Comments on: How To Stream Videos To Your Apple TV

By: H Green

H Green — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 04:31:35 +0000

if i go to tvduck or sidereel and find a link to an episode I want to watch, is there a way to save this file to iTunes and play it on our HD TV using Apple TV? We have XBMC installed in it, but the show we are desiring to watch is not on there.

By: All online movies

All online movies — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 20:11:31 +0000

Very enjoyable to read this post and your comments.

By: Freddy

Freddy — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 03:59:36 +0000

For the ones that don’t know about cuevana try it!! It’s free

By: Watch The Scenesters | Watch Unlimited Movies Online

Watch The Scenesters | Watch Unlimited Movies Online — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:26:35 +0000

[…] How To Stream Videos To Your Apple TV – First get your video into a format playable by itunes. The general rule seems to be, if a file plays in itunes, it will play on the Apple TV. AVI files aren’t compatible. I’ve decided on MP4 as my format of choice. … […]

By: frogger

frogger — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:56:07 +0000

Nice guide. Thanks

By: Jason Kaneshiro

Jason Kaneshiro — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 21:59:10 +0000

Hey Harrison, I’m planning on getting the new Apple TV as soon as it comes out, and streaming from a computer will be one of the first things attempted — will let you know.

By: Harrison

Harrison — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 21:19:09 +0000

Curious if anyone tried this on a new AppleTV. My wife and I are considering the purchase of an AppleTV for our bedroom television and doing away with the DVD player and such. Do these steps work on the new one?

By: C. Welsh

C. Welsh — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 23:55:12 +0000

how to share your iTunes library

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1143

By: C. Welsh

C. Welsh — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 23:49:02 +0000

Laura,
A better option would be to not sync but rather “Add Shared iTunes Library” with Apple TV. This way you can keep the many more movies on your external hard drive of your computer. Just make sure that these movies on that external are in iTunes. If you need help with that just let me know. Downfall is that your computer needs to be running in order to watch a movie.

By: Laura

Laura — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:02:22 +0000

Laura says:
May 17, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Please HELP
I have all my movies on external disk and want to put them on Apple TV. of course the memory on y computer is smaller than the memory on apple tv, so what I am doing is I upload to Itunes 10 movies and synk them to apple tv. then I erase itunes and upload another 10 movies. when I synk the first 10 movies erase.
How can I add movie by movie without eraseing what is already on apple tv?
thank you. Laura

By: Apple TV: Take 2 : Webomatica - Entertainment and Tech Digest

Apple TV: Take 2 : Webomatica - Entertainment and Tech Digest — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:45:28 +0000

[…] sending music to your home stereo, podcasts, watching movie trailers, photos, YouTube videos, and sending all the video content on your computer to your TV. And ultimately, it’s been a very fun addition to our household. A few hours were spent […]

By: tom

tom — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 16:57:34 +0000

If you want to automate all these steps, I suggest having a look at VideoDrive (www.aroona.net). Searches for metadata, cover art, numbers your TV Shows, etc. VideoDrive then puts all your videos in iTunes (without reconversion if you want!). If you have Perian installed on your ATV, they will stream right away!

By: mp4todvd

mp4todvd — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:04:32 +0000

Thank you for so detailed tips. I can enjoy more videos on my Apple TV now

By: Apple TV / Boxee: Streaming Content From Your Mac » Webomatica - Technology and Entertainment Digest

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:32:33 +0000

[…] My putzing about with Boxee on the Apple TV continues. I just got filesharing to work — meaning streaming content from my Mac, which has a large hard drive attached with video content procured using Handbrake. […]

By: webomatica

webomatica — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:31:55 +0000

I personally bought a LaCie 500 GB external drive. You may also consider the Time Capsule. Generally speaking, all hard drives fail so I just picked the one with the least number of terrible complaints. I’ve had other LaCie hardware and a Maxtor that lasted several years.

By: John

John — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:21:49 +0000

I’m about to pick up an ATV and stream it off a hard drive I can access through wireless network. Looking for a good 1 TB model. Anyone have anything they recommend? I can’t get excited about anything I’ve seen out there. Lots of negative feedback — especially with Western Digital “My Book World.” Any help would be greatly appreciated.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:16:22 +0000

Thanks for the reply. I think my problem was that I wasn’t letting the A TV sync first. I was planning on not syncing anything, and just using the A TV’s hard drive for downloads, but it seems that it has to at least sync something from iTunes in order for it to see your library and be able to stream. I seem to be okay now.

The built in sync functions seem to be poorly thought out…the automatic sync is so random that I don’t see how it would be useful unless your iTunes library is smaller than your A TV’s hard drive, and the custom sync seems to not allow drag n’ drop, like an iPod. Perhaps they’ll work on this functionality in future updates.

Thanks again for the writeup. Seems Apple is so focused on selling content from their store that they neglected provided any information for users that actually own their own content.

