Just had a few questions before purchasing this software and an Apple TV! (Currently a Mvix 760hd owner)
1- I think I read that the Atv doesnt shut off or power down completely, if thats the case, is it fair to assume any usb hard drives wont shut off or turn on automatically with the device? meaning I would have to get up and power on the hard drive and manually cut if off…can you please shed some light into that situation…
2- I have a couple of iso’s on my hard drive, this nitotv will play them like a regular dvd??
3- I havn’t heard anyone review the actual video quality of the avi’s/divx/dvd files on a lcd…is it stunning or just so so…im referring to regular divx files downloaded from popular torrent sites…
4- This Sapphire program, does it play the videos or just organize them with the imdb data? Is there a certain requirement for the filenames for sapphire to recognize the movie/tv show?
THANX IN ADVANCE FOR ANY CLARIFICATION…ALSO IF ANYONE ELSE HAS SOME NEWBIE QUESTIONS…PLEASE ADD THEM ON TO THIS TOPIC. THANX
1 - You have to shut of your usb manually (depending on your situation)
2- Install all codecs and nito will play the iso
3 - The picture is ok to watch a movie
4 - Plays and will organize files
Note: on all your questions you can search the forum for further clarification
Thanks for that. Dont get me wrong, I’ve been researching this topic for some time, just never really got clarification. My whole thing is Im thinking about replacing my mvix unit with the atv and just want to know is it worth it. It sounds like it is. Currently with my setup, I can hookup 2 usb devices, play iso’s with no problem and my divx files look and sound great on my setup…but the GUI is outdated and the atv seems a bit more polished. Should I make the switch? And can someone post an in depth review of their atv running 3.2.2 including what they like…most people just write about whats wrong with it…lol
I recommend the switch & purchase of the atv flash software. Everything that the mvix can do the apple tv can handle. The apple tv is a work in progress hence the free updates from apple. There is nothing wrong with the apple unit its just that people dont know how to achieve certain tasks thus the forum for help (it really does get in depth). The atv flash team in in the process of creating a free wiki site which will prove to be helpful. In the end the choice is yours.
my external hd’s are already formatted NTFS…will that work with the atv or does it have to be mac journaled or fat32? Also, will a 2TB drive work or is that too big?
the atv doesn’t shut down fully. so - it won’t auto-shutdown external drives like the WD MyBook etc… however - alot of the external drives now have low power standby mode if they are not accessed for some time… so don’t worry about it (unless yours doesn’t have a power saving mode). i THINK that the atv will NOT read NTFS drives. do a search on this forum for NTFS…
the quality is all dependent of the divx you download. if you download a dvd-rip from a torrent site - and it was created by Axxo or someone - then the quality it top notch. and if your lcd supports 1080p etc just set the atv to that mode and it looks great.
Sapphire is pretty cool. gets the album art, synopsis, rating etc and makes it easy to view. sorts it by the genre assigned in imdb. u need the avi files or the folder itself to be the name of the movie. if you have an avi file called THE MATRIX it will get the correct info. if you have an avi file called DS-MTX-1 then it won’t know what that is and skip over it.
Overall I am glad i purchased it. use it every day - and once i removed unwanted menu items (see my knowledgebase article) it is easy enough for my 3 year old daughter to navigate
MIXXXER!! I really appreciate the way you broke that down…very informative and specific! Im excited about the Sapphire program…looks like I’ll have a long project, getting new ext hd, getting it formatted to mac, transferring hundreds of gigs of movies after editing all the titles! whew!! cant wait… and yea…AXXO is the man!
If anyone can recommend a LARGE external hd to use with the Atv…these 500 gigs just dont cut it anymore lol
No worries - since it is all still fresh in my head - remember one thing.
i transfered 100’s of gigs of divx to my external - and then realized that the included players will NOT play multiple part movies. so if your divx is a 2 cd movie - it will stop half way through and u have to manually select the second file. if you DO plan to only use sapphire - then you have to go into every movie folder - right arrow the first part of the movie, add to list - then go to the second part of the movie - right arrow and add to list and join. it maybe takes - 20 or 30 seconds per movie. but i hate using the remote for so much clicking!
it is a bit of a processs but works well.
however a few of us on here use a free program on our macs call d-vision. it will join you divx movies together and spit out a new 1 part movie. does it fast too. (about 1 minute for a 1400mb file) (newer fast imac).
i just found it easier to join all the movies on my pc - since i was correcting all the file names anyways… ciao!