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How to connect Apple TV

I am about to purchase an Apple TV. Want to be certain I understand what I need in terms of cables and understanding wireless connections. Our setup is as follows: An Imac G5 Isight running Tiger / Mac OS X 10.4 11 in back room. We have a modem from Verizon for DSL and a Netgear router connected to our Direct TV via a cat cable,running under house into front room. to receive On Demand content from Direct TV. We are not using the router wirelessly and have the Imac connected through ethernet for the internet. So I do not really understand how wireless works. In the front room we have a Sony Bravia LCD flatscreen, a Denon receiver. I understand I can connect the apple tv to the Sony or the Denon with a HTML cable. What I don't get is connecting the Imac to the apple TV. OH I do have a Airport Express base station. Do I need to purchase something else to help me connect wirelessly? My husband could run an ethernet cable under the house or through the attic but I would like to avoid that if possible. We could decide to forgot the On Demand content from Direct TV as we don't use it too much and use the Netgear WGT624 router to connect wirelessly???
Can you nice tech smart folks help me ? I really appreciate it.

Imac G5 Isight, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Oct 5, 2008 5:42 PM

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14 replies

Oct 6, 2008 9:54 AM in response to Anne ONeil

If I understand your setup correctly the easiest way to proceed is to use the Apple TV as a separate network, rather than use your existing router:
(1) connect your Airport Express base station to your iMac with an ethernet cable
(2) connect the Apple TV to your TV by HDMI or component video + sound (analogue or optical digital) as detailed in the Apple TV manual
(3) follow the setup procedure for your iMac to discover the Apple TV
Then you are in business!

Oct 6, 2008 10:07 AM in response to Anne ONeil

Welcome to the  Discussion Forums.

I'm assuming you are looking for the princples here and not specific set up instructions. I don't believe the method described above is correct and would advise the following:

It isn't clear whether your netgear router supports wifi or not, if it does simply set up the wifi connection between the router and the tv, the tv and your mac can communicate with each other over a mixed wifi/ethernet network provided all devices are on the same subnet.

If the netgear doesn't support wifi then you will need to connect the express to the router by ethernet and set it up in bridging mode, again he tv and your mac can communicate with each other over a mixed wifi/ethernet network.

In terms of connecting your tv, tv and receiver, you have two options:
connect the tv to the receiver by HDMI and the receiver to the tv by HDMI, or
connect the tv to the receiver by optical cable and the tv to the tv by HDMI.

My personal preference is for the second option.

Oct 14, 2008 1:45 PM in response to Gino Cerullo

Thank you Gino and all others who have helped us get going. We purchased and connected the Apple TV on Saturday. My husband connected the router to the ethernet cable that we had for the On Demand. Everything appears to be working ok except for one thing. My computer keeps restarting itself. Does it have something to do with the way I set up the router? We have had a problem with someone stealing our signal lately and want to avoid this.so security is important to us. I have my IMac set up to open without having to sign in and this is a new problem. I hope I am making sense I woke up with the flu on Monday and am still burning up.

Oct 14, 2008 6:14 PM in response to Winston Churchill

Yes thanks I did have WPA on but wasn't sure which one to choose? WPA2-PSK or WPA-PSK {TKIP} + WPA2-PSK. I choose the WPA2-PSK.
My Imac just restarts and I find it at the sign in screen. This is weird because I had the account set to automatically log in. This time though I found a window saying logout was unable to finish. So it tried to log out and something stopped it??

Oct 15, 2008 1:14 PM in response to Anne ONeil

Hi Anne, what happens if you disconnect the Apple TV, does the computer continue to restart on its own? If yes, then adding the Apple TV into the mix is probably just coincidental not not the cause of the problem. If the problem goes away then you need to try and figure out what is happening. Try checking the logs on the iMac to see if you can see what might be causing the problem. To see the logs, open the Console application. All the logs are listed on the left side of the window.

Oct 15, 2008 4:37 PM in response to Gino Cerullo

Gino, I opened and read the logs but can't make sense of them. I am about to download some music to my apple tv so don't want to disconnect it right now. I will try later and let you know. Thanks for your help. The computer did shut down again today. I thought about clearing the logs now before the next self restart (is it considered a crash?) So maybe I could make sense of it.

Oct 16, 2008 10:37 AM in response to Anne ONeil

Ok the Imac was restarted this morning and the sign on screen was up. I had it on for about two hours after which it restarted itself again. I had unplugged the Apple TV during the last hour so I guess that is not the problem. Funny it never happened before Apple TV though. The only other thing that has changed is my router settings. Is there something there I can try changing and see what happens? I even ran as administrator to see if it still restarted itself and it did. I looked at the console log this morning and nothing much was there. Should I disconnecting the router to see if it happens then? I am really stumped here.

Oct 16, 2008 7:12 PM in response to Winston Churchill

Thats a good idea, I will post it there. BTW I unplugged the router and left the house for a few hours and the computer had not shut down! I think the problem may be the router somehow??
I do have one more Apple TV question though. Or maybe it is a router question. How do I get the router to only connect by ethernet not wirelessly? Or can I? I love my Apple TV but it sure started some frustration.

How to connect Apple TV

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