By: webomatica

webomatica — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:42:41 +0000

Chris — this post was written for the old Apple TV. With the new one, connect your Apple TV to your computer by going to “Settings -> Computers” on the Apple TV. It will ask you to enter in some numbers in iTunes. Then your Apple TV should show up in the iTunes sidebar. Once that is done, when you go to “My Movies” or “My TV Shows” on your Apple TV you should see movies or TV shows you have loaded into your iTunes Library.

At least, that’s how I remember the steps off the top of my head… I should update this post when I have the Apple TV in front of me.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:45:14 +0000

“Then fire up your Apple TV and go to Sources. You should see the shared iTunes library that’s located on your computer.”

Is this guide for the old version of Apple TV? I just got the new one, and there is no menu item called “Sources” on mine. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to stream movies to this device. The only thing I got to work was playing music from iTunes on my Mac to the Apple TV like you would to an AirTunes connected receiver. The song will play on the TV, but the screen shows Untitled, Unknown Artist and Unknown Album, with the time slider that goes from 00:00 to 1:00:00 and doesn’t move. That doesn’t seem right. I can’t access my shared iTunes library at all from the Apple TV menus.

The hard drive on this thing is too small for me for anything but rentals, so I got it mainly to stream from my Mac, and I can’t seem to get that to work. Any guidance would be appreciated! Thanks.

By: James

James — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 08:59:54 +0000

Webomatica — thanks for the tip! Worked like a charm!!

By: Hans Luijten

Hans Luijten — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:44:29 +0000

Great info — for some reason I can’t get the streaming to work … AT ALL …
I have several MP4 files … my AppleTV keeps teling me that “there are no movies in this Library” … I’m at a loss here. Are there certain limitations resolution wise?

I wish AppleTV would support WiZD server like applications, or simple file browsing just out of the box — now I have to install iTunes additionally to get things going … crap …

By: Hans Luijten

Hans Luijten — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:44:29 +0000

I wish AppleTV would support WiZD server like applications, or simple file browsing just out of the box — now I have to install iTunes additionally to get things going … crap …

By: webomatica

webomatica — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:40:09 +0000

James, are you up to date with iTunes 7.6 and the new Apple TV update? I was experiencing the same thing you’re referring to, but after my updates the issue was fixed.

By: James

James — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:14:41 +0000

Hi! Great post, thanks! I have a problem though with artwork for movies and it’s driving me crazy! Anyone… please help!

1. I have several .mp4 movie rips that I have added to my iTunes library
2. Selecting the “Get Album Artwork” option in iTunes doesn’t retrieve any metadata or artwork for the movies.
3. I’ve manually entered the metadata and have added a .jpg image (296 pixels high) to the movie in iTunes.
4. The image shows fine in iTunes however on the Apple TV I only get the metadata, I don’t get the movie image.

What’s going wrong?? Please help!

James

By: Fahad

Fahad — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:40:57 +0000

Thanks for the detailed article. I was looking for something like this and with all the screenshots it will be quite easy to set this up.

By: houserocker

houserocker — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 22:10:56 +0000

Thanks for the tips I’ll try this at home, hope it works!!!

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:40:46 +0000

Great info. I just got an Apple TV today. Once the software update comes out, I’ll be moving all of my iTunes content to an external RAID enclosure, adding movies, etc.

By: webomatica

webomatica — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:48:34 +0000

Hey JC thanks for all the tips. Especially the one about moving a library to another location and having to redo the metadata that isn’t encoded in the files themselves.

I’ll try out the iPod Hi-Res setting and see how that fares, as well.

Now the one last questions I have: is how big of a hard drive do I need?

By: JC

JC — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:39:08 +0000

Ahh. Another thing to keep in mind: If you use the Apple TV setting in Handbrake, your files will look as good as they can on the Apple TV, but they won’t be transferable to an iPod. If you want maximum portability, use the iPod Hi-Res preset; that way, it’ll still look great on the Apple TV, but it will also be portable for all your travel needs. Otherwise, you’ll have to convert individual files again next time you want to take some movies or shows on a trip (which takes several hours for each file).

I’ve been experimenting lately with the settings to see if I can eek a bit more bitrate out of Handbrake while still getting compatibility across devices. But the iPod Hi-res settings are the place to start.

By: JC

JC — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:35:14 +0000

Oops. Just saw your little plug for Lostify. Does basically what Parsley does. I’ll have to try that out.

Trust me, it’s worth it to use something like that all the time, rather than adding metadata in iTunes.

By the way, I usually name my files as I’m ripping them in Handbrake. Makes it easier to find them in iTunes after the import. By default, iTunes will give each file a name equivalent to its name in the Finder.

And don’t forget to use the Queue feature in Handbrake. Set up an entire disk worth of episodes and go to bed. Or better yet, use something like Mac The Ripper to rip multiple DVDs into raw digital files, and then Queue it all up in Handbrake and let it run for a day or so. I’ve done entire seasons in one big go that way.