Playing a Playlist of Videos on Apple TV

I've read that much like you can with music, you can create a new playlist in iTunes, fill it with Music Videos, and you will be able to play through the playlist on Apple TV. What about playlists that include movie trailers, tv shows, or other movies?

I really want an Apple TV to use as our home theater front-end player. I thought it would be awesome (and easy!) to create a playlist, drag over a few trailers, some other short clips, and then a feature presentation all in the playlist. Then, when it's a new movie night, just change up the content in the playlist and play it through.

Will the Apple TV play a playlist of videos assuming they are all encoded correctly and/or acquired through the iTunes Store?

PowerMac, iMac, MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Aug 7, 2009 1:54 PM

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6 replies

Aug 8, 2009 4:33 AM in response to MattDJ

a video playlist can play any type of video providing it is in the correct format.

bear in mind though that the appletv filters the playlists so that it only shows the appropriate video type depending where you are looking.

eg if you are "tv shows" section of appletv, the playlist won't show any video tagged as a "movie" or "music video".

Aug 8, 2009 8:26 AM in response to Chenks

This is what I don't understand. If I create a new playlist in iTunes and drag over some video clips (a mixture of properly formatted clips), will I be able to select this playlist somewhere within Apple TV? iTunes allows you to add movies, tv shows, and even music to the same playlist. Can Apple TV play a playlist with different media types like this?

I'm hoping to be able to use an Apple TV as a home theater player to automatically play a playlist of clips I've arranged within iTunes.

Aug 8, 2009 11:26 AM in response to MattDJ

no it won't do what you want.

if the playlist contains movies, tv shows and music videos, and you go into "movies" on the appletv and view the playlist, it will filter the playlist and only show the movies. (same if you go into tv shows etc).

now what i haven't tried is actually creating such a playlist and then going into "movies" and letting it play all the way thru to see if it actually does play the other content types. i suspect it won't as it doesn't show them when looking at the playlist on the screen.

for example, i have numerous playlist that contain just tv episodes.
these playlists only show up when i go into "tv shows". if i go into "movies" those playlists don't appear as the appletv knows that there are no movies in those playlists.

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Playing a Playlist of Videos on Apple TV

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