Home Media Setup Help

[Tazbec]

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 don’t 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.

[justperry]

For your question about HD you should look here: iTunes hd server

[Pyromonkey83]

Originally Posted by Tazbec

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 don’t 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. With your setup you cannot do this, but you have 2 options to make it work. If you have an HDMI in on your stereo receiver then you can change your setup to have your Apple TV go through your receiver, then to your TV. This will allow you to control your Apple TV without the TV on. Your second option is to use the TOSLINK (Optical audio out) connection on your Apple TV and send audio out to your receiver through this. Either will allow you to do this.

2. You cannot do this directly to the Apple TV. If you want to use a Time Capsule or something along those lines, you will need to either Jailbreak your Apple TV (Not possible on the ATV3) or use your phone to AirPlay network video files. Otherwise, you will always need either a Mac or PC broadcasting the files from iTunes over homesharing.

My personal setup is a Synology DS413j NAS for both backup and media storage for all of my blu ray movies and TV shows (I have approximately 5 TB of files with 9TB of usable space). This then connects to my iMac which has iTunes running 24/7 and homesharing on. I also have PLEX installed on the iMac, which again runs 24/7, and the PLEX app on my iPhone. With this I can access my files anywhere, anytime through the PLEX app on my iPhone/iPad.

[rodrigoodin]

Originally Posted by Pyromonkey83

1. With your setup you cannot do this, but you have 2 options to make it work. If you have an HDMI in on your stereo receiver then you can change your setup to have your Apple TV go through your receiver, then to your TV. This will allow you to control your Apple TV without the TV on. Your second option is to use the TOSLINK (Optical audio out) connection on your Apple TV and send audio out to your receiver through this. Either will allow you to do this.

2. You cannot do this directly to the Apple TV. If you want to use a Time Capsule or something along those lines, you will need to either Jailbreak your Apple TV (Not possible on the ATV3) or use your phone to AirPlay network video files. Otherwise, you will always need either a Mac or PC broadcasting the files from iTunes over homesharing.

My personal setup is a Synology DS413j NAS for both backup and media storage for all of my blu ray movies and TV shows (I have approximately 5 TB of files with 9TB of usable space). This then connects to my iMac which has iTunes running 24/7 and homesharing on. I also have PLEX installed on the iMac, which again runs 24/7, and the PLEX app on my iPhone. With this I can access my files anywhere, anytime through the PLEX app on my iPhone/iPad.

Hi dear, so i`m a newbie on this kind of things, but i`m trying to make a small Media Center. So i have a Apple Tv, a MacBook Pro and Samsung, so i just like to read my Macbook files using the Apple Tv. How can i do this? I don`t like to using the iTunes because if i download something i have to import from library and converter and this take a long time. So, with Plex can i read my mp4 files? Thanks.