Or for some of us who have a good amount of older material. Material which isn't in an Apple supported format, that we can't just easily drag into iTunes and then play from the Computer app on the Apple TV.
On my Mac, I regularly fire up VLC for that older content - this is awesome! And I personally prefer VLC over the other options for quite a few things.
That's not my problem. Anybody who hasn't already converted all of their video files to Apple approved formats deserves to lose access to those files. Apple should pull VLC and any other app which allows people to play anything other than what Apple approves.
Out of curiosity what software are you using to convert the files? Any recommendations?
Or for some of us who have a good amount of older material. Material which isn't in an Apple supported format, that we can't just easily drag into iTunes and then play from the Computer app on the Apple TV.
On my Mac, I regularly fire up VLC for that older content - this is awesome! And I personally prefer VLC over the other options for quite a few things.
That's not my problem. Anybody who hasn't already converted all of their video files to Apple approved formats deserves to lose access to those files. Apple should pull VLC and any other app which allows people to play anything other than what Apple approves.
Is the smiley face at the end of your message supposed to tell us you're just joking? Or are you really as much of a jerk as the post makes it sound like you are?
Agreed. I made a decision to just give up the struggle and encode/transcode all of my stuff to conform to Apple-supported formats and be playable in iTunes / iOS / AppleTV, but I still think out of the box the new AppleTV should be more compatible and versatile than it is. I'm glad VLC has shown that an Apple TV app can do more, because the Plex app for Apple TV utterly failed to do so, instead it relies on the Plex server (your Mac or PC) to transcode everything to the Apple spec on demand, which is in no way optimal.
That is the way Plex works on every platform. The Plex client for Apple TV is excellent. It rarely transcode anything. It transmuxes thing on the fly to switch containers. That requires very little power. A low power NAS can do that. I run both an Apple TV and a new Fire TV off a Synology. Both work fine. I prefer Plex on the Apple TV.
I disagree with you regarding support of multiple codecs and containers out of the box. Those days are gone. Many apps already on the ATV do this.
Again, Apple is ( I think ) waiting on the solution for H.265 listening, currently it is being hold up by HEVC Advance Group licensing terms, and there is ( may be ) a third group coming with yet another HEVC Patent Pool.
Agreed. I made a decision to just give up the struggle and encode/transcode all of my stuff to conform to Apple-supported formats and be playable in iTunes / iOS / AppleTV, but I still think out of the box the new AppleTV should be more compatible and versatile than it is. I'm glad VLC has shown that an Apple TV app can do more, because the Plex app for Apple TV utterly failed to do so, instead it relies on the Plex server (your Mac or PC) to transcode everything to the Apple spec on demand, which is in no way optimal.
That is the way Plex works on every platform. The Plex client for Apple TV is excellent. It rarely transcode anything. It transmuxes thing on the fly to switch containers. That requires very little power. A low power NAS can do that. I run both an Apple TV and a new Fire TV off a Synology. Both work fine. I prefer Plex on the Apple TV.
I disagree with you regarding support of multiple codecs and containers out of the box. Those days are gone. Many apps already on the ATV do this.
Plex the app has a very nice interface, but the server component for me is such an unnecessary overhead and complication - it completely bogged down my NAS (mine must be a low-low power NAS because it maxed out the CPU constantly to the point it was unusable).
I tried VLC last night, unless I'm missing something it's not really a very good media centre (yet). Yes, it'll connect to a NAS and you can read files off it and play them, but I wasn't even able to save favourites, so each time I had to go back into the NAS top level item, then click down into folders - the UI needs some serious attention. VLC has a ways to go, so I'll happily stick with Infuse for the time being.
Too little too late, VLC. At one time you were the easiest way to play the media that we couldn't figure out how to play otherwise. But long ago, we had to go for better alternatives for true media player experiences.
Plex, and some other sever-to-client applications, have blown you away. Why bake in support for unlimited formats when transcoding does a better job anyway?
Hi.
For all the fuss about the complexity of iTunes, I find other media players quite cumbersome. Here is about the ones I saw mentioned in other comments:
- As a user of Infuse I find the Apple TV version cumbersome. It is mainly a glorified yet inefficient network browser that plays video. Plus I have to allow the less secure windows sharing on my Mac for it to work.
- MrMC is a total mess (I bought it yesterday after visiting these forums).
- I also abandoned Plex a few years ago because it insisted on adding metadata in its own way and I could not find my media. I read a lot of people love it. Just not me.
- The only media app I like on the Apple TV is Airvideo HD, which works quite as well as the iOS version, and needs a server app on the Mac (or PC).
VLC on my Apple TV (which has no final software) cannot read AC-3 (I guess that will be corrected and might be anyway related to the beta software on my Apple TV).
But remote playback seems interesting as a way to "upload" video to the Apple TV, although there are some limitations due to memory management on the Apple TV (your content can be erased by the OS if memory is needed).
