How to usw AppleTV with Time Capsule

Apple TV and TC do not work with each other in any way other than having TC provide Wireless internet for your ATV.

There is no way to have ATV communicate with TC directly. (without hacking)

The best you can do is pull your TC content into Itunes, and either synch it all to the ATV or stream from Itunes.

dmm219 said:

Apple TV and TC do not work with each other in any way other than having TC provide Wireless internet for your ATV.

There is no way to have ATV communicate with TC directly. (without hacking)

The best you can do is pull your TC content into Itunes, and either synch it all to the ATV or stream from Itunes.

Click to expand...

Also, a lot of people have reported performance problems when they store their iTunes library on a Time Capsule (or other network drive) for use with the TV. When streaming, the data has to go through the wireless router twice (from the drive to the computer, then from the computer to the TV), and this seems to be more throughput than some peoples' setups can handle, especially for high bitrate video.

Pesevenk said:

thanks for the hint, but I'd like to try it first, before I buy an external HDD. Do you know what the problem is?

reets

Click to expand...

To answer your original question — Time Capsule is not a server. Therefore, you can't have the device itself stream its files out to media applications. However, there are two solutions to do this — but both require iTunes to be opened locally.

First
Turn off "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" in iTunes preferences under Advanced. Then drop your movie files into iTunes. It will then add them to your library, but will not copy them over from the Time Capsule.

Now, you can sync or stream your Time Capsule's movie files to your Apple TV.

Second
Move your entire iTunes library (Home Folder/Music/iTunes) to your Time Capsule. Once that process is completed, you hold down Option and click on the iTunes icon. Make sure your Time Capsule is mounted on your desktop. From there you open your iTunes library file that's now on your Time Capsule.

You can then setup your Apple TV and sync and stream.

You have to keep in mind the Time Capsule must stay mounted and iTunes must be launched.

Needless to say, I wouldn't recommend doing either. I think Time Capsule's slowness has more to do with the processor inside in the device than network bandwidth. Regular transfer speeds to and from the Time Capsule are extremely slow even for backups.

It just wasn't designed for streaming. It's barely acceptable for wireless Time Machine backups.

I use my TC for iTunes music. Is all on there. Streams fine shared through iTunes on a MBP but worth noting my ATV is connected via Ethernet to the Time Capsule.

Don't use it for video however, thanks largely to and their scumbag DRM making it such a pain for DivX.

re: music. iTunes does beachball a bit on the MBP, it's not ideal but it works fine.

I have a cheap External USB HDD plugged into the Time Capsule (as a so-called Airdisk). This has all my video on it and streams absolutely fine to my TV courtesy of the far-superior-to-Frontrow XBMC but again I should note I have an ethernet connection between TC and TV.

The OP stated that he had installed NitoTV which means they have hacked their aTV and it should be able to play files from network shares without iTunes being open anywhere. I haven't hacked mine yet so I can't comment beyond this.

Also, I thought that the files aren't actually streamed from the disk to itunes and then to the aTV, but that iTunes simply points the aTV to the file's location. Thus the only data that goes back and forth is a network path.

i tried having all my itunes content on my TC and noticed a speed issue too. seemed to take extra longer just to load up a movie to atv before playing, where as before having an external connected directly to the comp- access was instant with no stuttering. also itunes seemed to ask where the library file was after i had already told it earlier.

my guess is the HD part of TC is not always "on" and thus needs a few seconds to wake up when atv or itunes asks for its goods...

i dunno... deff something slower about it..

and boy consolidating it back onto my external HD took over 3 days!! yes 24/3!!! :O

kiranmk2 said:

Also, I thought that the files aren't actually streamed from the disk to itunes and then to the aTV, but that iTunes simply points the aTV to the file's location. Thus the only data that goes back and forth is a network path.

Click to expand...

Nope. iTunes actually streams the file across the network to the Apple TV. You can verify this by putting an iTunes-compatible file like a SD TV Show episode on your Time Capsule's hard drive, then dropping the file into your local iTunes library.

Open Activity Monitor's network pane and play the file on your Apple TV. You'll see that you are "receiving" roughly 1-2 Mb/s of data and "sending" out 1-2 Mb/s of data. If you stop the file that's one your Time Capsule, and play a local file instead—the "receiving" will drop down to almost nothing.

I'm sure Apple does this for a number of reasons — one of which is likely for DRM and another of which is to support Windows.