What a mess. I have an AppleTV and a 2TB drive full of media. What I want to do is have an easy way to stream all of my content to my AppleTV so when I move into my apartment anyone can watch whatever they want on the AppleTV at any point in time. But of course there are 4 problems that are keeping me from achieving this.
- I could plug the hard drive into a computer and stream it through iTunes on that computer. Problem is I only have a laptop. So if I ever want to go anywhere with my computer no one can view content on the AppleTV.
- I could use the usb drive on the back of the Airport router from apple and stream everything that way. Problem here is the transfer rate is insanely slow. Like unbelievably slow. So because it is so slow it is not only painful to add content to the drive, but the artwork for the content takes a very long time to load on the AppleTV. Plus this also requires me to have iTunes open on my laptop at all times, and have my laptop on the network at all times.
- I could do what I am doing now in my parents house, and have a stationary computer dedicated to running iTunes for the AppleTV. However I cannot afford to just buy a mac mini (because I am not using a windows machine).
- I could use the USB port on the back of the AppleTV by hacking the device. Only problem here is the app used to hack the usb port, nitotv, no longer exists. All of the How-To websites tell me to use this app that no longer exists, which is extremely frustrating.
It just seems like all this could be solved if apple stopped treating the AppleTV like a damn hobby and make it work to its potential. Stop forcing me to tether the device to one computer. Especially when that one computer is a laptop that is not always there to allow for streaming. Or apple could stop being little bitches about that damn usb port on the back and let me expand the storage beyond the measly 160 GB they have internally.
