I'm hoping you guys can help me out with my home media setup. We currently have Apple TV3 plugged into plasma TV and stereo system directly into TV. I have movies etc stored on a portable HDD. I can view these through Apple TV only when laptop connected (Windows not Mac). I would like to achieve 2 things:
1 Listen to music without having to turn TV on from iPad 2 / iPhone / laptop via air play.
2 Somehow connect portable HDD directly to Apple TV (maybe via Mac Mini or Airport Extreme ???) so I dont have to always have laptop running.
Would I need to store my iTunes on the HDD is this advisable? Is there a better way of doing things? I also looked at the Time Capsule as I need a backup solution as well but have read that that is better used just as a backup solution rather than both. What would you advise? We will also probably look at replacing our windows laptop with a MacBook of some sort in a year or so.
1 Listen to music without having to turn TV on from iPad 2 / iPhone / laptop via air play.
2 Somehow connect portable HDD directly to Apple TV (maybe via Mac Mini or Airport Extreme ???) so I dont have to always have laptop running.
Would I need to store my iTunes on the HDD is this advisable? Is there a better way of doing things? I also looked at the Time Capsule as I need a backup solution as well but have read that that is better used just as a backup solution rather than both. What would you advise? We will also probably look at replacing our windows laptop with a MacBook of some sort in a year or so.