How do you view your libraries with ATV?

[zerostar]

So what I am doing right now is I have a NAS 16TB with about 4TB of videos, I moved all my DVDs over to it over the years as well as moved everything to mp4. I have 3 Apple TVs right now, my Bedroom is a 2, My Livingroom is a 2 and my Spare Room is a 3.

I have jailbreak both the ATV 2's and have Infuse running with my video library on there, works great! I also have my purchased iTunes content always there and that is great too. I have my ATV 3 fully updated (which can't use infuse so I have AirVideo running to "Airplay" what I want to that ATV which is rare cause its in a spare room) I miss the new features on my ATV 2, I was thinking of moving everything to my iTunes library (still have the data on the NAS just point it all to iTunes) and share it all out that way.

Then I could update all my ATV's and have all the new features, HBO GO, Netflix next up, move icons etc. etc.

I just don't want to really have my iMac have to have iTunes on all the time or have to have my Wife or kid remember to open iTunes to use the Apple TV.

Is there a better way? Something I am missing that would make this just as seamless as I have it but without jailbreaking?

 

[octothorpe8]

Dunno. I have similar setup to you, but just one ATV and one library (~1TB) — and to manage streaming between them is my Mac Mini which I just leave on or sleeping most of the time, with iTunes just running. Even if another user is logged in in a separate user account, the ATV will still very reliably stream video (or music) right from the hard drive attached to it. I also stream music from that same Mac via AirPlay to my kitchen speakers, which are attached to an Airport Express. The whole setup works pretty much perfectly.

I use the Mini for a lot of other stuff, so it's not like I bought it JUST to do this, but now that it's all running so smoothly, I can't imagine doing it another way.

 

[Boyd01]

My library is 500gb but growing rapidly as I rip my large DVD collection. I have it on a new 2TB Time Capsule so that I can access on my MacBook Air with 802.11ac wifi around the house (I don't use the Time Capsule for backups). Also have a USB gigabit ethernet interface that I use when copying files and backing up the Time Capsule disk.

Only have one Apple TV, so when I want to watch my content I need to leave my MBA running iTunes. Since I live alone, this isn't much of an issue. But I'm learning there can be issues with having the library on a network drive. If you lose the network connection (when moving the computer out to the porch, or sometimes when it goes to sleep, etc) then there can be problems if iTunes is running. Had some corruption of the library once and had to go through and fix things since I lost the cover art from many items.

I think my next move will be to get a basic mac mini, connect a large local disk and just leave it running iTunes all the time. But at the present time I don't want to spend the money, and my setup works pretty well.

 

[Fuchal]

I haven't used it, but I know my Synology NAS has a plugin to run an iTunes share from the nas.

 

[irnchriz]

Don't upgrade the apple tv's

I have a very similar setup as above:

Mac Mini running iTunes, media on an external HDD connected via usb3

I rolled back my Apple TV 2's as version 6.1.1 causes issues with streaming some HD content and is incredibly slow at everything compared to 5.3 and you lose 5.1 sound on Netflix.

I had updated to watch the WWDC live stream but have gone back to 5.3 again. I only Jailbreak them so I can stop the updates running as my wife keeps choosing "update". LOL.

 

[Boyd01]

I haven't used it, but I know my Synology NAS has a plugin to run an iTunes share from the nas.

From what I understand, this is not the same as running iTunes on a computer and accessing the library directly within the AppleTV interface. You need to use an app on an iOS device to choose the movies and then send them to the TV. If so, then that wouldn't interest me.

 

[zerostar]

Hmm looks like putting the Files in iTunes will still be the best way to go, If I do it under another user maybe that will keep it running and out of my way... hadn't thought of that.

 

[Fuchal]

From what I understand, this is not the same as running iTunes on a computer and accessing the library directly within the AppleTV interface. You need to use an app on an iOS device to choose the movies and then send them to the TV. If so, then that wouldn't interest me.

That's a bummer.

