vinnycoyne.com

Since purchasing the new Apple TV, my old grey Apple TV has been collecting dust on a shelf in my office. With the new model retailing for $99 / €119, there’s not much point in trying to sell it (especially with the lack of updates for it).

Currently, I’m streaming my media to the new ATV from iTunes on my MacBook Pro. All of the content is on a network drive, so the only reason for needing the MBP is for the iTunes library / Home Sharing features.

Seeing as the old ATV is a low-power, Intel-based Mac, I figured I’d have a go at installing Leopard on it and using it as a media server for the new ATV to stream from. That way, I can move all of the video-related tasks to a dedicated machine, which frees up my MBP for other tasks. It also means that the iTunes library will still be accessible when my MBP is offline or out of the house.

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I tweeted a while back that I was working on some scripts which would help automate the process of batch-importing .avi video files in iTunes for use on my Apple TV. Some folks asked how they could set it up for themselves.

At the time, I was using a couple of Automator scripts, which were triggered by folder actions. They worked, but not very well, so I never posted them online.

Since then, however, I’ve found a much simpler way of converting & importing using an Elgato Turbo.264 HD dongle and a copy of VideoDrive.

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