Anyone else annoyed that you have to keep computer active to use appleTV 2

Question

Its 2011, I know longer find a need for a desktop now that laptops are so powerfull.  I am really annoyed that in order to use my new AppleTV I need to keep my laptop from falling asleep.  Ok, I could probably live with that if there was a way to close the display on my laptop without putting it to sleep, but as of now the best I can do, since I don't have an external display, is setup the energy saving settings to never go to sleep, but turn off display after 15 minutes, then either leave my laptop open, or close it almost shut with a towel in the middle.  One would think, that the geniuses over at apple devolopment would figure out a way for the Apple TV to send a signal across the network that would wake up a closed(asleep) laptop or desktop.  I can wake my computer up remotely over the internet from across the country, but I can't get my Apple TV to wake my computer up across the house.  Sounds to me like you guys dropped the ball on this one.  I mean who leaves there laptop/desktop on all day when they are at work, at the least they put it to sleep(or it goes to sleep on it's own after an hour).  How annoying is it to have to go into your office, wake up your iMac, login into your account (if applicable), open iTunes, then go back into the living room/bedroom every time you want to use your apple TV.  If you can't make it at least wake up an asleep mac, why not put iTunes on the apple TV and set it up so iCloud can stream your movies and music to the Apple TV.  I mean come on Apple. Where is the innovation in this product? One would be better off purchasing a mac mini, and using the TV as your display. Then you would be able to do anything with itunes, you could use the mac mini as your main homeshare hub and you would be able to do anything from your tv.
There is only one other solution I can think of, and I am not sure if it is even possible,  but if you could put Itunes on a wifi hard drive with all your libraries stored there, then maybe the AppleTV can access the Network Drive and solve my delema.  Does anyone know if this is possible?

Answer 1

Yes, wake for network access is checked.  You would think that would take care of the problem, but no it does not.  Bottom line is apple dropped the ball when it came to the AppleTV 2.  It is just as easy for me to plug my laptop into my TV every time I want to watch a movie through iTunes as it is to wake up my laptop every time I want to use my AppleTV.   If I have to tunr on, log in, wake up, or basically use my laptop to use an AppleTV,  why not just plug my laptop into my TV, then I get full internet access and more, not just itunes streaming and access to internets apps of Apple's choice. like MLB and NBA, but no NFL or Hockey.  no Pandora, Hulu, Blockbuster, Facebook, Twitter, ..., ect. I really hope Apple sees my point and takes this into consideration.