would anyone get a original apple tv?

[gdeusthewhizkid]

hi,

would any of you guys get a original apple tv.. I like the option of having my purchases right on the device and maybe even jailbreaking it and running plex. Seems like the original is easier to jailbreak. Thoughts ??

 

[EvilC5]

I have both, and I have not even really used my original apple tv's because for me the features of the ATV2 are more suited to my familys needs.

I might jailbreak one of my old ones so i can run plex also, but just havent got around to it. would be nice if you could JB the ATV1 and put a netflix app on it.

 

[gdeusthewhizkid]

I have both, and I have not even really used my original apple tv's because for me the features of the ATV2 are more suited to my familys needs.

I might jailbreak one of my old ones so i can run plex also, but just havent got around to it. would be nice if you could JB the ATV1 and put a netflix app on it.

that would be great. I hate having to leave my laptop on to play my music thru apple tv or my purchased content. Im considering the old apple tv with a 160 gig so i can add my purchased content to it.

 

[EvilC5]

that would be great. I hate having to leave my laptop on to play my music thru apple tv or my purchased content. Im considering the old apple tv with a 160 gig so i can add my purchased content to it.

yea, i didnt care for that either, so I bought a mini to serve everything up to my ATV2's. not having that, I probably would use my ATV1 for music storage at least.

 

[Omne666]

I have both but the idea of 'splitting' my data to like have music on the atv1 for me is defeating the very idea of the appleTV.

I dont want to have to show my family how to change which machine the TV accesses for media.

And as Im now ripping new material to the atv2 capabilities, which makes them unavailable to the atv1 is also a pain. So....I LOVE the atv1 menu setup better the the current atv2 setup, but love the output capabilities of the atv2 more, so........I have like five atv1's for sale.

Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?

 

[spiritlevel]

ATV1 is brilliant as a stereo. 160GB of music, controllable using remote on iPhone/Touch, lossless streaming to multiple rooms using airport express/airplay and your computer doesn't need to be running - can't do that with ATV2...

I'm about to buy a Super Pro 707 DAC for mine.

ATV2 great with a mini server though... one day.

 

[CWallace]

I bought the original when the ATV2 was released and the price was cut because I did not need the Netflix feature (already have it via Tivo) and I liked having a HDD and such.

 

[tbayrgs]

that would be great. I hate having to leave my laptop on to play my music thru apple tv or my purchased content. Im considering the old apple tv with a 160 gig so i can add my purchased content to it.

Noticed in your sig you have a Mac Mini HTPC. Why are you using your laptop to stream media when you could do so with the mini?

 

[AshMan]

Love the atv1. Have mine setup with xbmc and all my movies on a central server. Love having it stream on my tv's. ATv2 seems cool but atv1 does what I want it to do and does it well. I no longer use my w7 htpc for media just serving data now

 

[gdeusthewhizkid]

Noticed in your sig you have a Mac Mini HTPC. Why are you using your laptop to stream media when you could do so with the mini?

laptop i use for production and it gets filled pretty quickly with logic files and sounds libraries.. i use the mini for streaming also.. If i could put a bigger hard drive in my mini i would use it more.. Ive upgraded my macbook pro hard drive 2 times already... but i intend to use the mini more...

 

[gdeusthewhizkid]

for some strange reason also my mini doesn't always connect to my apple tv 2 .

 

[JonHimself]

I've had the ATV1 for a couple years and got the ATV2 for christmas. Only recently am I changing my mind about thinking the ATV1 is still fine. My original plan was to hack it and use a 500GB external drive so that I can sync a very large portion of my content to it and not have to worry about having the computer on (it usually is, but the ATV1 is in my bedroom and I mostly use it when I'm nodding off/relaxing and don't want to be bothered with having to go open iTunes). I also figured if I went away, I could take the ATV1 with me and have a ton of content.
Most of my videos are BluRay/DVD rips and then MKV TV show downloads (in addition to DVD rips of TV seasons I own). I realized that the ATV2 can support better encoding when I use Handbrake* but those videos are no compatible with the ATV1 - they appear to work with my iPad/iPhone 4 though which means I could take the ATV2 with me, sync videos (though not 500GB) to one of those devices and use Airplay to stream them to the ATV2 (assuming I can get a wifi network.. but an Airport Express would work/be convenient).
On top of being able to encode better quality videos, Airplay (also coming to apps), Netflix (which I've recently fallen in love with), the size, the price and the strong possibility of apps on the ATV2 make it seem like a smarter choice. I'm almost hoping that my ATV1 breaks so I can justify buying a second ATV2 to replace it.

* You may not notice the difference with the better encoding/care about it, I happen to notice a difference so it will bother me.

 

[EvilC5]

for some strange reason also my mini doesn't always connect to my apple tv 2 .

do you have it set to wake on network activity?

 

[EvilC5]

laptop i use for production and it gets filled pretty quickly with logic files and sounds libraries.. i use the mini for streaming also.. If i could put a bigger hard drive in my mini i would use it more.. Ive upgraded my macbook pro hard drive 2 times already... but i intend to use the mini more...

why not use a FW800 external? I have a 3tb WD, and have all of my music and movies on it and stream from my mini using it.

 

[mstrze]

why not use a FW800 external? I have a 3tb WD, and have all of my music and movies on it and stream from my mini using it.

+1

'cept I have a 1.5TB WD drive containing my iTunes Library hooked up to my Mini. Wake-on-wireless rouses it from sleep.

 

[gdeusthewhizkid]

do you have it set to wake on network activity?

yes but i have it in the basement and it doesn't always connect even though i have the mac mini connected with apple express.

