Ripped DVD's onto Apple TV w/out iTunes

[Supernerd]

I just bought an Apple TV, and it is worth every penny. At the moment, my dad has even used it more than me, as he so eagerly enjoys all of the features for playing music from his supermassive iTunes library. I am more interested in movies, however, and had some concerns involving DVD ripping.

I have maybe 20 movies ripped, and that number will grow. I have at least 150 DVD's, and I intend to rip them all at some point. I consider it, based on my current setup with my (shared) desktop iMac, a pain in the butt to have to log in every time I want to watch a movie. I have an iPad, but it's only a 32g, I can't have all of my movies on it and room for other things, no way. I was wondering if there was any way I could put ripped movies into my purchased movies in iCloud or if there is some other way to make them accessible to stream without my iTunes library open. I'd even be willing to use a third party product, but nothing illegal and I'm not jailbreaking. Can anyone help me?

 

[mic j]

I just bought an Apple TV, and it is worth every penny. At the moment, my dad has even used it more than me, as he so eagerly enjoys all of the features for playing music from his supermassive iTunes library. I am more interested in movies, however, and had some concerns involving DVD ripping.

I have maybe 20 movies ripped, and that number will grow. I have at least 150 DVD's, and I intend to rip them all at some point. I consider it, based on my current setup with my (shared) desktop iMac, a pain in the butt to have to log in every time I want to watch a movie. I have an iPad, but it's only a 32g, I can't have all of my movies on it and room for other things, no way. I was wondering if there was any way I could put ripped movies into my purchased movies in iCloud or if there is some other way to make them accessible to stream without my iTunes library open. I'd even be willing to use a third party product, but nothing illegal and I'm not jailbreaking. Can anyone help me?

Glad you are enjoying your new aTV!!!

Now the bad news. iCloud does not support personal movie storage and iTunes has to be running on something to stream content.

 

[jdblas69]

You could set up a NAS system that has a built in itunes server, I am not sure though if these servers support all media types or just music files.

I think Synology has NAS devices that have built in itunes server. I am sure there are others out there as well.

This solution may not be the most cost effective.

Unfortunately the cheapest solution is to leave your imac on and itunes open.

 

[Supernerd]

I assume that is a server I leave running which has my media on it? Maybe in the future, but that is way too much effort and money to just get rid of a minor inconvenience.

What would be perfect for me would be iTunes Match for movies. However, this is an unlikely move for apple, because all the features of iTunes Match are already present for movies through iCloud. The only feature Match has that movies don't is the ability to add non-purchased movies to the cloud. Not surprisingly, this is the feature I need.

I guess I could write a request to Apple... (pause so that you can laugh)

Seeing all the convinient features for purchased movies, it almost feels like Match was an afterthought, a way to squeeze out some more money, because more people use iTunes for music than movies. I, however, am very impressed with the iTunes movie system, and will certainly never buy a DVD again. I also plan to never get a Blu-ray player, the iTunes HD is fantastic. I wish iTunes could find a way to make everyone happy...