NAS & Apple TV 3 (video)

That's far from perfect on my opinion. Using your phone or iPad as the middleman is a unnecessary work around, we really should have to do that, and the Mac mini at over £500 would be quite an expensive NAS. So far the best solution is Firecore.

Oh actually it's an ATV 3 thread silly me. Firecore not out for that yet! So don't get an Apple TV 3 yet, get a ATV2 with Firecore and problem solved at 1/5th price of Mac mini.

Well i have trues to find a solution. But it got me thinking... I want to buy i aTV3 and i have a NAS so i SAS thinking about The same stuff. Maybe i should og for a LaCinema thing that does Lmost the same thing but comes with a HDD.

Then came The moment when i began to thinkt! I dont see the big problem in using my iOS device to stream the media. You use a remote anyway, the difference is you use your phone og something instead, and maybe you use the remote app anyway?

Maybe the problem is in our head, we dont like to think in this way, we want it OUR way.. So is it a big problem to stream through a iOS device/your remote?

Im also from Denmark and i hate the stupid limitations in streaming service, movie rent and crappy iCloud service... With iTunes match most problems would be solved!

If you think streaming movies wirelessly through the air to your phone, then back again to your ATV when there is already a network cable attached to both the ATV and your NAS, then fine do it.

You also probably dont have family members who dont have your phone, but want to watch your movies, tv shows and pictures. And who also do not know how to use a Mac computer to turn it on and stream through iTunes. My wife on a daily basis puts on kids TV shows we have burnded from DVD to the NAS. She doesnt use MAC and will not be able to Airply.

So Airplay is a workaround for people with iOS. But this process should be made as simple as possible for all audiences, not for techy individuals with iOS. But yes, that should work for you, but is not the right solution.

No, it is much easier to clean lube off my ATV remote then my iPhone or iPad. Plus, have you ever tried to navagte your library one handed via an iOS device? I still want to just pop on the TV and navagte my library without messing around with another device...

Having just bought an Iomega Home 2TB NAS with cloud, and already having Apple TV3, 3x iPad 4's, 2x iPhones and an iPod touch in the house. I was looking forward to ditching my old laptop with iTunes and playing my library straight from NAS to Apple TV.....but along with the 47,000 other people who have viewed this thread we are disapointed by the lack of joined up thinking....

With tablets everywhere and laptops dying out, how the **** an i supposed to get the great Apple user expereince for movies and music without signing up for an exorbitent cloud service from Apple (given my broadband is less than perfect, i'd end up going back to DVD+CD).

The Iomega iPhone app for Apple allows me to play the music via Apple TV, but the user expereince is shocking with an lack of album information, playlists or artwork... but it works for now....

Please Apple - work with the NAS vendors to sort this out and give people a choice...It's so very, very frustrating.

I agree that this approach to what is quite plainly to so many people a hugely significant flaw in the method of delivering 'home entertainment' by Apple. Also I cannot believe that this was something that they simply failed to foresee. Even with a fibre connection (which I don't - 8mb copper at its absolute best), the 'cloud' option is still dependant/reliant on an ISP having no outages. Apple had always been about users having the 'nowse' to know what is what, and kicked back against a 'big brother' approach.

We need to have the option to use 'cloud' if we so choose, and has the infrastructure to support the required technologies. But also be able to determine a 'home based' solution, where 'cloud' fails to deliver the quality of user experience Apple 'touts' as a driving force behind what they do.

Nearly 50,000 people taking an interest in this topic has to mean something to Apple, or risk starting to alienate people that have woken up to the good stuff Apple does, only to see them returning to inferior options but options that do allow a degree of self control and management of the media for which we have paid good money for.

I'll never go to Microsoft, BUT Linux does offer options, and is becoming easier to manage 'out of the box'. Please Apple, hear your user community, and accept that the cloud and streaming are not the only option. NAS connected storage is a sensible, viable, and eminently reasonable option

"I cannot believe that this was something that they simply failed to foresee." Lol, I seriously doubt that. They just want you to use iTunes... why must everyone think Apple is some evil entity out to get everyone. They have Teams of team that oversee teams of people. Their only job is to "foresee" things. Sticking it to us is not one of them. We need to grow up and accept responsibility for ourselves. We all knew what we were buying and if we didn't that's OUR fault for not do the research. So now what we are doing in this thread is attempting to make a great product work for us in the way we want it to. Lets stop all the blame displacement here... its childlike.

