Apple TV - iTunes Running?

[A4orce84]

Hey Guys,

Just got an AppleTV to play around with. Setting up Home Sharing on my Mac, and I'm able to share my itunes library to the AppleTV to listen to my music in the living room.

However, does itunes ALWAYS need to be up and running for me to access my music on the AppleTV?

And if that's the case, why can't it access just my music folder via normal networking....not sure why I have to have iTunes running all the time then?


Thanks.

--Asif

 

[Alrescha]

However, does itunes ALWAYS need to be up and running for me to access my music on the AppleTV?

Your Mac can be sleeping, and the Apple TV can wake it up on demand. iTunes does have to be running.

And if that's the case, why can't it access just my music folder via normal networking....not sure why I have to have iTunes running all the time then?

Because that is how it is designed. That is how it works. If you wanted something that used SMB, or NFS, or UUCP, you should have gotten one of those instead. 🙂

A.

 

[2010mini]

Actually itunes does not need to run at all.

If you subscribe to iTunes Match, all of your music will be available to you. And if you purchase your movies/tv shows through itunes, they will also be available without iTunes running.

 

[westrock2000]

Actually itunes does not need to run at all.

If you subscribe to iTunes Match, all of your music will be available to you. And if you purchase your movies/tv shows through itunes, they will also be available without iTunes running.

Just as a side note, for songs that are in the iTunes Store you will play back their version of the song. The important thing to note is that the iTunes Store version will be 256kbps AAC. So if your library is 320kbps (AAC or MP3), you will still receive 256 AAC through "the cloud".

It's not terrible in my opinion, but it is something to keep in mind. It also works the other way. If your local version is 128 or 192kbps, you would still receive 256 from iTunes Match.

The Apple TV is meant to be used as a "terminal" and the iTunes server feeds it. With large media libraries it is not practical to keep the media on the Apple TV itself like the first generation did. So you need to have an external library somewhere. Apple is very heavy on integration amongst its products, so iTunes is the natural answer. Also as a company it makes sense to focus your resources on one interface (your own).

 

[Lord Hamsa]

However, does itunes ALWAYS need to be up and running for me to access my music on the AppleTV?

And if that's the case, why can't it access just my music folder via normal networking....not sure why I have to have iTunes running all the time then?

Because the Apple TV requires an iTunes client to serve the media, and there isn't one built into the ATV3. Personally, I would love a firmware update that added an iTunes client to the ATV and allowed me to point it to a network folder for its media, but it isn't currently designed that way.