Stop Syncing items purchased on Apple TV

"160GB hard drive for storing content locally"

That's what the Apple TV page says.

You may be right that the Apple TV is just supposed to be an iPod for you TV but that's not the way they describe it in the Apple store and I've never heard it described that way anyplace else. I really am afraid you are right but my gosh, if that is so I really wish that sort of arrangement had been made clear when we bought the thing. I can only find one place on the Apple Store page where it says anything about syncing your Apple TV content to your computer's iTunes library, and then it says you "can" do that. It doesn't say it does it automatically, or that you "must" do that, or that you can't stop it from doing that.

Superfreud, thanks for the information. I'm going to give that a try. I suppose I may have to wipe my Apple TV clean, or some such process to start over, but it would be worth it.

Thanks to one and all

I'm surprised reading this thread as it's always been clear to me that you could choose to use your Apple TV for either Syncing or Streaming.

This old Apple article (regarding Apple TV 1.0) is still valid:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA38571?viewlocale=en_US

I believe you can just turn syncing off without wiping your Apple TV.
Besides what's recommended in the article, have you tried right clicking on your Apple TV in iTunes? Is there a "turn syncing off" option? I have a "turn streaming off" option on my mac if I just do that (I'm not syncing but rather streaming to my Apple TV)

Hope this helps!

Message was edited by: superfreud

Message was edited by: superfreud

Superfreud, yes, thank you. I think this is going to help a lot. I had never realized or focused on the ability to stream and what that meant, and, well, etc.

But that is at the heart of the original question. How to stop you mac from syncing with Apple TV all the time.

I still don't see my Apple TV showing up in my iTunes source list. But that may well be because the Apple TV was set up initially with ANOTHER MacBook Pro that now lives down at the office. One clue is that when I go to Apple TV in the Prefs I can't connect with my Apple TV. (Yes, there is an option to stop syncing there, BTW.)

So I'll bring home that MacBook Pro and see if I can sort out all the connections and then get up to speed on syncing.

Thanks again.

Jim

pvonk wrote:
"1) songs you purchase on an iPod are synced back to the iTunes library on your mac. ATV works the same way; it's designed to do that... period.
2) and, no, it is NOT supposed to be the primary storage for movies and TV shows. Just as the iPod is not.
It's NOT broken; it just doesn't do what you want it to do. Buy an external HD, put your iTunes library there and the drive space issue will disappear."

I understand it's "not broken", and how "it's designed", if you read the entire thread, or perhaps you did, or specifically my posts, you missed the point. Yet another post recommending buying an external hard drive. FOLKS, I have a TWO TERABYTE raid external hard drive where my iTunes library already exists! I know how to do these things, I simply don't want content being copied back from the AppleTV to my drives, "AUTOMATICALLY". I buy enough content from the AppleTV, that the total size of these files can get very LARGE. When the AUTO copy/sync back to computer HD, begins, it BOGS down my home network, my computer, and puts files on my HD that in many cases I don't want, thus forcing me to delete them. Constant copying and deleting files from a hard drive causes hard drive "fragmentation", and can make streaming your music properly more difficult as well. Have you heard of hard drive fragmentation and the perils of having to use optimizing? As far as streaming only solutions, I'll address that in a separate post.

<Edited by Host>

Besides all the lame posts telling us to use external hard drives for the iTunes library, something I've been doing for years, the next recomendations are to setup iTunes for streaming only. Well, try it, maybe you will have better luck. Right now I can stream without doing that, and have both. I use a "custom sync". I have a few short movies I sync from my external HD to the AppleTV. As well as my own "playlists", that are created within iTunes. What I find, and you can test, is open your iTunes app. Make a NEW "playlist", and then boot your AppleTV, do you SEE your NEW playlist. I DON'T, you need to be able to SYNC. Maybe if you setup to STREAM only you can see newly created playlists, but I'm NOT going to be testing that, as I have done this long a go, and it's one big MESS. If you want to play, good luck, I wish you the best. I'll say this again, and again, all we are asking is for a preference to disable AUTO sync back from content downloaded directly from the AppleTV, to any hard drive. As it stands right now, the only option that works, is using the "trashcan icon" in AppleTV to delete content saved on the AppleTV. This of course means you lose those payed for downloads. If you really want them, then of course you can just use the normal SYNC operation. If you setup iTunes for streaming only, I believe you will handcuff your options overall, and this to me is NOT an OPTION, or a SOLUTION at all to what the title of this thread pertains to. Good luck!

One scenario that no one has addressed is, what if you want to transfer something from itunes to ATV, and you have unwatched unsynced content on the ATV. In order to transfer from itunes, you have to either sync or delete any unwatched downloaded material from your ATV FIRST. And there's no option to get around that. Let's say I download a season of a show to ATV on one day without using itunes, and then the next day, I want to listen to a podcast on my ATV. Because you can't download podcasts with just ATV, unless I sync or watch and delete the rest of my purchased content first, I can't listen to the podcast. And if content is HD, the time to transfer the rest of my content could easily render the podcast out of date. This is ridiculous. I understand syncing with only one itunes library is a way to fight piracy, but you should be able to skip the step or prioritize transfers from smallest to biggest or something. This is a design FLAW. You people talking about ATV's design should just admit it.