 

[gdeusthewhizkid]

why not use a FW800 external? I have a 3tb WD, and have all of my music and movies on it and stream from my mini using it.

I use my mac mini also as a mixing station. Most of the internal hard drive space is dedicated to logic and some vsts. It's only a 250 gig drive in it. I also have a external 250 gig that has my big sound libraries too it and another 2tb drive that i use for my itunes library, . They are all attached to a 500 gig mini stack fw800 drive. The ministack is used as my time machine. My mac mini firewire slot is being used by my firewire audio interface. I would like to eliminate all these drives eventually and just go to a mac pro system with about 4 tb of drives in it..

 

[OmegaRed1723]

I have a 40GB TV that hadn't been used in over a year, so I decided to crack it open. I replaced the wifi card with the Broadcom Crystal HD BCM970015 PCIe Mini card, which enables 1080p playback and codec support for just about everything out there. I installed XBMC and Crystalbuntu, which is a build of Linux that some folks on the XBMC forums created specifically for use on the TV. This absolutely turned my TV into a new machine. It will play anything I throw at it with nary a hiccup. The drawback is that you lose wifi, so you either need a wired connection or a wireless bridge (e.g., Airport Express).

Plex doesn't run on the original TV, as it runs on an older version of OS X than the software supports. You can run either Boxee or XBMC, but only XBMC supports hardware decoding using the Crystal HD card. And honestly, without the upgraded hardware decoding of the Crystal HD, the thing is fairly useless. I tried running Boxee with mine without the card, and it choked on almost everything. You can plain forget 1080p and .mkv files, and most 720p material stutters.

For me, the $50 for the Crystal HD card was well worth it, since I already had the TV. If you're getting a good deal on a used one it might be worth your while to upgrade it. If you're already spending $150+ just for the TV, however, you might be better served looking for something else.

 

[newagemac]

I have a 40GB TV that hadn't been used in over a year, so I decided to crack it open. I replaced the wifi card with the Broadcom Crystal HD BCM970015 PCIe Mini card, which enables 1080p playback and codec support for just about everything out there. I installed XBMC and Crystalbuntu, which is a build of Linux that some folks on the XBMC forums created specifically for use on the TV. This absolutely turned my TV into a new machine. It will play anything I throw at it with nary a hiccup. The drawback is that you lose wifi, so you either need a wired connection or a wireless bridge (e.g., Airport Express).

Plex doesn't run on the original TV, as it runs on an older version of OS X than the software supports. You can run either Boxee or XBMC, but only XBMC supports hardware decoding using the Crystal HD card. And honestly, without the upgraded hardware decoding of the Crystal HD, the thing is fairly useless. I tried running Boxee with mine without the card, and it choked on almost everything. You can plain forget 1080p and .mkv files, and most 720p material stutters.

For me, the $50 for the Crystal HD card was well worth it, since I already had the TV. If you're getting a good deal on a used one it might be worth your while to upgrade it. If you're already spending $150+ just for the TV, however, you might be better served looking for something else.

If you install the Crystal HD card and don't software hack it or change anything else, will that allow the original Apple TV to play 1080p and 720p/30 files in your iTunes library using the standard interface?

 

[soLoredd]

For me, the original ATV is invaluable due to the hard drive. I keep it loaded with kids movies for my son. He also takes it to grandma's so he can watch Thomas The Tank Engine.

We only have MacBook/MacBook Pro in our house so streaming to the ATV2 would be a pain. I plan on getting an iMac this year at some point, though, so I'll look into the ATV2 then.

 

[gdeusthewhizkid]

For me, the original ATV is invaluable due to the hard drive. I keep it loaded with kids movies for my son. He also takes it to grandma's so he can watch Thomas The Tank Engine.

We only have MacBook/MacBook Pro in our house so streaming to the ATV2 would be a pain. I plan on getting an iMac this year at some point, though, so I'll look into the ATV2 then.

Ive considered the imac but dont they have overheat issues with like the hard drive going out or the motherboard going out?

 

[From A Buick 8]

Ive considered the imac but dont they have overheat issues with like the hard drive going out or the motherboard going out?

Really, i have not heard about an over heat issue.

 

[OmegaRed1723]

If you install the Crystal HD card and don't software hack it or change anything else, will that allow the original Apple TV to play 1080p and 720p/30 files in your iTunes library using the standard interface?

No, because the underlying software (Mac OS X, Lowtide) do not support the Crystal HD driver. The only way to make the Crystal HD card work is with XBMC. It's important to note that you can install XBMC over the existing TV software, and then open up XBMC as an app within the Apple OS. That way you don't lose any of the functionality of the TV (iTunes purchases, etc.); you only gain the ability to use the XBMC interface, which enables up to 1080p/60 playback using multiple codecs.

I chose a Linux build because none of my media is in an iTunes compatible format, and this gives me he ability to boot straight into XBMC.

 

[Pojo458]

I would stick with my 2G apple tv only because I don't have a lot of my own movies and videos to stream to my tv(I have alot of music). Netflix was a deal breaker for me to get the second generation apple tv since I can watch unlimited movies and 90s cartoons

 

[rayward]

Ive considered the imac but dont they have overheat issues with like the hard drive going out or the motherboard going out?

No. The casing gets pretty hot during periods of heavy usage, but it's designed to do that. The case is a heat sink, so it getting hot is what it's supposed to do.

I often have my iMac encoding HD movies in Handbrake, while simultaneously ripping a BD in Make MKV, and it still has the chops to be performing other functions - like file tagging and copying. And then Time Machine kicks in for a scheduled backup, and it doesn't bat an eye.

But it does get hot...