ATV 1 Back Up Question

[Balin64]

I searched around some but couldn't find a thread with a similar situation. So, about 10 months ago I bought a new original Apple TV. I used it mostly for renting and buying movies. I originally set it up with my MBP and chose not to sync movies, since I did not want my HD being filled with movies.

Occasionally, it would try to sync shows and movies but I always canceled the sync. Well, I ended up downloading about 80 gigs worth of content. When ATV 2 came out I bought it to test out. I unplugged the old ATV. Well, it's been a dew months and the ATV 2 is here to stay. But how do I transfer my ATV 1 content? There is not enough room on my MBP, and I'm afraid that if plug it in to my iMac I will lose the content. I probably should have set it up to sync to the iMac from the beginning. Any tips? Also, both Macs have the same iTunes account. Thanks!

 

[rayward]

I searched around some but couldn't find a thread with a similar situation. So, about 10 months ago I bought a new original Apple TV. I used it mostly for renting and buying movies. I originally set it up with my MBP and chose not to sync movies, since I did not want my HD being filled with movies.

Occasionally, it would try to sync shows and movies but I always canceled the sync. Well, I ended up downloading about 80 gigs worth of content. When ATV 2 came out I bought it to test out. I unplugged the old ATV. Well, it's been a dew months and the ATV 2 is here to stay. But how do I transfer my ATV 1 content? There is not enough room on my MBP, and I'm afraid that if plug it in to my iMac I will lose the content. I probably should have set it up to sync to the iMac from the beginning. Any tips? Also, both Macs have the same iTunes account. Thanks!

If you bought media on your ATV1 from the iTunes store, it should sync back to your iTunes library on your Mac. I keep my libraries synced, and anything I buy on the ATV is copied up to my Mac at next sync. (Actually, I stream all of my content from iTunes to save time when syncing, but ATV purchases still copy back to iTunes at sync, delete themselves from the ATV and are available on the ATV as streaming content).

However, if you ever synced any part of your ATV content with iTunes, and then deleted that same content from iTunes, the sync will delete that same content from the ATV. This is because the ATV is a mirror of your iTunes library, like an iPod, not an independent storage device. I do not believe there is a way to prevent this.

It seems to me that your media is trapped on your ATV. I have seen talk on here about utilities that can recover media from an ATV, but I have no knowledge or experience of that. The only way I know to free your ATV content is to sync it to iTunes, making sure you have enough HDD capacity to take it all (I use an external HDD attached via USB for my media), and keep your fingers crossed. If you have never properly synced the content and/or deleted it from iTunes after a sync, your media should copy into your iTunes library.

I accept that this remedy is a little "kill or cure", so I do recommend looking around here more in case a better solution exists.