Should I buy an Apple Time Capsule?

Hey guys,

Today, the 2TB Time Capsule is on sale for just under the €250,- euro's nearby my home.

I own a MacBook Pro 15'' Retina, an iPad, iPhone and Apple TV.
Within few months I'm going to buy a iMac too, so I have to make the decision.

Since last year I got my eyes on an Apple Time Capsule, because I want to have an Apple 'eco system' in my home. I want to backup my files, like my Aperture library, iTunes movies, music, documents and all stuff like that.

I also want to backup my MacBook, just instead if it crashes (I always like to test beta's, so I could switch easy back if I want to downgrade to a lower version of OS X).

I got some questions about the Time Capsule by itself, hope you guys can answer them.

1. Does the Time Capsule support Windows in a good way?
I mean, I got 2 desktops in my home and it is really important to get fast internet.

2. Is the 2TB drive just like my Dropbox folder?
I got Dropbox installed on my Mac and Windows platforms, and it is just like a seperate folder I can access. Is the Time Capsule just like that?

3. Do I have access to the 2TB partition, or just a little of that?

4. Can I play (iTunes converted) movies directly on my Apple TV via the Time Capsule?

5. Can I access the files placed on the Time Capsule also on a Windows pc, iPhone or iPad?

Thank you very much, I'm pretty curious about it!

Oh, last but not least, in various games like Call of Duty (which I play a lot on my PS3) it says my 'nat' is 'open'. In the past I had some issues with the 'nat' of my router, I hope the Time Capsule won't be so difficult to configure?

So in my case, the Time Capsule is a bad option?

I mean, read and write speeds aren't good and it could make trouble with the internet connection when it's syncing with my MacBook while I'm playing Call of Duty or something like that... True?

Btw, could I play / stream (iTunes converted) movies from the Time Capsule on my Apple TV 3 with (burned in) subtitles?

ConCat said:

It partially depends on how far away from the router you are. If you're relatively near it, then you'll get full 802.11n speeds, which is more than enough to accommodate the HDD and most of what else you could be doing. The farther you get from it, the slower the speeds you'll get, and at some point the backups will start hogging WiFi. It really just depends on your setup.

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My house isn't that big but because the router will placed on the left side of my home, the signal has to be stronger to get internet in my garden too.

Do you think the Time Capsule will give me up to 12 meters of wifi?

Great!

But can I also stream movies directly from the Time Capsule to my Apple TV3 without having a jailbreak or computer?

Confuzzzed said:

You'll have to partition the Time Capsule to do this and then the limit will be how quickly your computer can access the files on the TC, as you can not stream directly from Time Capsule to ATV.

If I were you, I'd buy a decent USB3 or TB peripheral and do your Time machine back-ups that way. It will also be physically connected to your computer so getting movies to stream to your ATV will be snappier if that is your main consideration for use.

The initial TC back-up and encoding takes a long time which is a limitation of how it can physically be attached to a computer. Once you do the initial back-up everything is fine over wifi but it is recommended you do the initial back-up over a physical connection. Which is neither USB3 nor TB so not terribly fast.

Beside, the Time Machine software makes the use of ANY external hard drive a simple task IDENTICAL to how the computer sees a TC so you should not have any reservations about that.

I would only go for TC if you also need an Apple branded router. Because it does work better with iPhones and iPads. Whatever people say about settings!

But if the router is your motivation, the price of an Airport Express base station also provides some options like putting a printer elsewhere in your house, air-play of music by hooking it to speakers and/or Amp depending on quality of sound you need etc.

The price of a Wester Digital external hard drive and an Airport Express will probably be LOWER than that of a TC of comparable storage and gives you more options in my view

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Well, the 'big' thing for me is that I have to keep my MacBook open while I'm watching video's on my ATV3. I thought the Time Capsule could stream video's directly to my ATV... but it isn't.

I think I'm going to wait for the next generation Time Capsule's, hopefully they will integrate features like these.

Confuzzzed said:

There are alternatives...All you'd need to do is export your video file to the device and it'll stream to your TV...

like this:

http://www.dabs.com/products/western-digital-tv-live-streaming-media-player-7R19.html?src=2

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I understand, but the meaning of this everything is to create an Apple eco system in my home. I thought the Time Capsule would support streaming to the ATV, but unfortunately it doesn't.

The best alternative for me is to put the movies of my iTunes library on my iPhone or iPad and then stream it to the ATV. The big issue is that I only have a 16GB iPhone and iPad, so I was searching for a better = bigger option.

Serban said:

i just bought the TC, it is faster than other routers i had

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I just bought a Apple Aiport Extreme router, to extend my WiFi coverage in my home. Works pretty well, except that the 5Ghz modes goes offline for 30 seconds randomly, pretty weird.

Nightarchaon said:

I have a TC, i ended up using it as nothing more than an expensive network hub.

I hung a Drobo of the USB port for storing my iTunes library, i backup my macbook pro (but not my imac) to the TC, my iMac backs up to a 4TB raid array via Thunderbolt,

the WiFi i only use to connect my iPhone and iPad Mini 2, because wifi is shockingly bad if you live anywhere built up nowadays, too many competing signals

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Yes, I agree with that!