AppleTV and NAS help

Since some/most of your questions have to do with the Seagate NAS, and very few of us own that, this might not be the best place to seek those answers.


Well, generally, this is correct up to a point, you can jailbreak--something most of us in this AVS forum do not do--or you keep iTunes open on a Mac. Obviously, I strongly suggest the latter. The media itself can reside on a NAS, iTunes doesn't care. But there actually are other ways to get media from a NAS to an aTV2 that bypass iTunes running on a Mac somewhere. For instance, I stream media all the time to my un-jailbroken aTV2 that 1) is located all over my house, 2) is not in iTunes and 3) is not even in iTunes compatible formats, thanks to AirPlay, an iPad or iPhone and a little iOS app called AirVideo. You still have to have a Mac running somewhere in the house--so the AirVideo server can live transcode your video--but you don't have to have iTunes open and don't have to waste any time transcoding video to "fit" into iTunes. The iPad/AirPlay/Air Video combo is quite nice to the aTV2. When I'm in my living room, there's always an iPad a foot or two away. (And I've kept a Mac on 24-7, or accessible to wake up on demand, for at least 5 years now.)


There actually are many reasons not to jailbreak: as we get older, some of us appreciate keeping things simple and reducing complication since "home theater" can be complicated enough, we don't mind fitting within the very few restrictions of the Apple walled garden, and (at least in my case) I wouldn't willingly choose to waste any amount of time hacking an already great little $99 device, maintaining things behind the scenes and troubleshooting when those hacks invariably break with an update, etc. There is a lot of good work being done in this area, it does seem fairly fool-proof these days to jailbreak, so definitely go for it if you are so inclined, but any minute I don't spend w/r/t jailbreaking an aTV2 is a minute I can spend watching or listening to something.


No idea.


Too vague to answer; streaming video over your network can be affected by a lot of things.


There are many NAS threads here at AVS, some in this forum, but most are in the main HTPC forum and the Content Streamers forum.

I don't have a true NAS, but I do have 7TB of media plugged into my Airport Extreme over USB, Apple calls that AirDisk and I've always thought of it as a poor man's NAS. I went this route because I wanted media on regularly formatted drives that I could swap in and out, move to different enclosures, move to a Mac and easily backup or recover if need be. Very easy to set up, very easy to maintain and even though it is "slow" (it is slower than typical external USB speeds to a Mac) it is still fast enough to stream blu-ray rips over a wired gigabit network. What it is not is redundant--it's just bulk space for content for me, anything I need backed up I back up (several times) and don't rely on the redundancy of a NAS type device to protect me. The other drawback of an Airport Extreme/AirDisk approach is that it isn't designed to serve up video files to multiple users at the same time--as a real NAS is designed to do. In our use case, I don't need that capability: it's just my wife and me and usually we're watching the same thing at the same time. Plus, that 7TB AirDisk represents only about 1/4 of the media storage and backups we have around the house.

I can also attest to this: using an Apple Extreme basestation instead of a third party router is a big advantage if you have a house filled with Macs, iOS devices and aTV2s.

The very first of the new-style square Extremes was not gigabit, but all the models since the end of 2007/beginning of 2008 have been gigabit. I've had 2 Netgear gigabit switches, a 5 and an 8 port, feed into mine for several years now without any trouble.


One big advantage of the NAS, size and drive configuration aside, is that unlike local USB and firewire storage, you can put it anywhere on your network--so if it is bulky or noisy you can stash it out of the way and keep your home theater quiet. Never underestimate the value of fans in keeping drives up and running and happy.

Since you have the device, why not hook it up and experiment with it in the way that you plan to use it? Then you can find out for yourself whether it's up to your tasks. My thinking on this is it doesn't really matter what you use, you still need to have several devices and multiple drives not only for storage but also for a good backup plan. Never rely on one device for everything; a NAS running some form of RAID is not a substitute for a backup strategy.

Is your Seagate 6TB two 3TB drives in RAID 1? (That would show you just under 3TB of space.)

As you note, an Extreme is a gigabit router, and yes, plenty of AVS folks have a NAS device wired over gigabit into an Extreme.

You can access your Airport Disk from the internet, at least Apple say so. I've never done it, but there's a setting tab for it in Airport Utility.

You can keep multiple drives connected to an Extreme even though it only has one USB port, just use a hub, or an enclosure that has multiple drives but connects over a single USB cable. As I mentioned previously, I have 7TB of USB storage on my Extreme.

