Is Apple TV suitable for me?

[joestas]

Hi

I keep having to carry my iMac from my office upstairs to my lounge downstairs so that I can watch films and TV shows that I have downloaded.

They are mostly on AVI.

I get very confused about Apple TV. Does it stream the files on your mac to your TV?

Also, can I do this with the AVI movies that sit on my desktop or do they all have to be .mov files?

Thanks a lot.

[stomer]

AppleTV can do both stream from another iTunes library and play content stored directly on its hard disk.

Unfortunately your AVIs will not play on AppleTV (unless you hack it). You'd need to transcode those files to either MOV or MP4 format.

[aprofetto]

AppleTV + Boxee might work for your .avi files.

If you don't have alot of movie files, it may be worth just encoding them to .mov, or .m4v or .mp4.

Also, you could always buy a Mac Mini to keep by the tv?

[rayward]

AppleTV + Boxee might work for your .avi files.

If you don't have alot of movie files, it may be worth just encoding them to .mov, or .m4v or .mp4.

Also, you could always buy a Mac Mini to keep by the tv?

Much cheaper to get an Apple TV and convert the avi files via free software (Handbrake et al).

[tom1971]

Enabling the USB port and linking an external HD to your ATV is probably the easiest solution.
You can copy your files via SFTP to the external hard drive connected to the ATV.

[Chris Rogers]

Boxee will allow you to play AVI on ATV. I have quite a few