Apple TV experience

[prosoft]

I have a purchased an Apple TV for use as a music server. It has been modified with a 500gb hard disk and loaded up with several hundred CDs ripped in AIFF format. I used dbaudioamp for the ripping as this seemed to do an excellent job of highlighting which disks needed cleaning. I use an IPOD touch to control it.

 

Things I love-

I find the sound quality using the DAC in my processor is equivalent to my CD player (and it cost less to purchase than the power cable in my cd player).

It uses standard connectors (HDMI, optical) and hence is compatible with cables I already own.

The operation of the IPOD touch is fabulous.

I have been enjoying music that I haven't listened to in years due to the convenience of having it all at my fingertips.

 

Annoyances/queries

The ATV disappears from itunes periodically. This is itunes on Windows. Part of my reasoning in going for ATV rather than a mac was to avoid moving from Windows. How do I get it back into Itunes or force Itunes to scan for it? (this is not a simple network issue - the network is wired and I can ping/ftp to the atv ). I made the mistake of deleting the ATV from itunes, which caused itunes to instantly discover it and wipe everything. Of course it took ages to copy everything back as the ATV is limited to Fast Ethernet, although at least itunes acknowledged its existence!

 

I have to turn my monitor on to put the ATV into standby. Nonetheless, I also note that it seems to generate as much heat in standby as when left on. From some menus it is possible to put it into standby by holding down the play button on the apple remote, but this appears highly dependent on where in the menu it is (back to switching the screen on).

 

Is there a way to switch the screen off on the ipod touch (i.e. powersave) without it locking? It feels like I am constantly unlocking the remote. Or constantly charging it.

 

I would be grateful for your advice/thoughts.

 

 

[Egon]

Several users here have ATVs, hopefully someone can solve your problems. I'll just provide feedback to let you know you're not alone. I've had mine 8 months, love it for the same reasons as you, and have explored most of its capabilities.

 

Your issues and my responses... it disappears. Make sure you have the latest firmware on the ATV, this is in the general settings, and the latest version of ITunes. As you likely do, this won't fix it. Mine disappears from time to time as well. Usually I unplug ATV, close ITunes on my Windows PC, then plug in the ATV again and then restart ITunes. 90% of the time this fixes it. 10% it doesn't and I have no solution besides wait, it'll show up in a few hours for no explicable reason. It'll return before you can have everything reset and reloaded, so don't do that again, it's frustrating and unnecessary.

 

Standby... I haven't measured power consumption personally, but online reading suggests Standby doesn't cut power usage much. Your options are to unplug it, or do what I do, which is leave it on constantly and count the $5 it raises my monthly power bill as a convenience charge.

 

Touch Autolock... you can change the setting to change how long before it auto-locks. Otherwise, I'd just get used to the unlock process and the few second wait for it to reconnect to your ATV library, and/or charge it whenever not in use. It's still faster than changing CDs or getting out of your seat.

 

Al Gore is on Apple's board. He hasn't done much to save the environment from that position.

 

 

 

 

[prosoft]

Thanks for the feedback. Confirmation that I am not missing anything obvious is much appreciated. It is surprisingly difficult to find answers to these questions.

 

My ATV has reappeared exactly as promised. Playback always blips for a second, so I knew immediately. Fortunately my ipod remote has never failed to find the ATV.

 

The lack of a proper standby option is dissappointing, although considering the heat haze rizing from my amps this may not lead to a huge increase in my bills. I assume a MAC mini or laptop would have a standby mode.

 

I admit my concern about the remote does sounds a little petty and the unlock process is very slick! The longest delay on auto-lock is 5 minutes, or about the time it takes to play a track. My impression of Apple is that it is very user friendly so long as you don't wish to stray from a very tightly defined set of capabilities. To be fair, this is what I really want from a music server.

 

[Raimund Heubel]

@Prosoft

Can I please ask you to expand on your 500 GB big - as I take it - INTERNAL hard disk of your Apple TV. I always thought that the maximum size of an upgraded internal HDD for the Apple TV would be at a limit of 250 GB. Can you please share type and make of this HDD, thank you.

 

Best regards,

 

Raimund

 

[prosoft]

Hi Raimund,

Unfortunately, I can't help with the details as I didn't modify the unit. Mine came modified from a guy in the UK (http://www.marlcroftcomputers.co.uk/). I know he has fitted a sata interface to allow a larger disk to be installed internally, but I can't comment on the technical details. Whilst researching this, I didn't find anybody else doing this and the 250gb limit is frequently quoted on forums.

 

The extra space is very useful and allows me to achieve a simple one box music server, which is what I wanted. I have various extra software utilities installed, but I understand that the larger hard disk works with the unmodified Apple software, which is not the case with external hard disks.

 

[wgb113]

Judging by both of your experiences I'm guessing it's got something to do with Windows as I've never encountered it in the two years we've had our ATV connected to our iMac.

 

Could it be some sort of Firewall issue?

 

Bill

 

[HarryHWombat]

@prosoft

 

Not sure if this is the case with you but i can tell you the AppleTV can disappear from my iTunes (this is Mac based so may not be applicable to your situation).

