Advice on Hardware: Apple TV vs using Existing iOS Hardware

[Scott Baret]

Hi everyone! I hope someone can help me out here with this, as it's something I have been wanting to do for a while now.

I have a lot of shows I have purchased (for download and not for streaming) over the years. Since this became a thing, I've usually watched them on a Mac, iPad, or iPod touch. However, with a brand new sofa on its way and me being pretty sick of looking at laptops at the end of a day since I still do a lot of work from home, I feel it's time to finally get my content on a real TV.

My TV is nothing fancy at all since I don't really use it much! Aside from Jeopardy and sports, there's really nothing I follow on it. I also have the most basic setup: I have a non-smart TV, a BluRay player, no cable services, and get by with the five channels or so I can get over the air. I don't want to pay for any subscriptions since I already pay enough to get print magazines and newspapers (which I still get a lot out of) and also prefer things that don't need always-on internet (there is something great about flipping the router off for a while and pretending it's 1991).

I have two HDMI ports on the set. One is being used by my BluRay player. The other has one of those SNES Classic Minis attached to it. I don't mind having to swap a cable out between the SNES and something else, but if there's a way around this I would prefer that.

I want to watch what I have purchased for download. That includes movies and the old TV shows from way back from when I actually used to follow TV. I also have home movies that I have digitized from VHS, which are in my library on my Mac and I have synced to an iPod touch as backup.

Here's the million dollar question: what would work best out of the following?

A. Get an Apple TV, find a way to sync it with the home movies (if this is even possible...by the way this is a MUST for this setup), download the TV shows and movies purchased over the years through iTunes, and connect it to the TV.

B. Get some sort of hookup for the iPod touch. My touch can only go up to iOS 12 since it's a little older so I'm hoping that's not an issue either now or long term?

C. Get a hookup for an old iPad 2 that I no longer really use. It would be bulky though...and would it work since it's stuck on iOS 9?

D. Get some other kind of equipment and hook it up.

I'm not the most versed in these modern TV methods...but hey, I still know how to program a VCR!!

 

[acorntoy]

Im a bit confused - so you want everything to be stored locally, as in the WiFi goes down you still have everything?

Lightning Digital AV Adapter - Lightning to HDMI

The Lightning Digital AV Adapter mirrors what you see on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod so you can enjoy it on your widescreen TV or another HDMI-compatible display.

www.apple.com

This would work the with 6th gen iPod touch and allow you to watch anything downloaded/streaming on it to the TV. Obviously space would be capped at the devices storage.

You could also get an Apple TV, even with just a local (won’t connect to websites etc) internet connection you’ll be able to Airplay to share video from any newish Apple device to the tv. More like 1998 than 1991. If you go the Apple TV route you wouldn’t be able to “sync” the content to appear on it, but you could easily just AirPlay your home videos from the touch or iPad to the Apple TV.

Ive done something similar with my moms kitchen tv setup, she has a 512GB iPad with a mix of ripped videos/home videos/ and purchased content With an Apple TV connected to a dumb 720p tv. While only the purchased content shows on the native apps on the tv any of it will play if the iPad airplays a video to the tv.Sometimes she can’t find something but I just got to remind her she has to start the video on the iPad and not the tv.

 

[Realityck]

My TV is nothing fancy at all since I don't really use it much!

How about using a 3 IN 1 OUT HDMI SWITCH supporting HDMI 2.0/HDCP 2.2, then connect a ATV4K to it. From there as suggested you could airplay from your MacBook Pro or 8th gen iPad.

If your TV was new enough you could install the AppeTV+ app to allow you to directly access your iTunes collection on recent Samsung, LG, VIZIO, Sony sets. I think most are 2018 models, except VIZIO. see this URL

How to watch Apple TV+, MLS Season Pass, and more

support.apple.com

 

[acorntoy]

How about using a 3 IN 1 OUT HDMI SWITCH supporting HDMI 2.0/HDCP 2.2, then connect a ATV4K to it. From there as suggested you could airplay from your MacBook Pro or 8th gen iPad.

If your TV was new enough you could install the AppeTV+ app to allow you to directly access your iTunes collection on recent Samsung, LG, VIZIO, Sony sets. I think most are 2018 models, except VIZIO. see this URL

How to watch Apple TV+, MLS Season Pass, and more

support.apple.com

If they can use a newer device it would dramatically improve the setup, the advice I gave above is purely based on the touch 6th gen and iPad 2 they mentioned, as well as what I understood a preference towards local storage.

That said they seem to like old tech, so if it interest them they could probably set up what they want with an Apple TV 2 (A4 720p) or TV 3 (A5 1080p). Both can be found on eBay often for $10-$25 and support non HEVC airplay very well.

 

[Scott Baret]

Yes, local storage is what I want. I don't want anything streaming so I can turn the wifi off entirely, as I like to do sometimes. I almost feel it would be best to just get this cable and even another iPod touch since they're so cheap right now so I can save my other one for music. It would probably be somewhat comparable to the Apple TV and cables in price.

 

[Boyd01]

You can mostly do what you want with the Apple TV. I have over 2tb of media on a Mac Mini that I use as a server (downloaded iTunes purchases plus my own ripped DVD's, CD's and home video). I can access them from two Apple TV's, two Macs, an iPhone and iPad.

If you really want to turn off internet access, not sure if that will work on the Apple TV however. Got fast FIOS a few years ago and it almost never goes down. But in my rural area, I had slow DSL for over 10 years and it wasn't so robust. When internet access was down, I could not access ANYTHING on my two Apple TV's, not even my own local library of ripped DVD's. However, I could still access all of these on my other Macs and iOS devices, so there was no problem with my own home network.

Apparently, the Apple TV needs to "phone home" to work at all. Caveat: this was my old AppleTV 3, maybe the newer models are different. My work-around for this problem was to airplay video to the Apple TV, that would always work.

 

[Scott Baret]

I thought of another idea...I have an iPhone SE that has been sitting around since it was replaced last year. It would prevent me from purchasing another Touch and I could keep all storage local on it, although it's not so great with battery life.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the adapter linked earlier has an output for charging? I've got a bunch of extra charging bricks from the phones I've used and retired over the years plus a random Griffin one I got somewhere, so I'm sure I could go about doing this.

I know I'd have to get up to change something since I don't believe there is a remote here, but I do that anyway for BluRay and had to do that to change volume and channels for years...didn't have a TV that came with a remote until the mid-90s.

 

[SigEp265]

Plex

 

[Scott Baret]

UPDATE: I went with the Lightning adapter. It seems like it will do what I want. Thanks for all the input!!