NAS & Apple TV 3 (video)

The only workaround I've been able to make work is to use a symbolic link from my Windows 7 machine to point the Itunes Music folder at my NAS.

mklink /d "D:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music" "M:\Music"

My Win7 machine has itunes installed, Home Sharing is enabled, the music library is still local, but when it looks at the iTunes Music folder, it's actually looking on the NAS's Music folder. TV & Movies are all in this folder anyway, so they work as well.

This allows me to easily manage the music library & playlists (much easier than using Firefly on my ReadyNAS Pro 6). When I plug my iphone, ipad & ipod in, it sync's normally. I've ran it this way for about 6 mo and love it.

There is no downside if you run a computer anyway (so power usage is incidental) and if your PC dies, your itunes library is intact on the NAS, so you'd simply point to it again. I do run synctoy to backup my itunes database automatically each night to the NAS.

Pretty sure we are all doing this. What I believe the question here is to remove the computer from the equation.

That would require Apple to release a NAS or allow others to authenticate your Apple ID? Right now, only Apple products can do it (that I know of)

It's possible, I've done it. But my last post explaining how was deleted due to being in violation of apple. It's the only major flaw in apple's media streaming and it seems they don't even want us to help each other and have the best experience seeing as my post was deleted. Crazy. The software I am using is fantastic, and just makes it work as one would expect.

I use a NAS and can stream movies, photos and music to AppleTV.

Ah yes sorry thought it was out for ATV 3. They say it's in the works, I reckon it will be available soon from past experience. Once it is I recommend it, I honestly find it brilliant. I just wish Apple realised its not a good thing requiring iTunes and therefore needing your computer on all the time, when USB hard drives and nas's exist. Why oh why oh why do I need a dedicated computer always on under my tv to watch movies when I have a) an apple tv and b) a hard drive.

I figured, but then I also think they're missing an opportunity. I spent £150 on a NAS drive from a competitor. I would MUCH prefer to spend that, or similar/little more, on an apple product. But they don't have one. To do it pure apple style the minimum spend is over £500 on a mac mini which is way too much for this, and over the top. You can't even use an airport extreme with hard drive, the perfect opportunity for them to get in on this. I would have bought that instead of the NAS if they did.

I have the post in email luckily as this looks an interesting option. I was really disappointed to find that to get at my photos (on my PC but would rather point at my NAS) I have to enable through iTunes but what really got me was that as I have a file structure of folders for year then events that the ATV only sees the year so if I have 5,000 photos in a year I have to scroll through them all to get to the last ones rather than scrolling down a bunch of directories. I imagine it is something to do with the way that Apple integrates it's products and so I guess album management is done that way but a real pain for what I have. They either drive people towards their products ... or away.

Please, keep in mind that having your media in a NAS but having to stream from your PC through iTunes (the *only* way, as of this writing, to send video to an AppleTV 3) might mean you're getting the file from the network and then sending it through the network again to the AppleTV. Depending on your set-up this might be enough to seriously hinder the quality of what the AppleTV sees (or to have the video all chop up) and to render your network unuseable.

Unless all three things are on the same router through ethernet or only one of them is on WiFi and the other two over ethernet you'll be using the same bandwidth to send the file twice over your network. For HD movies this might be too taxing.

Until we can either stream from a NAS or attach storage to the Apple TV 3 we have almost no benefit from storing the media in a NAS.

I have most of my media on a NAS and then I have versions in ATV3-compatible formats stored in a 1TB external HD connected to my Mac. It's from this that I stream video files (not the video itself, really) to the ATV3. It ***** but it's the option that ***** the least.

Well there is one solution which is not using an external PC or Mac. It is albeit using anotger iOS device. But thats still a lot handier than turning on the PC.

I am using a synology NAS which is offering a App for iPhone/iPad. From there u can easily access your video. Than you simply airplay it to your atv3. It might seem excessive to ise a mobile phone for this purpose but since I am using it as a remote anyway, it feels quit natural.

For interests sake alone. I submitted the following as an 'enhancement request' :

"My understanding is this. Media/Data Streaming between NAS devices and Apple TV is not possible/supported. I fail to comprehend the rationale behind this limitation. My internet connectivity is not up to iCloud streaming HD content (between 5 & 7mb/sec), and my library of music, tv, films totals more than 1TB. It makes sense to me to have all my media data stored on a NAS device which I can then use as a home networked device without tying up the memory, and CPU on my MacBook.

As I like to view media at the highest resolution 1080p, my media library is only set to grow ever larger, I need large storage capacity at home, and not be the slave of internet reliability/capacity.

I love Apple products, but sometimes you make life for those of us that do not have the fastest connectivity very difficult, and this actually works against Apple in the longer term."

Not sure if it will receive anything more than ..... 'file under bin' ..... but, if you don't ask, you don't get

I also submitted the request as a Feature Request. My take on this was I do not want my computer on all the time, its a real pain for me, and my family wouldnt have a clue what to do. So I and have to J B my ATV to stream from a NAS when I would be very happy to buy an Airport Extreme if it did the job.

Hello guys,

it's no perfect solution, but still you don't need a PC or a Mac to stream NAS contents to your Apple TV 3.

The Apple TV 3 requires home sharing which is only available on an iTunes device. A NAS is no iTunes device. However certain NAS, such as Synology offer the ability to create an iTunes Server. This is no "home sharing" but it is the same as when going to "Settings" in iTunes and share your library (which also doesn't enable the Apple TV 3 to play your library).

What you can do now is to connect your iPhone or iPad to the iTunes Server on the NAS and then stream video or music (I use iTunes Match, so I only need it for videos) to your Apple TV 3 with AirPlay. Since I am using my iPhone and iPad to control the Apple TV 3 anyway, it's not really an issue for me. This kind of activity is also very kind on power consumption for the iPad.

What you need for this to work:

iPad or iPhone with the latest Remote App. I have an iPad 3 and iPhone 4S with iOS 6.

Any Synology NAS with DSM 4.1 and iTunes Server.

Apple TV 3.

It doesn't matter whether you use LAN or WLAN with your devices. The iPad/iPhone is WLAN only of course.

If you really want Apple only devices (i.e. no NAS) just buy a Mac mini and attach a 3TB USB 3.0 disk to it and use it as "NAS". The Mac mini is about the same power consumption as an average NAS on idle and at the same time is a real Mac allowing you to use it as a computer. I am just a student and after buying an iPad, iPhone and Apple TV no money was left for the Mac mini 😉 or I would have chosen that solution since I really dislike Windows 8 on my PC.