Is it now the time to buy the AIRPORT EXTRME?

[Tijmen]

I Got a question,

I wan't to combine al my apple product with each other with the AE (Macbook Pro, Apple TV).
But is this the time to buy the AE. Does any one know if there is coming a new model soon?

thanking you in advance,

Tijmen

 

[simsaladimbamba]

We don't know, but it is unlikely that a new AEBS will be released soon, as there is no new technology to incorporate (except Thunderbolt maybe).

 

[Tijmen]

I want to use the AE as a time capsule and as storage for my Apple TV.
So i don't have to put on my Macbook to watch a movie.

I will combine the AE with my external HDD instead of bying the Apple's Time Capsule (cheaper).

It's possible to do like this right?

thanking you in advance,

Tijmen

 

[simsaladimbamba]

I want to use the AE as a time capsule and as storage for my Apple TV.
So i don't have to put on my Macbook to watch a movie.

I will combine the AE with my external HDD instead of bying the Apple's Time Capsule (cheaper).

It's possible to do like this right?

thanking you in advance,

Tijmen

It is possible to do this, if the Apple TV is on the same network.

Maybe MRoogle can help you find some more threads about this issue (connecting HDD to AEBS and streaming content to the Apple TV).

 

[johnfkitchen]

I have an Airport Extreme with a hard drive containing movies. But I have not seen an option on my Apple TV 2010 (on the same network) to access these movies directly.

I therefore use my MacBook Pro to do this.

How do I get directly to the movies without using the MBP? I suspect this is not possible, but I'd be happy to find out that I'm wrong!

 

[dXTC]

I have an Airport Extreme with a hard drive containing movies. But I have not seen an option on my Apple TV 2010 (on the same network) to access these movies directly.

I therefore use my MacBook Pro to do this.

How do I get directly to the movies without using the MBP? I suspect this is not possible, but I'd be happy to find out that I'm wrong!

Your suspicion is mostly correct; your tv can't see that external drive by itself. Under normal conditions, the tv can stream music and video only from an active, running iTunes instance-- that is, iTunes on your MacBook Pro. You can dedicate an old Windows XP PC just for running iTunes, if you have one, and have its iTunes library pointing to media on the drive attached to your Extreme; this will free up your MBP.

The only way I know to have tv address media directly without another computer is by installing and playing media through XBMC, which of course requires jailbreaking the tv first.

 

[drewyboy]

We don't know, but it is unlikely that a new AEBS will be released soon, as there is no new technology to incorporate (except Thunderbolt maybe).

i respectfully disagree. Yes hardware wise there isn't much to be done... possibly add thunderbolt, probably not, add a 4th ethernet and maybe something else, but I think software wise there's a lot to be desired. It's just like apple to update one w/ a few hardware but talk about the software improvements. "Now connect an external hard drive and share it using iTune Home Sharing!". I heard some rumblings in the forums about jumbo packets or something like that, and also more security options and what not. Anyways, a small hardware refresh w/ more software options I think is a worthy upgrade... at least for those of us holding out till the next one since it's been about 1.5-2 years.

 

[dXTC]

i respectfully disagree. Yes hardware wise there isn't much to be done... possibly add thunderbolt, probably not, add a 4th ethernet and maybe something else, but I think software wise there's a lot to be desired.

You might have a point there. I know of two things I'd like to see from future iterations of the AEBS:

• A fourth Ethernet LAN port, as you mentioned above.
• The ability to limit/throttle the available WAN bandwidth to the Guest Network. This would let a house guest check an email or Facebook status quickly without configuration, while preventing the cheapskate two doors down from leeching all your bandwidth with his massive torrent sessions. Of course, it's not a good idea to leave your WiFi unsecured anyway, but some people do.

 

[Tomorrow]

I want to use the AE as a time capsule and as storage for my Apple TV.
So i don't have to put on my Macbook to watch a movie.

I will combine the AE with my external HDD instead of bying the Apple's Time Capsule (cheaper).

It's possible to do like this right?

No.

The Apple TV will not connect to media files on your network, it will only connect to a computer running iTunes. You can have the media files on an external drive, but you still need your MacBook to be on. Moving the media files off the MacBook may even slow down the performance of the Apple TV.