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I haven't bought an Apple TV thus far because I have lots of media that I'm pretty sure it won't play. But this new interface looks fantastic, particularly with

I haven't bought an Apple TV thus far because I have lots of media that I'm pretty sure it won't play. But this new interface looks fantastic, particularly with the improvements to seeking (a hobbyhorse of mine - underpowered boxes plus crappy software makes it an often frustrating experience) and the addition of Siri. I don't think the remote looks that great for games, though.

dv35z 11y ago
AppleTV plus a Synology NAS is a pretty great combination. I have a Synology NAS, with an archive of movies stored on it. It also has a torrent client, which can pull down media directly. The Synology media service indexes the movies (finding cover art, genre, ratings), and makes them available for playing within the LAN. The best part is, the media service is AirPlay-compatible. Using Synology's (decent) iOS app, I can (1) Search for & initiate a download using the NAS on-device torrent service, (2) Stream that movie directly to an Apple TV - all controlled by the iOS device. Pretty slick. I might also note, because the NAS & AppleTV are connected to the router by ethernet - not wireless - there is no lag/buffering/etc.
- draw_down 11y ago
  But it won't play Matroska/Ogg/AVI, will it? This is my concern, I have a ton of stuff in non-MP4 formats.
  - abritinthebay 11y ago
    Correct - though this is mostly due to there being little/poor hardware support for those formats. Natively the Apple TV (currently, don't know the new model) supports H.264, MPEG4, and MJPEG - all of which are trivially supported by actual chipsets. Matroska/Ogg/Avi aren't as well supported (or well used, tbh.. other than Avi which is a container anyhow)
  - lukifer 11y ago
    It's a little roundabout, but I use AirVideo HD [1] with a separate iOS device to get around this. My media server recompresses content to MP4 in realtime, which then bounces to the AppleTV via AirPlay, which all works seamlessly for being so janky. Assuming Apple isn't too tight-fisted with TV app approval (which remains to be seen), I imagine the AirVideo folks will pull off a better version of the same thing using a native app. [1]: http://www.inmethod.com/airvideohd/index.html http://www.inmethod.com/airvideohd/index.html
  - rsynnott 11y ago
    Apps like vlc and mxplayer for iOS play Matroska, Ogg, and most of the codecs that lurk within avi files, and will presumably be ported to this new AppleTV pretty quickly.
  - dv35z 11y ago
    Correct - seems to really only prefer mp4. About half of my library is not compatible. Fortunately a re-download isn't so bad, especially if it's an opportunity to get a higher resolution version (that's the optimist in me speaking). There are other VLC-like players available, but the drawback is the video must stream from your iOS device rather than the NAS.

dv35z 11y ago

AppleTV plus a Synology NAS is a pretty great combination. I have a Synology NAS, with an archive of movies stored on it. It also has a torrent client, which can pull down media directly. The Synology media service indexes the movies (finding cover art, genre, ratings), and makes them available for playing within the LAN. The best part is, the media service is AirPlay-compatible. Using Synology's (decent) iOS app, I can (1) Search for & initiate a download using the NAS on-device torrent service, (2) Stream that movie directly to an Apple TV - all controlled by the iOS device. Pretty slick. I might also note, because the NAS & AppleTV are connected to the router by ethernet - not wireless - there is no lag/buffering/etc.

draw_down 11y ago
But it won't play Matroska/Ogg/AVI, will it? This is my concern, I have a ton of stuff in non-MP4 formats.
- abritinthebay 11y ago
  Correct - though this is mostly due to there being little/poor hardware support for those formats. Natively the Apple TV (currently, don't know the new model) supports H.264, MPEG4, and MJPEG - all of which are trivially supported by actual chipsets. Matroska/Ogg/Avi aren't as well supported (or well used, tbh.. other than Avi which is a container anyhow)
- lukifer 11y ago
  It's a little roundabout, but I use AirVideo HD [1] with a separate iOS device to get around this. My media server recompresses content to MP4 in realtime, which then bounces to the AppleTV via AirPlay, which all works seamlessly for being so janky. Assuming Apple isn't too tight-fisted with TV app approval (which remains to be seen), I imagine the AirVideo folks will pull off a better version of the same thing using a native app. [1]: http://www.inmethod.com/airvideohd/index.html http://www.inmethod.com/airvideohd/index.html
- rsynnott 11y ago
  Apps like vlc and mxplayer for iOS play Matroska, Ogg, and most of the codecs that lurk within avi files, and will presumably be ported to this new AppleTV pretty quickly.
- dv35z 11y ago
  Correct - seems to really only prefer mp4. About half of my library is not compatible. Fortunately a re-download isn't so bad, especially if it's an opportunity to get a higher resolution version (that's the optimist in me speaking). There are other VLC-like players available, but the drawback is the video must stream from your iOS device rather than the NAS.