[mythtv-users] Apple TV FE with DVD Player?

Brian Phillips brian.phillips at gmx.net
Sun Jun 22 12:33:52 UTC 2008


Jeff Walther wrote:
> I've been reading the postings about using the Apple TV as a Front
> End with great interest. 
> 
> Then I looked at the Apple TV more closely on Apple's site and it
> does not appear to have a DVD drive.  I guess you're meant to get all
> your media on line, which seems a little silly to me, but what do I
> know about marketing (answer:  very little).   
> 
> Would there be any obstacle to attaching an external DVD player or
> DVD-R drive to the Apple TV through the USB 2.0 port and using it 
> with MythDVD?   It kind of spoils the one-box philosophy, but it
> would still be pretty compact altogether.
> 
> I'm in the research and learning phase of setting up a MythTV front
> end and back end, and am still exploring the options to figure out 
> what best suits my needs.   It sure looks like the Apple TV could do
> everything I want in a front end at a lower price than I can build a
> quiet attactive PC, except that it does not have a DVD player. 
> 
> Thank you for any helpful or humorous responses.
> 
> Jeff Walther

Jeff,

While I can't answer the feasability of a DVD drive, I'll give you an
example of what I do.

I have a 40GB AppleTV, with Mythbuntu installed to the entire internal PATA
drive.  I don't have a USB DVD drive and the internal PATA drive isn't big
enough to hold the amount of iso's I own.

I actually rip my DVDs on my windows machine, transfer them to my backend
where I have my main storage, and then NFS mount the main storage drive in
my backend to my frontend.  This works well for us as we use Mythvideo to
watch our DVDs and they're all selectable from a menu rather than using a
DVD player to watch each DVD seperately.

Hope that gives you some ideas.

Brian



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list