"We all knew what we were buying and if we didn't that's OUR fault for not do the research."

I agree... to a point. The fact is that researching whether you can use an ATV3 to play media from a library on a NAS would be difficult at best. Judging from Apple's marketing and tech specs, you should be able to. And, in fact, technically, you can. Just not in a way that most people would find to be optimal. Which is something that you really wouldn't discover until after you've purchased the equipment, set it up, and actually tried it out.

So, yeah, I suppose the follow-on to that is it's OUR fault for not returning the product when it didn't perform as we desired/required. But it's soooo dang close in every other way. I don't think it's "childlike" to suggest that it could be made better, or that it needs something more to be truly usable. People make such comments and products every day, and, often, products evolve as a result.

My comment "I cannot believe that this was something that they simply failed to foresee." ... is stating exactly what you try to pick me up on .... that is, I doubt that they did not foresee it. In other words it was a design intent, to have more people use 'iCloud'. The point is that for many people, and probably not for those such as yourself 'davefromdallas' .... living in a large urbanised area such as Dallas, you will enjoy the connectivity that will enable you to happily stream 'HD data' across your internet connection. There are - sadly - still many in the world that do not yet enjoy such connectivity, and are therefore - by 'dint' of geography - denied the access to enjoy HD content

As for taking responsibilty ourselves. Without people requesting/requiring change to function, feature, or form in products we buy there would be little or no advancement. It is always reasonable to ask for change, or to enquire something that many find obvious has not been implemented.

Finally I do not see Apple as any kind of evil entity, just because I question a design function, and disagree with their implementation does not mean that I think them evil, or nefarious. To my mind Apple are a genious organisation, but just like all of us, not always right. An opinion, but fortunately something we are all free to express

guys to be honest i wouldnt waste your time, its such a mess and there are so many other products that do it.

I use my TV3 for solely streaming Itunes match content and Netflix, ive left movies alone as its messy, you have 2 options.

Run a media server on a PC or MAC, such as Air Video, or mezzmo and then use Airplay to fire it onto your TV.

Ive tried Upteen combos and the best option by far is

Iomega Boxee i have one sat with the TV3 pointing to my NAS and it plays everything and anything i chuck at it and never skips drops or stutters. Its by far the best there is.

Not expensive either, £80 for the standalone streamer to feed from a NAS or 150 for the same but with an included 2TB drive.

test the setup by installing Boxee on a MAC or PC laptop and see how none problematic it is, then decide.

It can be done, just with an AppleTV 2 (for now)

http://blog.newpathnetwork.org/2011/11/synology-nas-enclosures-your-own-cloud-an d-media-center.html

I completely agree with this notion -- not EVERYONE has a 15-25 Mbps Internet connection to stream HD. Whoever tells you that 2-5 Mbps is good enough, is just wrong -- the experience will be awful.

The NAS approach of storing media locally for local distribution is the only solution until EVERYONE can get (and afford) 25+ Mbps connectivity.

This is most definitely true. I have a DS111 and the iOS apps are excellent especially DSFile. Also a 3rd party file browser exists that allows you to connect via DLNA to your Synology NAS and then Airplay them to the AppleTV. No jailbreaking required.

"It can be done, just with an AppleTV 2 (for now)"

Yes, as has been discussed already several times in the 6 pages of comments on this thread.

But that's not a solution for the OP (or myself), who is asking specifically about the ATV3.

Synology NAS' are nice, and the 3rd party DLNA connection solution sounds great. There are also solutions for Synology and other NAS systems that use the native Apple Remote app to do the same thing (that's what I use). I'm not sure that's the optimal solution, though, because as someone else pointed out earlier, you're then sending the media/file over the same Wi-Fi network twice nearly simultaneously, doubling your bandwidth requirements. Frustrating because, while my Wi-Fi can usually keep up, every once in a while...

It's also frustrating because I went through the trouble to get hard wire 100BT cable to my ATV, I really should be able to play media directly from my Apple TV interface utilizing that more reliable connection and not rely on a Wi-Fi "proxy" (and not suck up all of my Wi-Fi bandwidth that I might want to use for something else - like working on my laptop - while I'm watching a flick or listening to tunes).