 

My AppleTVs are connected through a plug network (wired) as is the main Mac. If the main mac switches to Airport (wireless connection) the AppleTVs lose their connection to iTunes. Similarly, if one changes from wireless to wired the connection also drops. This generally happened when my kids logged into their accounts which for some reason switched to using the wireless network - or maybe they just fiddled around.

 

I would guess changing from wired to wireless or vice versa changes the IP address of the host computer.

 

Once dropped that seems to be that - I need to restart iTunes.

 

So, if you have both wired and wireless networks this may be your issue - or at least it may give you some hints.

 

[prosoft]

This is curious. My ATV has been completely reliable since the weekend, without restarting my computer or even itunes. My network is wired in the sense that I have structured cat5 in my home (running computer networks is my profession - which is not to imply that I am immune from making stupid mistakes). I have a Cisco AP that my ipod connects to and this has never lost access to the ATV. Itunes has copied 200gig of files to the device a couple of times without any hint of trouble. I could ftp/ssh to the ATV using its appletv.local hostname even though it didn't appear in itunes.

 

I am not familiar with the workings of the bonjour protocol that Itunes installs. I shall investigate with a packet sniffer if it happens again. I would not be suprised if it was something that XP was doing.

 

In summary, the only significant black mark I have with the ATV is the lack of a power save mode. A gigabit interface would be a nice touch, when initially replicating a large library and I'd like Apple to sell one with a larger disk.

 

 

[Paul Held]

The only additional comment I'd make from personal experience is that after trying the ATV in sync mode but experiencing mysterious many drop-outs and wipe-outs I simply gave up that strategy. It works perfectly well in streaming mode - no difference in performance, no drop outs or blips. Any surprises are now dealt with without stress given that there is really negative implication associated with reset/reboot, etc. on the ATV in this format except some minor options setups (at the worst)

 

thx

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I agree Paul. The streaming mode where you push music to the ATV or where you pull music from your music server to the ATV is ideal.

 

[Egon]

Chris- You've clearly got a reason for saying that, and I'm curious to hear it. In general I thought the "best practice" for most cases includes music stored on the computer's hard drive, in this case the ATV. Why the different method for this situation? Sound quality or convenience/lack of headaches?

 

And back to the original conversation, although I experience the dropouts, it's something that happens less than once a week, rarely an issue. I find it more in the last 2-3 months than before, especially since ITunes 8 and the corresponding ATV update were released. Wired vs. wireless doesn't seem to be an issue, and the report of a Mac user with the same problem suggests the OS isn't an issue. Don't think we've got a solution but the Bonjour suggestion seems most likely to me. I just don't really know the inner workings of that program enough to speak intelligently about fixes.

 

And finally, I have to say I'm jealous of a 500GB hard drive on the ATV. Beautiful.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Egon - I certainly do have my reasons for this one. You are correct that I don't like streaming audio and try to avoid it whenever I can. This is one exception. I don't consider the Apple TV to be the ultimate high end device but rather a wonderful convenience device. Thus, I elect to avoid headaches dealing with synchronizing content and what to do with a few Terabytes of music and only a 160 GB ATV. So I guess you hit the nail on the head, "convenience/lack of headaches."

 

[Paul Held]

Yes Chris, that's it exactly. A great convenience device made more convenient by not treating the ATV like a computer - like I said, no stress. YMMV

 

By the way, it streams perfectly - with ALAC files over an unexceptional G network - not bad for $200 gear.

 

[cfmsp]

 

 

Agreed on the convenience listening.

 

I intentionally bought only the 40Gb model Apple TV - refusing to pay an extra $100 when the increase in size was still not going to be nearly enough to hold a sizable inventory of audio/video data.

 

With the 'shared libraries' feature, it's simple to stream, and possibly there is less hard disk access required, although with only 256 Mb (non-upgradeable) Ram on the ATV, perhaps hitting the hard drive for virtual memory is a wash.

 

Chris, no plans for putting an SSD into your Apple TV? it's a 2.5" Pata, and supposedly is easier to replace than on a mac mini.

 

clay

 

 

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I believe you 100% that it's easier than replacing a Mac Mini HDD :~) But, still no plans on my radar for the ATV SSD upgrade.

 

[Egon]

Thanks for the explanation and very understandable why you'd do that. I stream most of my music too, but also sync it because it provides convenient "his & hers" music sources with both the ATV and original ITunes server for my wife and I to listen to different music on theAirport Expresses in the house. What a convenient gadget.

 

[Egon]

Just thought more about what you guys wrote... the idea of streaming sounds even better as I'd still have two libraries. Didn't think that through before.

If it's streaming, is it streaming the original file, or converting to ALAC on the fly as in Airtunes? For example, if my library on my ITunes server is all AIFF, what will play from a streaming ATV, AIFF or ALAC?

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I believe it's ALAC no matter what you do :~(

 

[wgb113]

Curious if you also have to log out your kids' accounts in order to get it to show up again in your iTunes account?

 

I know that you can only pair the AppleTV with one library/user account on a Mac at a time.

 

Still, I've never had it disappear both when it streamed wirelessly over our network from our iMac or since it's been streaming from that same iMac hard-wired to a gigabit switch. They've always found each other without issue on startup.

 

Bill

 

[HarryHWombat]

The issue for me is the switch between wired and wireless. If it is connected wired and then on the host mac I turn the airport on the appletvs drop. I think it is a known issue.