Apple TV, the Do It All Machine

There are rumors of an Apple TV update/replacement. Why change something so perfect, so completely awesome as the Apple TV? Really, it does boggle the mind. What's that you say? You've checked into it and the Apple TV doesn't do anything you that seems remotely useful? No TV time shifting, you can't watch your DVDs on it, no recording and to top it all off the hard drive is woefully undersized. I see the problem. You are using your Apple TV as Apple intended. Yeah, if you do that then the Apple TV is a waste of cash and electricity. So let's make the Apple TV great. If you already have one you'll be set, if a new one comes out you'll be able to grab the old model for a huge discount and be very happy

Let's start with the easiest trick to turn the Apple TV into a media monster: extending the storage capacity. You can (and probably will want to) hook a USB drive directly to the Apple TV and use it for storage. But that involves some non Apple approved hacking so let's start off easy. Here's the basic deal: You've got a computer with scads of ports. You've got a locked down Apple TV with no obvious way to add additional storage. If only there was some way to add a removable drive to your computer and have the Apple TV use that extra storage. No problem

Put all your content (all that will fit anyway) on the removable drive. IT could be a USB 2 or FireWire drive, it really doesn't matter. Now get ready to drag all that content into iTunes. If you just drag the files into iTunes then iTunes will copy all the files from the removable drive to your main hard drive. Wasted time and duplicated space. So before you drag the media press the option key. iTunes will add the music/movies/TV shows to your library but not copy the files.

So what does this do for your Apple TV? As long as keep iTunes running your computer you can set your Apple TV to share the library. Once it is shared, all your media goes with it. So now you have  a nearly infinitely large Apple TV hard drive. How well does the streaming work? Over a G network there is a very short pause, between two and three seconds, after you select a movie and the time it starts playin

But that just means more storage, storage that you'd go broke filling up if you bought stuff from the iTunes store. Let's take care of of why you'd need extra storage and time shifting TV in the next step. Recall that one of the complaints about the Apple TV is that it isn't a PVR (personal video recorder). But, since you are using your Mac for storage anyway it can be. This stunt involves a program called TVShows, the willingness to torrent some files and some automation trickery.

First off grab TVShows. TVShows is a torrent tracker dedicated to music. Just kidding, it is dedicated to TV shows. Launch it and you'll find a long list of shows you can subscribe to (in HD if you wish). Since it is just a tracker you'll also need a torrent downloading application. TVShows recommends Transmission but any engine will do. Installation of both apps is straight forward and the entire process (checking availability, grabbing the show) is automatic

Good news, you've got time shifted shows on your computer! Bad news, you can't watch them because the Apple TV can't read the format! Solution: iSquint, simple to use, can transform the downloaded video into something usable by the Apple TV. Bam, your Apple TV is now a PVR. With folder actions, Automator and maybe AppleScript you can get these shows added automatically to iTunes for your viewing pleasure.

Wow, now your Apple TV is becoming more useful. You can time shift TV, use as much storage as you want but what about those pesky DVDs? You can push as hard as you want but jamming a DVD into the Apple TV is really difficult

But you still want DVDs on you Apple TV, right? If you've got a fast machine this is no problem, but it is processor intensive. For example, a feature length movie takes about 10 hours to rip on my G5 tower and about an hour to rip on my 3 GHz iMac. If you've got the time and the horsepower to rip movies then grab Handbrake and start ripping away. Add the movies to your iTunes library and you'll have a box full of backup DVDs and a newly uncluttered DVD storage area

There's a ton more you can do to make your Apple TV great. You can install a browser on the thing (pretty cool), add Perian so you don't have to transcode movies, set up torrent app to skip the computer part entirely and so forth. Perhaps in a future column. But get started using the "new" Apple TV today.