Is it possible to use ATV without a Mac or PC connected?

I need some advise,

I want to buy Apple TV, but im not sure it works the way in want it to.

After reading the discussions forums i see that you need to have a Mac or PC streaming your content via iTunes.
I want to use it without a Mac or PC, I want to store my movie files on Apple TV plugged straight into the TV with no computer in between.
Is this possible?

I also want to upgrade the hard drive to a bigger one at least 1TB.
Can anyone recommend what sort of HD i need to buy?

I also want to add my files to the ATV straight from my mac via USB not FTP, is this possible?

And yes i want to use the ATVFlash to enable me to play all my AVI files.

Any help will be grateful.

Thanks
Pilky

how do you want to copy your movies to ATV. If you use ATV flash you dont need to use Itunes you can copy the movies with a FTP client directly onto the ATV en play them.

I haven’t got atv yet I am waiting for some of my thread questions to be answered before I jump in. But from what I have read I can answer some of your questions

Once you install atv on your apple tv yes you can play all avi files

You can connect a external USB 2.0 hard drive to the apple tv and then play your movies off the hard drive without needing any computer, you also can have the external drive connected to your computer and have the media streamed to your apple tv. You also can copy contents from your internal/external hard drive to the internal hard drive in the appletv I believe this can be done by USB 2.0 someone will need to verify this! Lastly you cannot get an internal 1TB hard drive for the apple tv, the biggest the apple tv can take is 250GB and they are a little costly. I would stick with streaming off your network. Or using a external hard drive connected to your apple tv.

Hope this helps

YA this was mostly all said but :

Go and buy a 1TB external usb hard drive.

Plug it into you home computer. copy over all 1TB of avi files etc you have.

Unplug the 1TB drive from you computer. plug it into the back of the ATV (after you have enabled usb HDD support)

Done.

You now have 1TB of movies on you ATV and you do not need a computer at all. I am like you - I have no need for itunes on ATV etc - I removed every other menu item from my ATV - so when it boots up the only option i have is FILES (that allows me to play all my avi movies from my attached usb hard drive).

In your case - if you ever want to put more movies onto your external HDD - and NOT use FTP - you will need to just unplug the 1TB drive from the ATV, plug into your computer, transfer movies onto it, then plug it back into the ATV.