Apple TV... or something else?

Hamish

Hamish

Hamish

Soldato
Joined
14 Apr 2003
Posts
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Deepest Yorkshire
At the moment I connect my MBP to my TV (42" 720p LCD) by VGA which is a right pain to setup due to all the cables - to run in clamshell mode I have to connect power, VGA, mouse and kb.

I want to replace this with something else that I can copy all my media across to and play off as well as stream off. Therefore AppleTV looks ideal... But as I can't fit all my films on my hard drive I keep them on an external, I assume this would mean that I would have to add whatever I want to watch to my itunes library from the hard drive before watching it, not to mention converting it to 720p as well. Is this true? Also if I deleted it off my laptop's hard drive would it delete from Apple TV too?

I also looked at the Pinnacle showcentre which is ideal apart from the fact it only runs off Windows PCs. Surly there are more options?
 
Someone correct me if Im wrong, but as I understand it the AppleTV's hard drive is only used for caching data and doesnt actually store anything. To access your media your "host" Mac has to be on.
 
Ive been thinking of doing this to replace me aging Xbox as a media centre... But, ive been looking at the topspec MacMini instead... my TV supports VGA in@1280x720 and i could simply stick the Mini under the TV and it could connect using WIFI to my existing Media server... Then with Front Row and the standard remote id be laughing.

Also with the addition of another Elgato Diversity ;) I could use it as a fully blown twin tuner PVR as well, which would be a nice added extra.
 
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DreederOcUK said:
Ive been thinking of doing this to replace me aging Xbox as a media centre... But, ive been looking at the topspec MacMini instead... my TV supports VGA in@1280x720 and i could simply stick the Mini under the TV and it could connect using WIFI to my existing Media server... Then with Front Row and the standard remote id be laughing.
Click to expand...

Depending on what you want to play, that is true for sure.

sid
 
You can store your collection on your Apple TV

You have two options - either store it on your Apple TV or stream it from your host PC

I've had mine for a couple of months and it does its job and the interface is great. I wish I'd gone for the 160GB version over the 40GB though
 
The Apple TV can store media on the hard drive, but the 160 GB version is quite expensive when you compare it to the bottom spec Mac Mini (which is very capable).

The new version of Front Row in Leopard is basically the same as the Apple TV interface except of course you can play a heck of a lot more formats without hacking it.
 
Yeh i'm still tempted by the Apple TV, the YouTube feature and iTunes hookup are pretty sweet features, the only bad point I can see is the H.264 only limitation. I spose it is the future though and it wouldn't be hard to convert all my videos to it. On the other hand I have a 1.42Ghz Mac Mini here which could be used as a HTPC I spose, thing is it doesn't have Front Row (although I think there are hacks to install it) and it's still a computer: needs to be booted up every time you use it.

Also I think it can be hacked to do pretty much anything you like - http://www.appletvhacks.net/ has a lot of articles on it, would rathr not go down that route though
 
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