Newbie question about music

Hi - I’ve managed to install atvflash and everything is working well.

My question is - I have a few hundred CDs that I want to rip (lossless) to an external HD and then have available to play through my AppleTV, ideally via front row/iTunes.

I have a limited amount of space on my Macbook pro, so I can’t just use iTunes to import and sync.

I’m really scratching my head at a way forward and I’ve looked everywhere for an answer - I assumed this kind of question would be pretty common.

Please help…

Garry