So I have a home with 4 Macs. Each of our Macs have different movies within iTunes that I imported movies into. When my wife and I watch a movie, we turn on our Mac with the movie on it, open iTunes, turn on our Apple TV, find our library on Apple TV, and watch the movie. Here's my question, and excuse my ignorance if this is either simple to do, or not possible at all - we have around 500 gigs of movies in our iTunes library, is there any way to watch the movies WITHOUT iTunes open? Or ideally without the computer open? We don't want to upload the movies to iCloud for space concerns - so is there another solution?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Airplay movies without iTunes open?
- Thread starter nyguy4u
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The first Apple TV had a internal hard drive to store and playback movies, so maybe try to find one. The recent ones only use their storage for apps.
Airplay has two sides, a sender and receiver. What you need is a dedicated playback device, a media center device, something that will consolidate all the movies from each of the Macs and play directly to the TV without a need to have a separate computer.
This can range from a Raspberry Pi with an external hard drive (if you are fine with the hands on approach) or a WD TV Live Hub (that is ready to go with a internal hard drive). Or if you are fine with a computer running and sharing the movies over the network there are many streaming devices like the Apple TV but you don't have to have iTunes open (Plex, Roku, as well as others). Unless your TV can play movies directly from an external hard drive you will need a computer/device hooked up to the TV.
I use Kodi running on an old computer. The total cost was basically the remote. It can play locally stored movies or pull them from a different computer.
So in conclusion, you need to decide first where you will keep all the movies. This will tell you what kind of device you need to get. Or just continue using your Apple TV.
Airplay has two sides, a sender and receiver. What you need is a dedicated playback device, a media center device, something that will consolidate all the movies from each of the Macs and play directly to the TV without a need to have a separate computer.
This can range from a Raspberry Pi with an external hard drive (if you are fine with the hands on approach) or a WD TV Live Hub (that is ready to go with a internal hard drive). Or if you are fine with a computer running and sharing the movies over the network there are many streaming devices like the Apple TV but you don't have to have iTunes open (Plex, Roku, as well as others). Unless your TV can play movies directly from an external hard drive you will need a computer/device hooked up to the TV.
I use Kodi running on an old computer. The total cost was basically the remote. It can play locally stored movies or pull them from a different computer.
So in conclusion, you need to decide first where you will keep all the movies. This will tell you what kind of device you need to get. Or just continue using your Apple TV.