Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

JGeorge07

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I'm about to buy an Apple TV and can't seem to find the answer to this anywhere online. If I buy a movie, does it stay on the Apple TV or my home computer (iMac)?

The reason I ask is, I would like to have my movie collection completely digital. The Apple TV HDD has enough space, but I don't want that to also be taking up valuable space on my computer.
 
It will sync the movie to your computer, but you can then move it to a different drive - as long as iTunes knows where it is. Once that's done, the drive can go off-line, unless you need to play it on the computer.

I've been using my :apple:tv this way (it's upgraded to a 250GB drive), so I don't need my MBP open and running. I keep all my large media on an external drive, but keep my music on my internal.
 
So if I buy a movie on Apple TV, it will sync to my iMac automatically. Then I can just move the movie to a flash drive or whatever, remove the flash drive, and the movie won't "re-sync", correct?

Just want to make sure I understand. And thanks for the help too.
 
So if I buy a movie on Apple TV, it will sync to my iMac automatically. Then I can just move the movie to a flash drive or whatever, remove the flash drive, and the movie won't "re-sync", correct?

Just want to make sure I understand. And thanks for the help too.
DANGER DANGER!

Do not use a flashdrive to back up anything. Flash drives are only a way of moving files around, never a backup solution.
 
So if I buy a movie on Apple TV, it will sync to my iMac automatically. Then I can just move the movie to a flash drive or whatever, remove the flash drive, and the movie won't "re-sync", correct?

Just want to make sure I understand. And thanks for the help too.

Correct. Unless you change the setting for a particular movie in the :apple:tv "Movies" tab, it won't care. (I've been doing this for a long time now, but just for fun, I checked it out [again] by unmounting my external drive and hitting sync. All is well.)

edit: +1 on not using the flash drive. Put the file on an external hard drive AND burn a DVD ("data").
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.