Best way to stream movies to TV?

[dpriest]

I have been doing quite a bit of research on the web but wanted some advice. I am planning on buying an Apple TV and connecting it to my HDTV. I wanted to store all my movies on a drive that I can wirelessly stream to the apple tv. I have seen various NAS drives such as the Buffalo, WD, Seagate, etc and wanted to know what is the fastest, best way to hook all this stuff up. Some of these drives connect with an Ethernet cable, but I am not sure what to do as I am new to all this stuff. I have heard of programs such as pogoplug, but again, don't understand what this is all about. From what I understand so far, I put all my movies into iTunes and make sure the iTunes library is pointing to the drive that my media is on, then the apple tv accesses the media from the drive via iTunes. an I just buy an external drive, connect it to my pc and use this, or is there an advantage to using an NAS drive? Sorry if I am all over the place with questions. Any and all advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[Rob423]

I run a plex server on my main pc... I like plex alot my tv supports it. I think the new appleTV is going to support plex if it doesnt already. But the roku boxes can run plex. A drobo is a pretty cool device to store tons of data. There pretty pricey, especially when you have to start buying several HDD's....

Plex is also available for ipads which is cool

 

[Rob423]

Itunes is picky with certain file types i think just .mp4's.... So if you have mkv's or avi's mixed in i think youll have to convert them. With the plex software i load just about everything...... Theres so many options... For a long time i ran an "airVideo" server on my system and i used to have the airvideo ipad app. And i would use my ipad and air-play the movie to my appleTV and get around some obstacles... That worked out cool and i used my tablet as a big remote sort of.

 

[Den Watsons]

Use Serviio, Plex or Windows Media Player as a server on your laptop, PC. Just pick a file and stream directly on TV!

 

[Rob423]

I'm hoping a year after he asked his question he found a solution....

 

[Den Watsons]

Sorry, haven't seen that it was 2014, thought 2015!

 

[Rob423]

no problem. Ive done it many times in the past