Yesterday, while the power was out in various parts of the county, I went with the family to one of our local malls. The mall has an Apple store in it and while the others were occupied, I went in with my grandson. While in the store, I asked one of the employees whether I could stream a non-iTunes purchased video from iTunes to the Apple TV. His response was that it had to be a purchased item from the iTunes store. So I put the Apple TV back on the shelf and walked out the door - I don't feel like re-purchasing things that I already have in my library.
While outside, my grandson hinted that I had not phrased the question correctly. Brilliant! So he and I talked for a few minutes about the wording and we went back in the store. I then asked a different employee if I ripped a DVD that was in my library to a form which could be imported to iTunes, if I then could stream that movie from my Mac Mini to the Apple TV through my home network. I then got a positive response to my question. I then decided to purchase the Apple TV (ATV), the newest version (can't jailbreak it yet).
My motive for doing this is twofold, I want to stream movies I have already ripped and I want to be able to stream to the Apple TV from my iPad. When I got the ATV home, I unboxed it and tried it out one my TV downstairs by following the instructions on the enclosed booklet.
It was an easy install, I unplugged the STB and plugged the HDMI cable into the Apple TV. By simply following the instructions on the screen, including the part about connecting to the wi-fi with my password, I was soon able to get the ATV up and running. I then located the "Computer" block on the front screen. When this was selected, I was asked to enter my AppleID and password. Apparently, Apple does it's home streaming based on a common AppleID rather than a specific IP address. I am not doing anything illegal here so I went with the flow. The ATV then instructed me to set up home serving on iTunes with my AppleID. I then went and booted iTunes up with a new configuration file (press option while launching iTunes), did an add of all media that I had, set the home streaming bit on (from the menu), and made sure I was using the same AppleID that I put into the ATV. Once that was complete I was able to link into the library that I had created and stream pictures, audio, and video from my library.
Other things I learned:
1. Leave iTunes running because it breaks the connection. There does not seem to be a way of keeping the streaming running without a copy of iTunes running.
2. In order to stream to the ATV, the format must be either mp4 or m4v.
3. Do not make the mistake of pointing to all material because if it gets to some TV rips, it will place the contents into the movie category, not the TV category - should probably look to see what format is required.
4. You will need to spend some time getting the cover art and movie metadata squared away.
Other than that, once I get a remote controlled HDMI switch I will be all set on the downstairs TV.
- LW
This is a blog mostly about techie things, what I am doing to my apartment network on the cheap, IOT, 3D Printing, Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, ESP32, ESP8266, Home Automation, Personal Weather Stations, Things That Go Bump in the Night, and some side issues that need discussing. Remember, sometimes the journey to an end is as much fun as the goal achieved!
