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External Hard drive and Apple TV

I have digitized my entire DVD collection (over 200 DVDs) onto a portable external hard drive. I recently purchased an Apple TV. I'd love to just turn on my Apple TV and have access to all of my DVDs. My question is: Can I keep all the DVDs on my hard drive (having the hard drive plugged into my computer, obviously) and access them through my Apple TV? Or do they have to all be imported into iTunes for Apple TV to recognize and play them.


Any help is much appreciated. I can't fit all my movies into iTunes as they won't all fit on my computer's hard drive.


Thanks!

MacBook Pro, iOS 7.0.4

Posted on Dec 16, 2013 5:26 PM

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8 replies

Jan 5, 2017 10:31 PM in response to vazandrew

There are a lot of DVDs that have no copy protect, or are public but are in the traditional DVD format.

This question as I interpreted it is not about commercial ripping of DVDs it is about where to put the files that Apple TV can understand and access them. As when you may make a DVD with DVD maker and copy it to your hard drive ... for example, say you want Apple TV to be able to play that. Or, are you basically staying you won't be able to discuss it because you do not have an answer?

Dec 19, 2013 5:55 AM in response to JoeBro788

Hi Joe,


I stream from an external hard drive without involving ITunes. Just turn airplay on and select the Apple TV and go ahead and use your files as you normally would on the desktop. I convert all my disks to a single file such as avi, mp4 and such. This way i don't see the accessing from one video file to another which make up a typical dvd. This just seemed for me to be a simple solution.



And I hope one day there will be an Airplay on/off icon available from the Apple TV menu. Had to squeeze in that request. 🙂


New to the Apple family here and loving it.


Anyway hope this helps.

Dec 19, 2013 7:11 AM in response to JoeBro788

If you keep your music et al on your computer and just want your video on the external, rather than keep changing preferences, just hold down your option key (alt) when you File > Add to library. This will link the external file to iTunes without copying it to your computer but will keep your preferences unchanged so you can add music et al in future in the same way you have always done.

External Hard drive and Apple TV

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