I just wanted to check...does streaming your personal TV/movie library from iTunes work the same as on AppleTV 3?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Streaming personal library from iTunes
- Thread starter thatsmyfish
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yes, exactly like before - and unfortunately, Siri cannot yet search your local iTunes library.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Do you know this for sure or are you relaying someone's speculation? The "4" definitely CANNOT search our own media (yet)???
I believe they are referring to iTunes Home Sharing which can play your own movies/music that you add to your iTunes library.
Yes, you can also stream other iTunes content too including video. If you have photos you want to view on the ATV, you can also display them too albeit not from iTunes.
Glad someone asked this. The only 'apps' i use on today's AppleTV are MLB (during the season) and the Computers page which allows me to browse the iMac that's connected to my Synology NAS with 6 terabytes of media (movies, TV shows, music).
So good news that I am not losing functionality by updating. I really was hoping that I can use Siri to tell AppleTV to play Beetles music that is on my iMac w/ iTunes running or show me all of the movies I have with Elijah Wood. I have almost 1000 movies in iTunes, way more blockbusters than Netflix or Amazon Prime so searching those films since they are all tagged properly with directors, description, date - aired and a lot of meta-data would be great.
Unfortunately, Apple makes no money on things I bought on a DVD and ripped. they only make money selling media and services so I will be pretty disappointed if that's not the case. I plan on buying one in a few weeks so can someone confirm the isn't possible? If not,I'll just stick with my current box. I have an Xbox One for Games, iOS w/ AirPlay for YouTube mirroring and AppleTV for playing my media.
The only other advantage to the new box is that if Plex is every officially released, I can close iTunes on my iMac and just have AppleTV connect to Plex on my Synology NAS.
So good news that I am not losing functionality by updating. I really was hoping that I can use Siri to tell AppleTV to play Beetles music that is on my iMac w/ iTunes running or show me all of the movies I have with Elijah Wood. I have almost 1000 movies in iTunes, way more blockbusters than Netflix or Amazon Prime so searching those films since they are all tagged properly with directors, description, date - aired and a lot of meta-data would be great.
Unfortunately, Apple makes no money on things I bought on a DVD and ripped. they only make money selling media and services so I will be pretty disappointed if that's not the case. I plan on buying one in a few weeks so can someone confirm the isn't possible? If not,I'll just stick with my current box. I have an Xbox One for Games, iOS w/ AirPlay for YouTube mirroring and AppleTV for playing my media.
The only other advantage to the new box is that if Plex is every officially released, I can close iTunes on my iMac and just have AppleTV connect to Plex on my Synology NAS.
I really want to be able to use Siri to search for local content. The only hiccup I can see is that on the old ATV, when you select computers it will typically first load the list of content on your computer. So while it should be possible to use Siri to search for content after ATV has loaded the library list, it might not ever be able to do so from the main home screen.
I think this is fully possible if Apple changed priorities to people who have a massive iTunes library of non-iTunes Music Store purchases. When I add new content to iTunes, it should make an XML file in my library folder of that new line item, its location and all of the tags I've added. If I didn't put who directed the film, it's skipped but if I did, that's added to the XML file. When AppleTV fires up, iMac makes that file available via Home Sharing and Siri now has access to it. I'm sure Apple wants to know what non-purchased content I have for their data-mining (even if not nefarious, I'm guessing they do store a lot of user behavior / data) and I get the benefit of seeing Arnold movies on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and my own iTunes library.
In today's scenario, if I have Lord of the Rings and ask Siri to play it, it's going to show me everything except what's stored locally which seems counter intuitive. Wouldn't companies rather I play it locally than start a stream?
Further point, I purchased every Star Trek movie last Winter from iTunes. When I say to Siri "Play Star Trek Generations" is it going to stream this from iCloud / iTunes Store or will it stream it from my NAS where I've already stored it locally?
Last edited:
I agree with everything you say...I guess I am just resigning myself in advance to not having this capability. ;-)
Can someone please post of a pic of the UI for home sharing? I want to know if the movies are still displayed as a list or did they finally update and give it a new view?
You know what is annoying , all these reviews i see and half the video is them opening the stupid box and showing the remote for 2 minutes yet never showing things people want to see like this. Why do i care about someone taking the Apple tv from a box
I've literally watched almost every youtube video trying to find someone that shows the home sharing UI.
Still no user manual on Apple's site, and I checked NZ site as well. Not one reviewer can cover the most pressing question - how does it handle the user's own movies?
I think I'm just going to check my Apple Store tomorrow. I'll post a pic if no one does by then.
I'd like to know if all is still ok Home Sharing from a PowerPC mac or functionality has been stopped for older iTunes libraries.
That's my plan. Play with one on Saturday but I highly doubt apple has home sharing configured to these. It's all about apps now.
Home Sharing is working fine on my ATV4, interface seemed very similar to the ATV3 one, but white background instead of black. Haven't checked the Movies selection, busy streaming tv show at the moment.
Shame that you can't use Siri to play them. When you ask Siri to find a show, it tells me if they're on iTunes or Netflix, but doesn't check Home Sharing. Hopefully they update that, but I guess it'll need an iTunes update too as it'll need to index all your tv shows and movies and their actors, etc
Shame that you can't use Siri to play them. When you ask Siri to find a show, it tells me if they're on iTunes or Netflix, but doesn't check Home Sharing. Hopefully they update that, but I guess it'll need an iTunes update too as it'll need to index all your tv shows and movies and their actors, etc
It wouldn't be able to search your home private collection because it will be be able to index it. Then even if it could you personally wouldn't have put the correct meta data into your files like iTunes has in it's archive. It's not an iTunes Match like service, Home Sharing it what it says on the tin. You share your home files directly.
Many people do have correct metadata in their movie files in iTunes, and ATV picks it up when you browse your home shared media. So technically it should be possible to have Siri search this content. I'm pretty sure you can do a normal search when you're browsing your home shared content.
At the very least, it would be nice to be able to use Siri to search for a movie when you're actually in the home share section (at that point the ATV has definitely loaded your metadata), if you have a lot of movies that would add some convenience.
I'm not holding my breath for any of this, but it should be possible.
At the very least, it would be nice to be able to use Siri to search for a movie when you're actually in the home share section (at that point the ATV has definitely loaded your metadata), if you have a lot of movies that would add some convenience.
I'm not holding my breath for any of this, but it should be possible.
Yeah it should be possible. For example, I just streamed episode 3 of season 3 of Jonathan Creek. I have all the tags on the show in iTunes.
When I ask Siri to play episode 3 of season 3 of Jonathan Creek, it understands me and shows the same episode on the iTunes Store. So it's just a case of getting iTunes on my Mac to make the iTunes Library xml index available to the Apple TV.
Likewise, suspect this won't be something we'll see soon - but would be nice to be able to use Siri to navigate the Home Sharing screens since it's a pain the scroll through loads of entries on the new remote now you can't just hold the down button
When I ask Siri to play episode 3 of season 3 of Jonathan Creek, it understands me and shows the same episode on the iTunes Store. So it's just a case of getting iTunes on my Mac to make the iTunes Library xml index available to the Apple TV.
Likewise, suspect this won't be something we'll see soon - but would be nice to be able to use Siri to navigate the Home Sharing screens since it's a pain the scroll through loads of entries on the new remote now you can't just hold the down button