Have I wasted my money? Apple TV set up nightmare

So basically, that entire rant boils down to a lack of research and understanding of how the ATV works.

There is no requirement to load a profile on the ATV. The reason it is needed in your situation is due to the network setup. Of course this can be bypassed by connecting the ATV via Ethernet to the network. Is that not an option?

as soon as you say hdmi to vga your ship has pretty much sailed

vga does not support the DRM encryption called HDCP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection

apple also hate complex network setups like corperate encryption and login by browser and likely proxy too

sounds like you're a teather trying to use the appletv in your class something it was not really meant for they are cheap likely apple don't make money selling them but make up for it by selling media on them which is a possible reason why they don't get out of their way making sure they work on the average college campus network where fear of Torrent result in port80 being the only open port

Wrong track? Your not even at the train station....

I thought only guys didn't read directions.

And Apple TV came with simple ones.

Apple TV works ONLY with HDTVs with HDMI cable, not included.

You must connect to the internet with Ethernet cable or wifi.

You must have wifi to stream content from an Apple device to Apple TV. This means your Apple TV has to connect with a wifi service at school to stream.

MedicineWoman wrote:

And as for plugging it straight into the ethernet - that wont help because the ipad will be connected via wifi and they are different networks so that wont work. The only way is for the apple to connect via wifi through proxy OR for me to buy another routing device such as airport. This would just be another added inconvenience though, especially when I'm changing classrooms every lesson.

Here's where the Apple sheeple go wrong. There is no requirement to buy Apple products.

If you do not need Internet access, but instead need a simply Wi-Fi network to connect the devices and allow for AirPlay, an inexpensive Wi-Fi router that runs about $20-30 will be sufficient. It is likely to be a lot easier to deal with than installing the configuration profile and testing until it simply works.