer running everything and all the other computers/TVs accessing that single "server" for that particular setup.