Apple TV - Infuse - Raspberry Pi Server

Streaming & Network
1

Hi Guys

I have a new Apple TV which I want to connect to a server so that I can stream my current Movies and TV shows to my apple tv for viewing.

I have a raspberry Pi sat around doing nothing and a 10TB external HDD. My plan is to run a server on the Pi so that I can connect the Infuse app on my Apple TV to the server and stream the content from the HDD.

My question is what software and programs are best to run on the Pi so that I can access it from Apple TV and infuse? Any how to guides would be great.

I am also going to set up an Amazon Firestick on another TV. Can I access Infuse from this as well?

Will I be able to drag and drop movie files from my current laptop (once downloaded or converted) to the Pi server remotely over the network or will I need to connect straight into the Pi with a cable?

Thanks for all the help.

2

I would recommend against using a pi. Most of them have. 10/100 NIC that shares bandwidth with the USB ports. You’ll get slow disk access and port network. This can be alleviated with a USB gig nic but that will be limited to max transfer rate of USB3.

That being said If you only plan on doing 1080p videos a pi might be enough. Install dietpi and throw plex on it… or just shared through NFS.

3

Thank you for your reply.

What I am looking for is basically something I can drag and drop files to from my Laptop.

Like an external storage that I can connect to from a network and just move the files I download over so I can remove from laptop and so that infuse can access them on my apple TV.

What other options do I have? I have 2 x 2.5inch external hard drives that I would love to utilise. Again these will be limited to USB 3 speeds? I don’t want to really spend a fortune and I am probably happy with 1080p.

If I do use the Pi will I need to have a screen connected to it so I can manage plex? I literally just want a file storage that I can access from anywhere so infuse and link into it as well.

4

Do you have a wireless router? Many have the ability to attach hard drives and share them on the network. You’ll want something that can connect other that with DLNA to take full advantage of Infuse and it’s metadata fetching.

5

Thanks Bullseye.

I have an apple airport time capsule which I already have files on. I can also as external storage to it. Can I use this with infuse?

6

It appears that you can but I’m not real sure since I don’t have one to terrorize. Check this out and see if you might want to give it a go.

EDIT TO ADD: I just saw this in one of the infuse users guides that may help too. It’s from Streaming From a Mac, PC, or NAS – Firecore Support

"Device specific notes

Airport Extreme & Time Capsule

Username is admin
Password will be the Disk Sharing password, which may be different than the Wi-Fi network password"
7

I have an Apple TV 4K and a Raspberry Pi 3 B (RPi3) connected to a switch. The switch is connected to my router.

I then have a 1TB Samsung 860 SSD in a USB3 enclosure which is connected directly to one of the USB2 ports on the RPi3.

The SSD has a very low power consumption and the RPi3 is able to power it directly without any problems. This is most likely not going to be the case with the 2 x 2.5" drives (presumably HDDs) you mention. If you are lucky, you might be able to run a single 2.5" HDD off a RPi3 with some tweaks, but you really should use a powered hub or use drives that have their own power supplies.

The limitation is not going to be the USB3 interface on your HDDs but the USB2 one on the RPi. At best, you are going to get 10MBps (< 100Mbps). The Raspberry Pi 3 B+ has a “Gigabit” Ethernet port, but it is actually hanging off the USB2 hub and practical bandwidth is more like 300Mbps. But this has to be shared with USB2 traffic from the HDDs so you can actually find yourself worse off using an RPi3+ instead of an RPi3 or RPi2.

I am running LibreELEC (Kodi) on my RPi3 and I am simply exposing the SMB protocol so I can connect to my SSD from Apple TV 4K.

I do not have a 4K TV or any 4K material so I am only using this setup for 1080p (or less) material, but 1:1 Blu-ray ISO rips work just fine. I should mention that though the transfer speed is fine for streaming, it might not be as fast as a Gigabit connection to a “real” NAS when it comes to initial buffering or skipping.

When I need to reorganize files on my SSD I just unplug it from the RPi3 and plug it into my PC so I can get full SSD/USB3 transfer speeds, i.e. >400MBps. I suggest you do the same. Transferring large files over a 100Mbps network connection is just painfully slow.

I suggest that you do a Google search for “sbc nas” (without the quotes). There are plenty of articles on the subject and options, including Odroid HC1/HC2. You might also want to consider a Zidoo X9S (old model, but cheap) or Zidoo Z9S with both are media players (play BD and DVD ISO rips with full menus) which double as NAS servers with SATA and USB3 connectivity.

If you still wish to use a Raspberry Pi just because you already have it, and you want to use real NAS software rather than just “my” LibreELEC/SMB “solution”, you can install OMV (OpenMediaVault) on it.

You might also consider buying a cheap NAS without disk such as a Synology DiskStation DS119j and move your 10TB HDD from its enclosure (bye bye warranty) to the NAS. That would give you a setup similar to what most everyone else is using at a very low cost.

But again: Using a RPi2/3 as a NAS server for your 10TB HDD (or your 2.5" HDDs using a powered hub) will probably work, but you don’t really want to use such a connection for organizing your files.