Will an Apple TV be able to access movies on a hard drive that is plugged into airport extreme base station

Yes it will.... You still need to make sure that iTunes is open to access those movies over home sharing.

Unfortunatly iTunes has to open.

However with the advertisement of certain movies from certain movie studios, movies purchased or download via those digital copies that come in blu ray combo packs are available to stream to your apple tv without having iTunes open.

Meant to say with those certain movies and movie studios being available in the Apple iCloud, you can stream those movies to your apple tv or apple devices without having iTunes open. Sorry

I'm glad answer has helped you. As of right now movies from 20th Century Fox and Universal Studios are not licensed to be in the iCloud, so if you have any digital copies or iTunes downloads from these two studios they will not show up in the iCloud. Also in order for a movie to show up in the iCloud it has to be available for purchase in iTunes, if the movie is only for rent it will not show up in the iCloud.

How the "Movies in the iCloud" works is like this. If you have an apple tv 2 (or 3), all you need to do is go into the "Movies" section and there will be an option for "Purchased", if you go into that section any "available" movies you download from iTunes or by way of those digital copies will show up there. If by some reason the movie doesn't show up and it is available for purchase in iTunes and if it is not from Fox or Universal Studios, try re-installing the digital copy by putting the disk into your computer and re-entering in the authorization code. It should show up. I have experienced a couple of problems, but I am guessing with this being so "new" the issues will resolve themselves in time. These movies in the iCloud do not need to have iTunes open on your computer in order to watch.

As with "Movies in the iCloud" on devices like your iPad or iPod Touch, all the criteria I listed above needs to be met, but what you need to do is go into the iTunes app and find the movie in question. If it is available for purchase and not from either of those two studios mention previously then it should say "download" or "install" instead of giving a "purchase price". One thing to keep in mind, unlike the apple tv that streams it, on the iPad or iPod it gets physically downloaded to your device , so you need to make sure you have adequate space on your device to accommodate the movie.

I hope this helps to answer your question a little better if not do not hesitate to ask for help.

Yes the Apple tv 3 was just released last week, so the one you have is the Apple tv 2. Which is what I have and I have been completely pleased with it's performance.

This can be done actually! There are a few ios apps that can access an airdisk directly then stream the video to apple TV via airplay. I use FileBrowser. The only problem i run into is the filebrowser app has to be open the entire time, so disable auto lock and set your ios device aside and dont use it for anything else. If it locks or changes apps your video stream will cut out after about 5-10 min.

Hope this helps

i am working on a system that will work hopefully I get it up running and will solve all our problems!