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Apple TV 3 with airport hard drive media

D

deebs22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 25, 2013
1
0
I'm trying to set up my home theater and I'm running into a road block.
I recently purchased an apple TV 3 and I also have an airport extreme with an external hard drive connected to it with all of my movies on it.
The main question is how to watch the movies on the hard drive on the apple tv without having to use airplay through my macbook air?
Currently the movies are not in iTunes and I'd prefer to keep it that way.

I have an iMac 2010 8gb ram in an office nearby and an macbook air 2013.
I was considering installing plex in the iMac and have it utilize the shared airport drive and then install plexconnect on the appleTV.

Would this work? I'm concerned it'll be too slow.
Alternatively, I could connect the hard drive to the iMac to take out one wireless connection.

Any suggestions?
Thanks
 
bobr1952

bobr1952

macrumors 68020
Jan 21, 2008
2,040
39
Melbourne, FL
Hmm--ATV is designed to play movies through iTunes so I don't think there is a way around that with a stock ATV configuration. I have all my movies in iTunes but other than that, I have the same configuration as you. The jailbreak experts can probably point you in that direction for an alternate solution.
 
P

priitv8

macrumors 601
Jan 13, 2011
4,038
641
Estonia
AppleTV 3 is still unjailbroken.
There needs to be a computer between your network drive and AppleTV.
Once that's sorted, why not have it to be iTunes? Works straightforward.
You can use Plex, but you need to tweak your AppleTV to run the Plex Connect off it.
And you again will need a computer to run Plex Media Server.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dOxozFtoYs
 
F

faceghost

macrumors newbie
Dec 27, 2013
1
0
deebs22 said:
I'm trying to set up my home theater and I'm running into a road block.
I recently purchased an apple TV 3 and I also have an airport extreme with an external hard drive connected to it with all of my movies on it.
The main question is how to watch the movies on the hard drive on the apple tv without having to use airplay through my macbook air?
Currently the movies are not in iTunes and I'd prefer to keep it that way.

I have an iMac 2010 8gb ram in an office nearby and an macbook air 2013.
I was considering installing plex in the iMac and have it utilize the shared airport drive and then install plexconnect on the appleTV.

Would this work? I'm concerned it'll be too slow.
Alternatively, I could connect the hard drive to the iMac to take out one wireless connection.

Any suggestions?
Thanks
Click to expand...


Here is a trick that may help.

On your external HD (connected to the airport) put each movie in its own folder.

In Itunes, homesharing/choose photos to share/
Choose the external HD as photos to share.

Through the ATV3 choose "photos" and all of the movies on your external will play through the ATV without having to put them in itunes.
 
D

Delmar

macrumors 6502
May 10, 2012
308
11
Texas
faceghost said:
Here is a trick that may help.

On your external HD (connected to the airport) put each movie in its own folder.

In Itunes, homesharing/choose photos to share/
Choose the external HD as photos to share.

Through the ATV3 choose "photos" and all of the movies on your external will play through the ATV without having to put them in itunes.
Click to expand...

I've never heard of this "trick". I'll play around with that.
 
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