Apple TV as a music gateway: A few questions

andrewjnyc

Most of the reviews of the Apple TV emphasize/explore its video output capabilities, while largely glossing over its music side. I have no interest in using iTunes/Apple TV to stream video to my living room AV system, but I'm *very* interested in how it might serve as an answer to my prayers in terms of what I want to connect my music library to my stereo.



The $50,000 question: Using Apple TV and a properly-configured Logitech Harmony 880, could I stream music from an iTunes library on a hard drive attached to an Airport Extreme--and browse the library on my TV set--*without* my computer being on? If I could completely take the computer out of the equation when browsing my digital music collection and access it all from the couch, using the remote, then I'd buy an Apple TV in a heartbeat.

hmurchison

I'm going to guess and say no. Remember you have to input a code into each computer that has ?tv access. There is no way to input a code into the Airport.



Free of charge bud. Regards

slewis

Sure. I assume you can play music in iTunes off of an Airport Extreme HDD, as long as it's in your library and the HDD is functioning. So all that you would need to do from there is sync your library with your Apple TV.



Want my opinion? Try the Airport Express. It's cheaper, your computer will have to be on when playing back audio, but once you have iTunes playing music, just go into Front Row (I'm assuming you have it) and work it from there.



But if you're dead set on the Apple TV then I don't see the problem, as long as your can play music in iTunes from an HDD connected to an Airport Extreme you should be able to sync it with a device like an iPod or an Apple TV as well.



Sebastian

andrewjnyc

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slewis


Want my opinion? Try the Airport Express. It's cheaper, your computer will have to be on when playing back audio, but once you have iTunes playing music, just go into Front Row (I'm assuming you have it) and work it from there.

I already have an Airport Express. The deal here is that I don't have a desktop machine anymore--just a Macbook and a 500GB drive connected to an Airport Extreme. Right now, I can only connect the laptop to my HDTV via a clunky cable, so running Front Row on the TV isn't an option, and playing music off the laptop directly is inconvenient when I have company, etc. Being able to access my digital music easily from the couch is a holy grail kind of proposition for me, so it'd justify the cost of the Apple TV for sure.

@homenow

Rather than going the Air Disk route I would get on e-bay and look for a cheap G4 tower to use as your main media "server". Put a SATA controller in in and add up to 3 drives as you need them. Since all you will be doing is streaming media and not decoding video with it there shouldn't be a speed problem with an old G4.

aresee

To answer your question, no. AppleTV syncs to (and streams from) an iTunes library actually running on a computer. After the syncing is complete AppleTV can play any song or video that was copied over from iTunes library onto the AppleTV hard drive without a computer. If your library is less than 33GB, all your songs will be on the AppleTv.

andrewjnyc

Well, I picked up an Apple TV today at the Apple Store figuring I could return it within two weeks for a refund if it didn't do what I wanted...and lo and behold it pretty much does what I want it to. Yeah, the computer needs to be running for Apple TV to access the Airdisk's library, but otherwise the on-screen music browsing is everything I could have hoped for. Leaving my laptop running in the corner or in the next room is totally fine by me...and hey, it's probably just a matter of time until a hack emerges that'll take the computer out of the picture.

bryan1010

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