Apple TV

[monkey333]

Thinking of pulling the trigger, but want to know how we'll it will stream hd over Ethernet. I have a Ethernet over power connection that seems to work well. Also a wireless option as well. What about an ext hd hook up?

Thx.

 

[dagamer34]

Thinking of pulling the trigger, but want to know how we'll it will stream hd over Ethernet. I have a Ethernet over power connection that seems to work well. Also a wireless option as well. What about an ext hd hook up?

Thx.

Apple TV isn't really for playing local content you have, just Apple content and whatever apps are included. I'd look for something else if you want to play local HD content in .mkv format.

 

[dmw16]

Apple TV isn't really for playing local content you have, just Apple content and whatever apps are included. I'd look for something else if you want to play local HD content in .mkv format.

I don't totally agree with this.

Yes, the Apple TV doesn't let you plug a USB drive in nor does it let you play content from a NAS/Shared Drive/Etc. However, using home sharing you can add videos (in mkv format) to your iTunes library and play them on the Apple TV as long as your computer is on and iTunes is running.

The home sharing method works well for me, but of course it will depend on your situation.

 

[Ashenor]

Sounds a lot easier to just get a WDTV Live or something if you are looking to do that.

 

[Ns1]

I don't totally agree with this.

Yes, the Apple TV doesn't let you plug a USB drive in nor does it let you play content from a NAS/Shared Drive/Etc. However, using home sharing you can add videos (in mkv format) to your iTunes library and play them on the Apple TV as long as your computer is on and iTunes is running.

The home sharing method works well for me, but of course it will depend on your situation.

This. Super simple, way easier than setting up xbmc. Requires files to be in apple compatible format.

 

[Spineshank]

To me AppleTV is only worth it if you can jailbreak it. I stream from my Mac to my 360 which works just as well. I know people that use Roku's and really like them.

 

[sourceninja]

Roku + plex = win.

 

[Printer Bandit]

can plex stream .mkv files?

 

[dawks]

Thinking of pulling the trigger, but want to know how we'll it will stream hd over Ethernet** I have a Ethernet over power connection that seems to work well** Also a wireless option as well** What about an ext hd hook up?

Thx**

The Apple TV can stream HD fine over ethernet and should work well over wireless** I stream 'HD' netflix from the internet fine with Apple TV**
The main problem with Apple TV is codec/format support** Files need to be in a specific format (mp4, m4v, mov) and h**264 (at certain bitrates/resolutions/quality levels)** If you have varied formats I'd re***mend WDTV since it supports just about everything (including blu-ray grade MKV files encoded with h**264 or VC-1)** I actually regularly stream 5-20gig **mkv files to a WDTV over 100mbit and it works fine**

 

[Ashenor]

The Apple TV can stream HD fine over ethernet and should work well over wireless** I stream 'HD' netflix from the internet fine with Apple TV**
The main problem with Apple TV is codec/format support** Files need to be in a specific format (mp4, m4v, mov) and h**264 (at certain bitrates/resolutions/quality levels)** If you have varied formats I'd re***mend WDTV since it supports just about everything (including blu-ray grade MKV files encoded with h**264 or VC-1)** I actually regularly stream 5-20gig **mkv files to a WDTV over 100mbit and it works fine**

I stream 3D MKV's with no issues with my WDTV Live** Watch slickdeals, always a deal on them**

 

[sourceninja]

can plex stream **mkv files?

yes

 

[HaukSwe]

What about AirPlay?

VLC supports AirPlay so anything you playback on your computer you can instantly get onto your Apple TV, no file transfers required.

XBMC and Plex isn't quite ideal in my opinion. The Plex snobs has decided that supporting playback of RAR files is bad so you'd have to unrar all content in your library, that might or might not be an issue to you. If not all your content is in pure video files then Plex is a better choice than XBMC imho (Mainly due to their library scraper on OS X, which is really quite good. Last time I tried the plex interface was snappier, I might be wrong there though).

XBMC works well on the Apple TV, except I find the interface a bit laggy. Which is annoying. I have all my XBMC content on a USB HDD connected to an Airport Extreme and shared over the network. the ATV via XBMC streams that over WiFi in 720p just fine.

Since AirPlay was introduced in Mountain Lion howev I only really use XBMC if I want to go into my long-term library and look up something old.

 

[TheStu]

What about AirPlay?

VLC supports AirPlay so anything you playback on your computer you can instantly get onto your Apple TV, no file transfers required.

XBMC and Plex isn't quite ideal in my opinion. The Plex snobs has decided that supporting playback of RAR files is bad so you'd have to unrar all content in your library, that might or might not be an issue to you. If not all your content is in pure video files then Plex is a better choice than XBMC imho (Mainly due to their library scraper on OS X, which is really quite good. Last time I tried the plex interface was snappier, I might be wrong there though).

XBMC works well on the Apple TV, except I find the interface a bit laggy. Which is annoying. I have all my XBMC content on a USB HDD connected to an Airport Extreme and shared over the network. the ATV via XBMC streams that over WiFi in 720p just fine.

Since AirPlay was introduced in Mountain Lion howev I only really use XBMC if I want to go into my long-term library and look up something old.

