how do I play an AVI movie from my mac to my tv?

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Level 1

6 points

how do I play an AVI movie from my mac to my tv?

OK; I got a flatscreen + Apple TV. Got a movie on my laptop which I want to watch. But I am only 10.6.8 for good reason.

Is it a simple matter of watching it and mirroring it to the flatscreen? It looked simple, but took hours to do, well, I don't know what, but there was a thermometer so it must have been important work. Appeared to be copying it to Apple TV but I'm not sure of that.

I got to the point of seeing a black screen with a timeline across the bottom... but the spooled portion of that timeline never really moved and so the progress indicator never moved.

So, I gave up and put the movie on another laptop with later system. 10.8.5. It has a Mirroring popup in the displays control panel with looked much simpler. But it couldn't play an AVI file... so I downloaded the recommended plug ins... but still couldn't play it. What else can I add?

Apple TV, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Dec 1, 2013 6:29 PM

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Answer 1

diesel vdub

Level 7

22,178 points

Dec 1, 2013 7:46 PM in response to TheLudd

About Mirroring in OSX

Supported formats on the ATV:

Video Formats

H.264 video up to 1080p, 30 frames per second, High or Main Profile level 4.0 or lower, Baseline profile level 3.0 or lower with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format

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