ATV2 and movies on my HDD

oyalhi said:

Can I watch the movies that are stored on my external HDD which is connected to Airport Extreme? Movies are not part of iTunes library, just files. Or do I have to import any movie to the library that I want to watch via ATV2?

Thanks,

Omer

Click to expand...

AFAIK, yes...only through iTunes...even .m4v files playing through QTX do not show an AirPlay icon...
However, I can watch .m4v movies directly from my iPad2 (via AVPlayer HD)or from my iPhone4 ...

You'd need to jailbreak to be able to play directly from the networked drive. XBMC and the media player in ATV Flash (black) can facilitate what the OP's looking for. They don't even need to be MP4s to do it this way.

You can watch the movies on your external using the Air Video app and Airplay to the Apple TV without needing to jailbreak. Otherwise, you can hold down Option while dragging them into your iTunes library and they will remain on your external but iTunes will know about them.

newagemac said:

You can watch the movies on your external using the Air Video app and Airplay to the Apple TV without needing to jailbreak. Otherwise, you can hold down Option while dragging them into your iTunes library and they will remain on your external but iTunes will know about them.

Click to expand...

If these are .avi or .mkv files they would have to be converted to .m4v first I would imagine before they would be able to play from iTunes...Again, afaik, iTunes will only play m4v files...right>
IIRC, AirVideo does an "on-the-fly" conversion which is pretty cool, (although at times I was a bit disappointed at the quality of the conversions from AirVideo)