Apps Store videos / play locally on ATV4? [x-post]

[fastthumbs]

Not sure where this belongs so I'm crossposting from the other forum.

Can't seem to find mention of this anywhere. Doesn't seem like the new Apple TV supports storing anything other than apps, but is there a way to offload videos from my computer to the Apple TV? If tvOS apps support file transfer the way regular iOS apps can, then it should be possible—maybe when VLC is released.

Can anyone fill me in?

 

[jdogg836]

Nope.

 

[stukeyme]

The Apple TV 4 (tvOS) doesn't allow apps to have any persistent storage (other than 500Kb for preference/settings files and any data that is already included in the application bundle). So storing video files locally on the ATV4 wouldn't be possible unless Apple remove this stupid restriction. See here: No Local Storage

The whole persistent storage limitation seems crazy to me. The Apple TV has more storage than 8/16GB iPhones and practically the same as 32GB iPhone models. Imagine if Apple restricted users and developers from storing any permanent data on their iPhones! So I don't understand why Apple are limiting users and stiffling developers in this manner. I've been researching this issue and it sounds like user generated data can be stored in Cache directories and synced to CloudKit so that if tvOS purges the local version it will automatically re-download from iCloud again? That might work for small files (image caches, etc.) but it wouldn't work for storing large media files on the Apple TV. Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/appletv/comments/3s9t1g/persistent_local_storage_on_the_apple_tv_4/

I think the best solution for @fastthumbs is to store the media on a NAS or network drive and then stream to the Apple TV using one of the various NAS streaming apps that are already available on the tvOS App Store (I am using FileBrowserTV from Stratospherix) but there's also Video Explorer, NAStify, and Infuse is coming soon.