I'm pretty close to buying an Apple Tv 2 for my media streaming needs and to expand my airplay capabilities around the house. In terms of its ability to stream everything off my mac such as music / films etc, rent films online and more importantly allow me to stream videos/pictures/music from my iphone to it is incredible. The only thing that is missing and would clinch the deal is the ability to use things such as Iplayer / 4od / 5 on demand. After some serious googling i have found that you can "modify" the ATV2 to run Plex media server which will let you use Iplayer etc, but the downside is you have to have the Plex Server running on your mac to stream the programme and re-encode it on the fly back to your ATV2 so it struggles slightly with quality and lag. I have also found that apparently the Iplayer app on the Ipad will now stream directly to the ATV2 but i dont have one! Has anybody found a neater solution to viewing other content online on their ATV2?
If i remember rightly there is a browser that you can install for ATV, if its not there by default. Couldn't you just use flash and the browser? There is also a big screen iPlayer designed for TV use here.
without knowing how much a ATV2 is what about updateig your tv to a smart TV or just getting ps3's scattered around i know it sounds silly but my consoles make up 90% of my movie/od streaming with a ps3 hooked up to my main TV giving me essentially media server and an xbox hooked up in the bedroom giving me a media server and sky go. also i have a wifi HDD by seagate that streams my films on it to anything with DNLA capability.
jailbreak your ATV http://firecore.com/atvflash-black?gclid=CNDHkLnIkKoCFYpB4Qodxk3-yQ then follow the following instructions http://forum.firecore.com/topic/5554 Bit tricky to do, but the iplayer works fine, although the menu is a bit clunky
firecore.com jailbreak it, then install XBMC or Plex. the media player they do is much better than default ones because it allows streaming from any shared drive. XBMC plugin doesn't work very well. never tried Plex. Firecore's web browser is slightly frustrating to use with the remote, great using Remote app though, but slightly buggy on iPlayer website. will give ipad 2 streaming a try, but that can't be good for ipad's battery.
I have all but canned my media PC in the living room in favour of an Apple TV 2 now. I had an ATV classic which was great at the time but it outlived it's usefulness and I replaced it with a HTPC. Now the ATV 2 has replaced that - it's tiny, it's low power, it's wireless if you want it to be (mine's not) and it works. Flawlessly. I haven't done anything drastic to mine yet, I've only had it for a few months, but in that time I've had my server encoding my video library to Apple TV format (720 MP4's) 24/7 so I can watch them on the TV in the living room. I think I'm up to 150 HD films in my iTunes library now, and well over 30 full HD TV series, along with other videos that look gorgeous on a 42" screen, like concerts, music videos and documentaries. It does everything I need it to do at the moment. Youtube works well on it, as does Vimeo and Airplay is amazing. Streaming from my iPhone to the ATV is insanely handy. Pretty soon I'm going to pick up another ATV (probably off eBay) for the LCD in the kitchen so that I can access my music library and play it when I'm cooking or washing up. £99 is quite a sting for such a tiny unit, but when you see what it can do, you'll be so glad that you spent the money. I had an Apple Store gift card for £50 and a credit note for another £20 from a DOA return, so I got mine for a mere £30 and the cost of nipping into Victoria Square one day I was working in Belfast over the summer. I might have a go at installing the browser that was mentioned because that would really make it a full on replacement for my HTPC. That and what the OP mentioned - iPlayer support. Now my iTunes media library resides on my file server, which is on 24/7 and is home shared to all the machines in the house, and the ATV. Watching stuff on the ATV is so much smoother than it was when I was using my XBMC HTPC. I'm more than 50% sure that I won't go back to the Windows/XBMC based HTPC now. The only downside is that all my AVI and MKV DVD/Blu-ray rips need to be converted to MP4 and added to my iTL before they can be played on the ATV. As I said though, I've had my server encoding flat out since I got the thing
AVI HD doesn't work so well, but MKV (x264 encoding) works very well on FireCore's Media Player. i got mine off ebay for £75 inc postage. great little box, my house mate has complicated laptop + DVD player setup. i only have this little box and a very simple remote. airplay mirroring is fantastic addon to it. Unicorn, im guessing your file server is running official iTunes, rather than a NAS that is able to do iTunes share? since officially, aTV only supports Home Share.
The AVI's are DVD rips, at about 720x576 or whatever the standard of the DVD that I was ripping was. The MKV's are a mixture of 1080p and 720p from Blurays. Those look gorgeous when played in 720p MP4 on the ATV2. The DVD Rips don't look as nice, but they're still perfectly watchable. Exactly the same quality as if there was a disc in the player, just no menu etc on them, straight files. Yes my server runs official, atual iTunes. I looked into getting an iTunes share capable NAS before getting the ATV2, but as you said, it only supports Home Sharing, so I moved my library over the server and Home Share everything from there now. It's running on XP at the moment, but it'll be getting upgraded to Windows SBS 2011 eventually. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get iTunes to install and run on that. I might have to migrate the library back to my desktop when that happens. At the moment, having the library on the server means that I don't have to have my desktop machine switched on to watch content on the ATV.
So does the ATV2 not support the MKV format? That would be a breaking point for me as I am sick of converting files to play from the xbox. I am considering getting one of those WiDi boxes since my laptop supports the tech but I have heard equally disconcerting things about the WiDi, only with WiDi it is the latency that is of primary concern. I suppose I am also considering the Logitech Revue/ Google TV.
http://firecore.com/atvflash-black that's what you want. plays all file formats, only has problems with HD AVI files. MKV even 1080p ones (although down scaled because aTV only outputs 720p) plays great. default without jailbreaking, it only supports Home Share via iTunes. aka MP4 files encoded for iDevices. going Google TV is an option but you'll loose out on airplay. i find it is best to pick a brand and stick to it. they work really well, especially in apple's case.