You can't connect any USB drives to an Express.

What you cannot expect to do with a pool of AirPort Disk storage is serve files up to multiple users simultaneously.

Since I'm the only one who has been giving you advice, and based on the questions you've asked, here's what I really think you should do: instead of buying a NAS, buy another Mac instead.

Dedicate that Mac as your iTunes Home sharing and media server, stick big drives inside it or connect drives to it over firewire or USB, wire it to your network over gigabit, connect your aTV2 over gigabit, then sit back and enjoy controlling everything with your MBP, iPad and iPhones.

Keep it on 24/7 if it is energy-efficient like a Mini, or allow the aTV2 to wake it on demand if it is a power-hungry beast, like an old PowerMac. Dedicating a Mac as a whole house media server shares a few advantages of a NAS in the sense that you can put it anywhere, even out of sight if it is too big and noisy, and can easily be controlled remotely. It's easier to set this up than a NAS or an AirPort Disk, too--nothing tricky about sharing media from a Mac to an aTV2, iOS devices or other Macs on your home network--whereas it can be moderately tricky and time consuming moving a big iTunes library over to a NAS or AirPort disk and then managing it remotely as you go forward.

So, that's a roundabout way of getting back to this, if you want an aTV2, my advice is don't be tempted by moving your iTunes media library to a NAS or to an AirPort disk: while both approaches can be done, it isn't as easy or seamless to maintain a single "centralized" networked iTunes library as it should be this way. The web has been littered for years with complaints of loyal Apple users wishing this WAS something Apple would tackle and hit a home run with, but it hasn't been in the cards.

So instead, if you want an Apple TV, reduce complication, don't fight what Apple wants, and what Apple really wants you to do is set up iTunes Home Sharing on a Mac, and then keep iTunes running on that Mac with all your media stored locally. Your overall user experience will be much better this way.

This is exactly what I want do. I want to put all my media in iTunes and stream it via a dedicated computer in my garage via gigabit network. I have an atv1 and looking to switch to atv2. Would an older Mac mini work? I mean as a server only? I am looking to be as cheap as possible. I don't care about bit perfect video or audio. I am looking to keep my 4 year old out of my disc collection. So would an older g5 or g4 Mac mini or tower be my ticket. I have never had a Mac but all my colleages have them and swear by them.

I'm coming to this thread late, but I bought a second USB Newertech Voyager docking station that I have plugged into my AirPort extreme. Currently, I have a 3GB green drive in it and I've added what is currently about 1.5TB of video media to it by unchecking the preference in iTunes that says copy media to local drive. Presumably, that offers the ability to have unlimited storage in iTunes spread across multiple drives.

So, my media is stored on a network drive, but in iTunes. My Apple TV 2 and iPad connect to that iTunes library when I want to stream to either device or use the iPad as remote for iTunes. The only slight problem with that is the USB drive connected to the Airport Extreme will power down and it takes a few seconds after that for it's information to come up.

My Airport Extreme is a first generation model with only 10/100 ethernet so I have an external gigabit switch that I called all my devices to, including two Macs, my Apple TV 2 and my Philips TV. The Apple TV 2 the Philips are both 10/100 devices so the main benefit of having gigabit capability is when copying from one of the Macs to/from the Airport Extreme; it makes no difference for streaming.

BTW, I have two iTunes libraries, one for music, stored on my Mac Mini and which I sync with my iPhone and iPad, and one just for video that I use for streaming. I also still use Air Video to play music from the Airport Extreme directly to the iPad sometimes because it's very convenient.

Dennis

Although not a NAS drive, G-Technology started shipping its 8TB Thunderbolt drive last week. List price is $1K, which seemed like a pretty good deal to me.

I have a Buffalo CloudStor with a pair of 2TB drives in it that I bought a month ago. It's adequate for streaming 720p HD video, but 1080p BluRay video tends to get bogged down on the network and it's really slow when browsing files in the Finder. The Apple TV 3 still only has 100-Base-T ethernet so I'm not sure if it's that or the CloudStor, but I had the same problem when streaming 1080p video off my Macbook Pro to the Apple TV. Despite the slowness of the CloudStor, I'm reasonably happy with it because the NAS enclosure including a 2TB green Western Digital drive was only about $10 more than a bare drive.

Dennis