VLC supports Airplay? In Windows? How? To the Google!!

 

[sourceninja]

What about AirPlay?

VLC supports AirPlay so anything you playback on your computer you can instantly get onto your Apple TV, no file transfers required.

XBMC and Plex isn't quite ideal in my opinion. The Plex snobs has decided that supporting playback of RAR files is bad so you'd have to unrar all content in your library, that might or might not be an issue to you. If not all your content is in pure video files then Plex is a better choice than XBMC imho (Mainly due to their library scraper on OS X, which is really quite good. Last time I tried the plex interface was snappier, I might be wrong there though).

XBMC works well on the Apple TV, except I find the interface a bit laggy. Which is annoying. I have all my XBMC content on a USB HDD connected to an Airport Extreme and shared over the network. the ATV via XBMC streams that over WiFi in 720p just fine.

Since AirPlay was introduced in Mountain Lion howev I only really use XBMC if I want to go into my long-term library and look up something old.

If your content is in rar files, why not unrar them. Transmission supports executing a script on the completion of a download. It would be trivial to write a batch script to detect it was a rar and unrar it.

 

[TheStu]

If your content is in rar files, why not unrar them. Transmission supports executing a script on the completion of a download. It would be trivial to write a batch script to detect it was a rar and unrar it.

Seriously, why are you leaving your content in RAR anyway? Assuming the playback software can unrar it during playback, that is just wasted processes, just unrar it once and be done. Storage is cheap, as is local bandwidth.

 

[Aikouka]

Seriously, why are you leaving your content in RAR anyway? Assuming the playback software can unrar it during playback, that is just wasted processes, just unrar it once and be done. Storage is cheap, as is local bandwidth.

I have no idea why the majority of people would leave a downloaded file in the RAR segments. You mention that storage is cheap, but I'm not sure it's even necessary to make that statement, because it's not like compressing an already compressed file does much for the resulting size -- h.264 and all other video codecs are compression algorithms. What makes it even more inane is that the only reason they come in split RAR files is to facilitate easy replacement of corrupted downloads. It's a lot easier to download a few bad, relatively small segments than the entire file all over again. There are even places ( :whiste: ) that you can go that have mechanisms for automated requesting of RAR parts.

 

[bigrash]

I use my Apple TV to stream content from my desktop to my tv, but I hate that it doesn't support mkv files.

 

[dawks]

VLC supports Airplay? In Windows? How? To the Google!!

Have you figured this out? I'm guessing what he means is not that VLC supports it, but Mountain Lion Airplays what's on your screen, which means you can technically airplay VLC... Or is there a button in VLC to push video to Apple TV?

 

[TheStu]

Have you figured this out? I'm guessing what he means is not that VLC supports it, but Mountain Lion Airplays what's on your screen, which means you can technically airplay VLC... Or is there a button in VLC to push video to Apple TV?

No, I haven't figured it out yet. Specifically I am looking for Windows solutions.

 

[HaukSwe]

If you only do airplay desktop mirror with 10.8 you won't get audio on your TV, however in VLC you can choose audio device and select airplay for output. So, VLC supports airplay the same way iTunes does.

Airplay support and windows I don't know much about.

Not sure if Apple TV even makes sense for someone who doesn't use OS 10 and/or iOS devices? Apple TV is worth is only to use airplay. As an XBMC/Plex device, also great. However if you can't jailbreak or use airplay I'm not sure if it's worth it for the standard features.

My downloads come in RAR and I need to keep them to upload. Auto-unrar on complete transmission script is quite interesting, I don't want to use Transmission but perhaps same thing can be done using uTorrent.

 

[TheStu]

If you only do airplay desktop mirror with 10.8 you won't get audio on your TV, however in VLC you can choose audio device and select airplay for output. So, VLC supports airplay the same way iTunes does.

Airplay support and windows I don't know much about.

Not sure if Apple TV even makes sense for someone who doesn't use OS 10 and/or iOS devices? Apple TV is worth is only to use airplay. As an XBMC/Plex device, also great. However if you can't jailbreak or use airplay I'm not sure if it's worth it for the standard features.

My downloads come in RAR and I need to keep them to upload. Auto-unrar on complete transmission script is quite interesting, I don't want to use Transmission but perhaps same thing can be done using uTorrent.

As an ultra low power Netflix or Hulu Plus box, it is pretty great, the thing is using an A5 CPU, designed for mobile devices, it is probably pulling 5W or less at load.

 

[dawks]

As an ultra low power Netflix or Hulu Plus box, it is pretty great, the thing is using an A5 CPU, designed for mobile devices, it is probably pulling 5W or less at load.

It has a 5W PSU, but it wouldnt even read on my watt meter when running under normal usage.

Works great for Netflix. Annoyed you have to subscribe for Hulu to work.

 

[TheStu]

It has a 5W PSU, but it wouldnt even read on my watt meter when running under normal usage.

Works great for Netflix. Annoyed you have to subscribe for Hulu to work.

Well, that is a Hulu Plus thing. The 5W was a ballpark guess, nice to see that I was more or less on track.