Here’s what I’m looking to do… buy an external HD to put all my movies on so they are not taking up space on my macbook…
I’d like to be able to watch the movies on my TV.
I’ve seen people who connect their harddrive to an Apple TV, then the Apple TV to their actual TV…
Is this the easiest way?
What do I need to buy/do to be able to do this?
Why not just plug the macbook into the tv via hdmi?
My macbook is a few years old and doesn’t have an HDMI port. If I were to get an adapter, would the quality be good on the TV as long as the movie file is of quality?
Get a wd external drive then get the wd tv (the best one) and bam their you go. What MacBook is it? The one with the mini display port or does it have VGA or dvi, if you have VGA and the tv does that would work fine but you would need to hook the sound up via rcas the quality should be fine too
i dont know much about apple tv but popcorn hour does exactly what you are looking for
wd tv live plus FTW, especially the new one with gigabit lan, can get the regular plus for $90. also you can toss some custom firmware on it and make it even better, have my fiances setup 2 hours away at her apartment with a 750 external attached. Streams netflix to it and I ftp all of her shows to her when they come on each week. Great piece for what youre looking for
Apple TV does this, but probably not quite as simply as you would want. Its easy to do and has a sleek interface once configured, but its actually somewhat tricky to get it up and running initially.
I have a computer running 24/7 already, so I just tossed a old drive in there as a SMB share. My ATV 2.0 can connect to it and has been able to easily stream any file I used to date. I never tested any 1080P content, since its hard to find that content for TV shows, and the output is 720P anyways. It does 720P MKV’s, DIVX, Etc, seamlessly. Never had any issues with it. It just sits there under my TV, on 24/7, running silently, cool, and efficient. It’s the best solution I know of for streaming content from a shared network drive, but direct over USB is a bit more iffy. Its technically possible, but not the best solution for that. If the $99 cost is a concern, it is also among the highest priced options for what you want.
It really depends on what you are looking to do. If you are set on playing content off a HD, look at WD Live or something like that might be a better bet. If you want to stream content, or run XBMC, ATV works great.
As a former huge proponent of the PCH I can no longer recommend it. They have been horrible about fixing bugs in the firmware.
My suggestion is build a small HTPC and run XBMC on it. That way you’re not at the mercy of some small company issuing firmware updates to deal with the ever changing codecs of ripped movies.
^ I’m running one of those at home now, with Win7, a 64GB SSD and 2GB of ram. Built it for $300 (had a copy of win7 available so that’s not included in the $300) and it runs XBMC perfectly. Streams 1080p mkv’s off my server, or anything I plug in via USB, as well as 1080p youtube.
Apple TV is nice but I’m not willing to step down to 720p. Since upgrading the 58" samsung plasma I can actually see the difference between 1080 and 720. I’ll be putting an Apple TV in my bedroom on the 32" soon though.
Agree. Anything less than 32" you are ok with 720p but once you go bigger, its noticable. My 42" LCD I can see the difference between 720 and 1080.
building a media center box would be overkill for this.
WDTV Live Plus + WD External Drive would work really well. Not the nicest interface on the planet, but it’s simple and comes with a little remote to look through everything.
have an xbox 360? you can set it up to find the movies on your hard drive and stream them. thats what i do.
I do. how do I go about doing this? i thought it was impossible
isnt the 360 finicky about video type, as to it wont play a wide selection suck as mkv’s?
yeah it’s pretty limited from what I understand
If you want flexibility, dont buy a application device (ie. xbox, appletv, etc), buy a HTPC cheap and plug in your hard drive.
If you want a simple way to do it, buy an appletv and convert all your media to the format apple wants.
I prefer my WD TV, plays errrthing I throw at it, but iso, but they can be converted to MKV’s in minutes with free software
+1. HTPC here after trying some other options and couldn’t be happier. Except I’m leaning toward an Apple TV for my 2nd TV, but to jailbreak it and have it run XBMC with the XBMC database shared between it and my HTPC. Pause in one room, resume in the other baby.
^ That’s the exact one I’m running, except I’ve got a 64GB SSD instead of a 320GB regular drive.
The quality of the ATV’s output is very good. Resolution alone does not determine video quality. I don’t mind the 720P limitation one bit, since I only stream SD and 720P content anyways. Theres no reason to have the link between the display and the ATV to be 1080P when the content is 720P or less. It really just depends on what you want to do, and the ATV is a great package for quite a few applications, especially if you already have a iOS device and can find a use for AirPlay or services like that.
Its not the definite reference in media streamers, but it should not be discredited solely due to the 720P output. If you like 1080P BD rips, its not for you. Otherwise, it has a very easy to use and responsive interface thats more pleasant to use compared to most solutions.
I might have to look into this and move my Dell into my bedroom and get a bigger unit for my living room. I love the idea of pause and play on different tv’s.