Play DVD in Laptop and stream to Apple TV ?

No, that is not a feature of the ATV. You can, however, hook your laptop up to the television with the appropriate cables and watch your DVDs on the television that way.

In my personal opinion, though, the easiest thing to do would be to buy a cheap DVD player.

Best of luck.

One option might be to "rip" the DVD and convert it to a format useable by the Apple TV.

I understand that it is perfectly legal to back up your own store bought DVD's. A one TB USB hard drive should be able to store at least 100 movies.

Bootstrap_Bill wrote:
I understand that it is perfectly legal to back up your own store bought DVD's.

your understanding is wrong.

And, despite some possible differences in interpreting the DMCA, the terms of use of these forums prohibit discussions of ripping DVDs.

Another option would be to wait until your movie is broadcast and record it yourself. This definitely is legal.

Absolutely. However, it does not answer the OPs question which was how to view their DVDs on their television.

I wonder if it might be possible for someone to write a utility that would somehow make a DVD look like a valid video file? Something that would do on the fly translation.

Bootstrap_Bill wrote:
I wonder if it might be possible for someone to write a utility that would somehow make a DVD look like a valid video file? Something that would do on the fly translation.

it would need to break the encryption on the DVD, which is what isn't allowed as per the DMCA.
this topic is strictly forbidden so there is no point trying to continue the discussion.

Sorry, I wasn't aware that the DMCA restricted streaming personally owned DVD's.

Bootstrap_Bill wrote:
Sorry, I wasn't aware that the DMCA restricted streaming personally owned DVD's.

it's the breaking the encryption on the DVD that is the issue (regardless of whether you own the DVD or not), and to stream it you would need to get round the encryption.

Maybe it's time to update the DMCA. This seems like a silly restriction.

If you could arrange that, it would be quite convenient.

I wish there was a program that would stream DVDs to the Apple TV.. In the mean time I might just Burn my "rented" Netflix DVDs and convert them into Apple TV format to just stream to the Apple TV.

PS: get a life people who are trying to abide by DUMB LAWS that realistically can not be efficiently enforced!