Apple TV or NMT popcorn hour

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Apple TV or NMT popcorn hour

I am a dedicated apple user and am seeking to organise all my DVDs digitally. I am immediately drawn to the ease of use apple TV but have some caveats.

1. Can I attach the necessary terabytes of hard disc I will require?

2. I love the browse feature via DVD cover/Director/Actor. However can i get the same organisational lovely GUI for my own ripped DVDs

Popcorn hour has several such GUIs available eg "Yet Another Movie Jukebox" but they are pretty PC biased YEUCHHH!!!. Nonetheless they are providing me with the functionality I need for my desired jukebox experience. In essence this is kaleidiscape on the cheep but a degree in programming seems a pre requisite.

3. None of the blurbs on apple TV explain how it deals with pre-existing DVDS in my collection? Can someone enlighten me?

Imac, Mac OS X (10.4.10), Sony Vaio, Sonos Music, Loewe Home Theatre

Posted on Feb 21, 2009 12:52 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 21, 2009 1:26 PM in response to shuggyboy2

1. You can attach as much storage to your mac/pc as you like, but not directly to the tv itself. You can store 40 or 160 GB on current tv's but can stream an almost limitless amount of content via itunes. The tv does run into issues with extremely large libraries (100,000 items +). For the avoidance of doubt the size of a library is judged by it's item count, not its storage requirements, so 130,000 tunes using 350 GB may be an issue, but 5,000 movies using say 10 TB, would likely be fine.

2. The way you browse itms content on the store is not the same as the way you browse your own content, whether purchased or home video. However one of the great features of the tv is it's GUI, I doubt you'll find other alternatives to equal it.

3. You won't find any instructions for converting your own DVD's, this is illegal and is not only won't you find  providing instructions to do this, but you will also find discussion of this nature is not permitted on its forums.

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