As for "the struggle to encode/transcode" everything to conform Apple supported formats, I have 2 very easy solutions:
- Beamer has been working very well for some years and accepts about every format, I believe it even transcodes DTS to AC-3 on the fly,
- iFlicks 2 is a very easy (and quick, ca. 20x on my 2012 Retina MacBook Pro, probably faster on newer MacBook Pros with faster SSDs) )way to transcode, add metadata (and you can choose or correct it if needed) and add video to your iTunes library.
So, welcome to VLC and bravo for Remote playback! :-)
Could someone bridge the gap between me and comprehension and kinda explain why this is better than running a Plex Server on my MacBookPro and Plex on AppleTV? Sure, I'll install it, to have it on my AppleTV, but.... I just don't know why I'm installing it, apart from "gotsta have VLC"
I also still prefer iTunes and Home Sharing. It works great to sync and stream videos to my iPhone and iPad, and stream to Apple TV. I probably miss out on some advanced features with VLC or PLEX, but for me it does everything it needs to do. If possible, I try to do as much as possible the Apple way ;-)
To add my videos to iTunes, I use VideoDrive which handles every file I throw at it. Incompatible files are transcoded or converted with HandBrake in the background, while descriptions and artwork are downloaded as well. My video collection looks like the official iTunes store. No fuss :-)
I also still prefer iTunes and Home Sharing. It works great to sync and stream videos to my iPhone and iPad, and stream to Apple TV. I probably miss out on some advanced features with VLC or PLEX, but for me it does everything it needs to do. If possible, I try to do as much as possible the Apple way ;-)
To add my videos to iTunes, I use VideoDrive which handles every file I throw at it. Incompatible files are transcoded or converted with HandBrake in the background, while descriptions and artwork are downloaded as well. My video collection looks like the official iTunes store. No fuss :-)
I'm like you in that I try and do things as Apple as possible, so for me even transcoding non-MP4 files into proper MP4 format would be okay (though a bit of a headache getting all the older stuff transcribed), but the problem exists that I moved my iTunes library off my desktop systems and onto a NAS due to one big thing: space requirements. My desktop and laptop are SSDs and I set up a NAS on my network and moved all my media files there. At that point, keeping iTunes running on a desktop so it could point to a NAS on the network seemed like a really bad and very network inefficient setup with a lot of network traffic that could be easily simplified by cutting out the silly iTunes middleman. Also, the ATV is plenty powerful enough to do everything locally (and store library metadata in a local dbase), it's been that way since gen 1, so why run a separate "server" component just to serve up files, it makes no sense, why would a Wookie want to live on Endor?
I like Plex, the UI is nice, but the server component (for me) makes no sense, I think it might if you want to serve files to multiple locations (perhaps??) but even then a local database is merely saving only metadata and grabbing simple files from a file server (which can then be a simple cheap NAS). VLC is very basic and has never struck me as a media centre, but rather an app that plays all formats (and the ATV really needs a media centre app not merely an app that plays lots of formats).
iTunes is an inefficient mess, Apple needs to stop requiring the component serving up all the files to run on a desktop -> that doesn't recognise homes today which run NAS systems and other network storage (e.g. Airport Extreme disks) to backup and store files.
Comments
Pet peeve of mine to see people screw up basic grammar.
I disagree with you regarding support of multiple codecs and containers out of the box. Those days are gone. Many apps already on the ATV do this.
Or you mean decode?
Again,
Apple is ( I think ) waiting on the solution for H.265 listening, currently it is being hold up by HEVC Advance Group licensing terms, and there is ( may be ) a third group coming with yet another HEVC Patent Pool.
I tried VLC last night, unless I'm missing something it's not really a very good media centre (yet). Yes, it'll connect to a NAS and you can read files off it and play them, but I wasn't even able to save favourites, so each time I had to go back into the NAS top level item, then click down into folders - the UI needs some serious attention. VLC has a ways to go, so I'll happily stick with Infuse for the time being.
Plex, and some other sever-to-client applications, have blown you away. Why bake in support for unlimited formats when transcoding does a better job anyway?
To add my videos to iTunes, I use VideoDrive which handles every file I throw at it. Incompatible files are transcoded or converted with HandBrake in the background, while descriptions and artwork are downloaded as well. My video collection looks like the official iTunes store. No fuss :-)
I like Plex, the UI is nice, but the server component (for me) makes no sense, I think it might if you want to serve files to multiple locations (perhaps??) but even then a local database is merely saving only metadata and grabbing simple files from a file server (which can then be a simple cheap NAS). VLC is very basic and has never struck me as a media centre, but rather an app that plays all formats (and the ATV really needs a media centre app not merely an app that plays lots of formats).
iTunes is an inefficient mess, Apple needs to stop requiring the component serving up all the files to run on a desktop -> that doesn't recognise homes today which run NAS systems and other network storage (e.g. Airport Extreme disks) to backup and store files.