My book live on Apple TV

Welcome to the Apple community.

Engelhard wrote:

But is it possible to access to Itunes and watch movies on the Apple TV directly from the My Book Live??

No

It won't work.

I have a dedicated computer that all it does is "host" my itunes library. The apple TV is designed to work with content over home sharing from an itunes library running on mac or windows; streaming content from the internet; or airplaying content from an iOS device or computer. It is not designed to play content from a hard drive or other external source.

I don't understand why you feel the need to keep your computer out of the loop.

Engelhard wrote:

Than what will work?

Could you recommend another NAS-server?

Peter

No, the Apple TV will only work with iTunes

If you're still looking for a device to stream your content from the My Book Live NAS Western Digital makes their own version of an Apple TV called "WD TV Live", which costs the same and provides most of the same apps (ex. Netflix, Hulu, etc.) It will stream your content from the NAS, and if you decide to keep your iTunes library on that NAS it stream that media as well. That way you can have the best of both worlds. 🙂

Just a quick note if this helps. I just served a movie to my Ipad from my My Book Live harddrive. From there I selected my apple tv as my output source. This is working great!

That will NOT work. AppleTV will only read content from iTunes. It is not enough to have a shared folder or drive somewhere. It has to be indexed and served though iTunes. So you have to have a Mac or PC running iTunes.

I have the same question too. I have my book live and I am thinking about buying Apple TV. I found this on my book live page "The drive includes iTunes server support so you can centralize your music and video collection and stream it to any PC or Mac computer with iTunes."

Someone stated that it will only work with iTunes so if it serves the media like iTunes then it should work, right?

Wow, really? This is the same idiocy apple has been spewing for years. "What's the problem having a computer running in the middle?"

1) I have to leave a user logged in to the computer, providing a GAPING security hole.

If iTunes ran as a service on the system instead of as a per-user library, I could almost see this model being viable. But it doesn't, and apple has no plans or desire to make it so.

2) I have to supply power, network connection, etc for that computer when it's ONLY PURPOSE is to act as an 'itunes server'.
If iTunes ran as a service on the system instead of as a per-user library, I could almost see this model being viable. But it doesn't, and apple has no plans or desire to make it so.

3) Why should I have to double my bandwidth usage to watch content resident on my NAS?

In stead of being able to stream directly from my NAS to my APPLETV, I have to ensure there is sufficient bandwidth available to have my NAS stream to my computer, which then streams to my APPLETV. Simply so that the computer can perform the required DRM, even for content I've created myself and content which has no DRM restrictions.

4) What happens when my computer hard drive fails?

Oh, well then I get to re-index my entire library ONCE AGAIN (if I'm lucky) or more, because transporting iTunes settings doesn't really work well when you restore from time machine.

5) Why should I have to index the SAME CONTENT across MULTIPLE COMPUTERS in order to view it there?

Wouldn't it make MUCH MORE SENSE to be able to index and access that index on the NAS? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to store your content on your NAS and be able to watch it on all attached devices directly, immediately, and as if it were local?

It seems to me that the only reason for these limitations can be that apple wants to ensure that you have to spend as much of your hard earned money as possible to utilize the content you've paid for on the devices you've paid for. Contingencies, convenience and user satisfaction requirements be ******. These are things you can't even accomplish when using apple's own hardware and software throughout your (presumably home based) enterprise. Oh, wait.. If I had a SAN, I could then dedicate a LUN to my iTunes library, and as long as I ensured that the LUN was mounted to the same path on all my machines... Nope, iTunes will freak out if I do that and have more than one machine mapping that LUN...

It's a poor design carried further by the selfishness of the parent. Here's hoping that at some point apple gets with the program and provides a means by which to share content in a more acceptable means.

Western Digital has an app called WD 2go. While it's cumbersome, you can access your My Book Live from an iPhone or iPad and push music to the Apple TV using the audio source output option. While it requires you to have an iPhone or iPad (possibly an iPod, I'm not sure), no computer needs to be running.

OK, these short clip answers "no" or "won't work" - give me a break, that's just not helpful. What will work, is to have a computer running iTunes 11, and select the Apple TV as output via AirPlay. I just got my MyBook Live, and haven't put media on it yet. I am not 100% positive, but it seems that only iTunes would work to stream through, I don't know if you can stream to say the music or video app of an iOS device. Certainly, we do have a Mac server that is always on, and I leave iTunes running on this server, using the same Home Sharing account. So I think by accessing that iTunes library, I should be able to stream the content from the MyBook drive to my iOS device. You can also target iOS output to the Apple TV via AirPlay, but that seems to me it could chew up the wifi bandwidth, and my router is only G. (Time to get a good dual-band gigabit N router, eh?) As soon as I get all my questions answered about the MyBook, look for a post on my blog, http://techgeekjay.blogspot.com

QuiteTrite, please explain:

1) "security hole"? You can certainly lock the computer while on, and still access its library using Home Sharing by going to the "Computers" app on the Apple TV.

2) power - don't you leave any machines running all the time? Or just run it while watching. Personally, I have a 24/7 server at my house, because it runs the network, iTunes library, family Wiki, etc. (Yeah, I'm a little hard core.)

3) The answer is always going to be more bandwidth. You need to double your bw because you are putting more use over it. The alternative is not to stream.

4) Backup backup backup (let me repeat: backup). At home I have (2) WD MyBook Live drives. One provides Time Machine backups on half of it, and media on the other half. The other is a backup for the first drive. One thing I have been considering: CrashPlan.com, monthly unlimited family backup plan up to 10 machines (I have 5) is $9/month, about what I am paying for Netflix. Not bad, adding off-site redundancy.

It is inexcusable nowadays with all the economical options to go without backups. If you aren't running a Mac, this gets more difficult. I frankly don't know how good the WD backup software is on Windows, as I don't have any Windows machines any more at home that I am responsible for backing up. If you follow Windows out-of-the-box best practices, and store all your files in the Documents library folder (and only have one library folder), then it is easier to back up, but Windows still stores other important stuff all over the place.

5) MyBook Live is a huge step forward, but bear with the industry. It is getting better, and the emerging standards will converge. iTunes/AirPlay is NOT DLNA, it is Apple's own protocol. I am betting that a firmware update on WD's side, or perhaps an update on Apple TV / iOS end, will eventually support both or a newer inclusive protocol.

Rebuild your entire library on the WD network drive and on one computer, point to it as the source for iTunes.