Apple TV and Big Movie Archive

My wife wants me to set up something (an external hard drive? server? mac mini?) that can hold our library of movies so we can watch them through our Apple TV any time, not just when I have my laptop booted up and iTunes open (we have two laptops in the house and at the moment no desktop).
What would be the best and/or most inexpensive way to set this up?
THANKS!

ThanhLoan wrote:
That would be nice if Apple TV has a built-in media player to stream contents directly from a local hard drive attached to the miniUSB port.
For me, using network to stream video contents is a waste of bandwidth while contents can be made readily availaible locally.
Is there any forum at Apple where we can submit features for next firmware/generation ?
Thanh
http://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html
Use that link.
I would be very surprised if they allow USB connected devices.
Yes, it would be so logical and AppleTV 1 had a normal USB port that could do just that with modified firmware.
While AppleTV1 lags behind in the power/newer features stakes, the onboard storage was great when you were going away and could just take one device and a few cables - no need for internet, an iOS device to Airplay or laptop to provide a streaming iTunes library.
I can't see them going back and adding storage and if they did chances are it would be solid state and of limited size, and no user expandability option.
AC

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Come on Apple, step up!
This should be the best all-round product you sell but out of the box it is rubbish.
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There's an issue currently that a lot of us are experiencing in that we all get the error message "iTunes is currently unavailable; please try later"
It's an issue with Apple and we're awaiting an update re this
I've posted a topic in regards to this after having a long conversation with Apple support this morning and will be receiving a call from their tech team tomorrow to run through it further
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Apple tv and rented movies

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I rented a movie from iTunes, and can't get to my AppleTV, I thought I would wait for the 2.0 upgrade to watch, but do not think I will then either , as much as I dislike opop ups, I think they should have one when you rent, letting you know where you can watch (on what)
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AppleInsider has a very good article on AppleTV 2.0
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/01/15/firstlook_apple_tv_2_0_and_itunes_movie_rentals_photosvideo.html
Here is a excerpt about the movie rentals
Now, users can rent and buy movies, as well as buy music, music videos, and TV programs directly from the iTunes Store using the simple remote control. While music and video purchases can be synced back to a desktop iTunes library, just like the new WiFi Store on the iPod Touch and iPhone, video rentals ordered on Apple TV can't.
You can rent movies directly from iTunes for playback on iPods, but those can't be synced to the Apple TV. Therefore, you have to choose whether a rental you order is something you want to watch on TV or anywhere else, before you actually rent it. Given that rentals are $3.99 and $4.99, that decision isn't as deeply ponderous as it might initially seem to be.
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?/what is DVD quality? and what was "near DVD quality" that was advertised for AppleTV1.0
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Apple tv and purchased movies

Can I watch a movie I purchased from iTunes using my iPhone on apple TV while it is being downloaded?

No.

Apple tv and i movies

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The first thing to check would be your internet download speed, you can do this atwww.speedtest.net.
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Can i plug in an external harddrive and play movies?

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orip67 wrote:
Can an external harddrive be plugged into an Apple TV and play movies?
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I have had my Apple TV for 3 days now and the movie I wanted to rent still hasn't loaded. What am I doing wrong?

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AppleTV rentals are fixed size, and don't degrade quality if the connection is slow.
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SD 2.5Mbps
720p HD 6 Mbps
1080pHD 8 Mbps
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On a computer use speedtest.net to test your internet speed.
When I has a 1 Mbs it would take 8-10 hours to download an SD title.
With 4.5 Mbps it take 15-30 minutes to play 720p movies, longer for 1080p.
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If you turn out to have slow internet an alternative is to rent in iTunes on your computer, then once fully downloaded you can play on AppleTV under Computer>your iTunes>Rentals (only appears when a rental is on the computer ready to play). Alternatively lower rental quality settings from 1080p>720p>SD in future if you need faster starts.
I have also seen issues recently on some of my units where it starts downloading well, but for some reason freezes and refuses to fetch the rest unless I play from the start - this is usually after I've played and paused a rental a few minutes in and I've confirmed it just stops fetching more data sporadically - it never used to do this.
AC

I have rented a movie on apple tv and wish to finish it on my mac book air. When I open iTunes on my mac book air I can not see the movie in iTunes. It is an authorised device and I can see other purchases just. How do I fix it?

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Rented movies downloaded to an Apple TV can't be transferred to any other device.
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HT1551 I ordered a rental movie on my computer and want to watch it on my 1st generation apple TV and it is not showing up there...any suggestions?

I ordered a rental movie on my computer and want to watch it on my 1st generation apple TV and it is not showing up there...any suggestions?

I had same problem last night with a movie rental not showing up under the 'Rented' tab in iTunes/Movies on my iMac: as I had no other rentals, there was no 'Rented' tab at all.
In iTunes 11, the Downloads icon only appears next to the Search bar while there is an active download. Once any downloads are finished, the icon disappears. I had no icon so I had to assume the downloading had finished (in the previous UI you could check download progress even after they had finished).
My movie rental did, however, show up under 'Rented Movies' under the 'Movies' tab in iTunes/Devices/(select any i/device) so I knew it was somewhere in my iTunes. Yet, we couldn't access it via Apple TV.
I fiddle around for a bit, restarting iTunes, restarting the iMac, to no avail. Then I did a little housekeeping and moved a different movie I'd imported awhile ago, from the 'Home Videos' tab under iTunes/Movies. Under File/Get Info, the 'Media Kind' was incorrectly set to 'Home Video' so I changed it to 'Movie'. Thus the file was moved over into the Movies tab. Hey Presto! The Rented tab suddenly showed up, and there was my rented movie!
This is the second time a movie rental did not show up after downloading. Unfortunately my husband initiated the download so we figured he must've messed up somehow as he's not as familiar with iTunes as me. Hence we opted to download the movie under a different iTunes account, which worked the second time with no problem. Needless to say the invoice for the original download had no problem in finding us, hence we were effectively being charged twice for the same movie! We have to contact apple support (such a hassle) but hopefully they will understand the issue (that's the difficult bit) and they are usually good at refunding when they finally accept the customer is genuine in their claim.
In case anyone is tempted to critique my method, we download rentals through iTune on our computer as we had too many problems trying to rent via Apple TV. Often the movie was not available to watch for many hours after it was rented, even though we'd start 'download' halfway through the day and sit down at night to watch it! We have also had problems with movies that kept stopping during viewing because it wasn't streaming fast enough. We'd give some time and come back to viewing, only to encounter the same. One time we gave gave up and tried again the next evening, only to find the movie expired. There is meant to be 48 hours after you've started viewing to resume watching a movie. Apple's only response to this was to advise we needed a broadband internet connection to stream the movie - this was despite me already telling them we have broadband.
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Apple TV and Big Movie Archive

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