 

[Otago Lad]

Hmm looks like putting the Files in iTunes will still be the best way to go, If I do it under another user maybe that will keep it running and out of my way... hadn't thought of that.

May not be of much use to you as a mac user, however I run Windows Home Server 2011 on a home built Server which now has 42TB of storage and I have iTunes running full time on the server and it works fantastically well in serving movies, Photo's, music, documents etc. to a range of devices (four aTV's, a Roku 3, laptop, desktop, iPhones and iPad's and also my/the kids new Macbook Pro) around the house. Also, with Plex Server also running on the server I can access everything very easily on the road as well.

From a mac perspective I guess using a Mac Mini in the same way might also work.

 

[zerostar]

May not be of much use to you as a mac user, however I run Windows Home Server 2011 on a home built Server which now has 42TB of storage and I have iTunes running full time on the server and it works fantastically well in serving movies, Photo's, music, documents etc. to a range of devices (four aTV's, a Roku 3, laptop, desktop, iPhones and iPad's and also my/the kids new Macbook Pro) around the house. Also, with Plex Server also running on the server I can access everything very easily on the road as well.

From a mac perspective I guess using a Mac Mini in the same way might also work.

Hmm, yeah might just have an old Windows Machine I can throw 7 on and use that headless! good idea!

 

[schlotz]

Over 500 movies, most in HD, along with itunes music (approx 21GB) are on my 16Tb drobo which is directly connected to the iMac via TB. Using Plex & Plexconnect to serve up to my two aTV-3's. This works for us.

 

[zerostar]

So right now I have iTunes setup on my Mac, I've moved about 1/2 the items to it... looking good so-far! With the help of iDentity to get the MetaData and iSubtitle to add subs when needed (we have a deaf person in the household) this seems to be a winning solution for us.

Is there a way (until I can setup a dedicated machine) to keep iTunes open all the time? Like have it automatically re-open if someone in the family quits it?

 

[westrock2000]

You will have to have iTunes running all the time as it provides all the back end for the "library" you navigate on your ATV.

The ATV is meant to be a terminal because it is more practical to have a large library stored away from the set top box itself. The Apple TV 1 may have seemed cool at first being able to store things locally, but it is not feasible to expect such a device to have access to many terabytes of data. Most people just do not want that hardware sitting in their living room.

Windows 7 is a great platform if you are concerned about the power or cost of having such a computer running 24/7. Any low-end processor in a cheap tower can hold many terabytes of data now-a-days and serve it up no problem.

 

[zerostar]

Yeah I deff agree, the stream from network setup is more practical then keeping it all in the Living Room.

 

[gabigrigore]

My setup

I use the following configuration for two TVs:
- MacMini (Mid 2010, 4GB RAM) with iTunes (for ATV) and XBMC for the TV directly linked to MacMini;
- QNAP TS-412 with 4x3TB disks in RAID 6;
- AppleTV 2 upstairs connected to the MacMini via Airport Extreme last generation (it works excellent with 720p movies).
All the movies are in .m4v format (using iFlicks) and all the music is in .m4a format (using XLD).
I've been using this configuration for the last two years without any problem. The only nuisance is the random movies artwork disappearance in iTunes.

 

[Crazy Badger]

I have a HP Microserver running FreeNAS that is also running Plex Media Server (for managing the 6-7TB of media content) and PlexConnect (for directing Trailer app traffic from ATV to Plex without the need for a jailbreak). Also used the FreeNAS box for TimeMachine backups and running ownCloud.

 

[Boyd01]

I've been using this configuration for the last two years without any problem. The only nuisance is the random movies artwork disappearance in iTunes.

I had this problem when my iTunes library was on a network drive. The artwork was still in iTunes if you did a "get info", and doing that restored the artwork in the iTunes browser and the AppleTV.

I am pretty certain that this problem is caused when iTunes starts but cannot connect to a network drive, or if some problem causes the network drive to become unavailable while iTunes is running. I imagine the same thing could happen with a directly connected external drive if it wasn't available.