Tetsuo Time

As you may or may not have read my families AppleTV came in the other day. I've been spending the past couple of days messing around with it whenever I can. The way I'm setting it up pretty much is to be a thin client for streaming media files over the network\internet.

I was having troubles with the sharing features at first though. When I first set it up I accidently picked sync instead of stream. So it was copying all ~2,600 songs of mine to its little hard drive. I didn't want that... but I found out that if you disconnect a syncing computer it'll erase the songs from the AppleTV hard drive so that was quick. I then set it up to be streaming just like when shared libraries show up in iTunes on a computer.

This wasn't working very well at first though... partly because of my network issues slowing down connecting to the share and me getting impatient with it. I called Apple and they where baffled by it and thought that perhaps the PC upstairs was conflicting with my Mac downstairs. But later on on my own I figured it out and things are just fine with that. That is one of those times where I wonder why I call tech support because they usually just recommend everything I had already tried before calling.

My high res album covers and iPhoto library looks real nice on their 32 inch HDTV. Sure it's 1280x720 stretched to 32 inches so it's still not as good as a computer but it's a hell of a lot better than an old TV... it gets pretty close especially with HD videos and photos.

The last problem I had which has yet to be resolved is that I was going to install software on there so it can access network shares and play videos like divx and also be able to access more internet video services other than the bundled youtube. You use a flash stick to install the software but it turns out the one I had is most likely not compatible since it didn't work. Luckily the recommended flash stick is only $5... so I have that on order... so I'm waiting for that.. but I will show my family what they can already do when they come home which should be impressive enough as it is to them.

Next I would like my family to get a NAS with iTunes support. I'm thinking this one. I'll be ripping all their music to it and all our DVDs so the AppleTV or any computer on the network can share them. The 2TB one is ~$320... that's pretty tempting.

As you may or may not have read my families AppleTV came in the other day. I've been spending the past couple of days messing around with it whenever I can. The way I'm setting it up pretty much is to be a thin client for streaming media files over the network\internet.

I was having troubles with the sharing features at first though. When I first set it up I accidently picked sync instead of stream. So it was copying all ~2,600 songs of mine to its little hard drive. I didn't want that... but I found out that if you disconnect a syncing computer it'll erase the songs from the AppleTV hard drive so that was quick. I then set it up to be streaming just like when shared libraries show up in iTunes on a computer.

This wasn't working very well at first though... partly because of my network issues slowing down connecting to the share and me getting impatient with it. I called Apple and they where baffled by it and thought that perhaps the PC upstairs was conflicting with my Mac downstairs. But later on on my own I figured it out and things are just fine with that. That is one of those times where I wonder why I call tech support because they usually just recommend everything I had already tried before calling.

My high res album covers and iPhoto library looks real nice on their 32 inch HDTV. Sure it's 1280x720 stretched to 32 inches so it's still not as good as a computer but it's a hell of a lot better than an old TV... it gets pretty close especially with HD videos and photos.

The last problem I had which has yet to be resolved is that I was going to install software on there so it can access network shares and play videos like divx and also be able to access more internet video services other than the bundled youtube. You use a flash stick to install the software but it turns out the one I had is most likely not compatible since it didn't work. Luckily the recommended flash stick is only $5... so I have that on order... so I'm waiting for that.. but I will show my family what they can already do when they come home which should be impressive enough as it is to them.

Next I would like my family to get a NAS with iTunes support. I'm thinking this one. I'll be ripping all their music to it and all our DVDs so the AppleTV or any computer on the network can share them. The 2TB one is ~$320... that's pretty tempting.