Bought and Apple TV2 back in December for upstairs in our bedroom and was pretty impressed with it. The ability to watch Netflix, iTunes movies and videos, play iTunes music all from a network connected computer downstairs in the office running iTunes was nice for a little while.
Fast forward about two weeks later, we climb into bed and turn the TV on so we can watch a movie that I had imported into iTunes earlier in the day and that’s when we realize that iTunes is NOT running downstairs on the computer. This means we can’t watch the movie I put into iTunes earlier without going all the way back downstairs to start iTunes.
Fast forward another week and now I’m getting sick of having to rip my DVD’s to my computer THEN convert them to a format that iTunes likes, then import them … too many steps and it takes too long.
I start searching Google for a better way to do this and I come across FireCore’s aTV Flash Black, they wanted $29 and I generally prefer open source and free solutions but I did some reading on their product and realized that if it actually does what it’s supposed to – this could be the solution. The only requirement was a jailbroken aTV and I had that covered already so I spent the $29.
My opinion: Definitely worth the money!
Simple installation – Download from their site after purchase and run the install FROM THE COMPUTER.
Install Media Player – A simple installation of their Media Player from the new Maintenance menu on the aTV.
Result: I can now rip movies to my drive on my computer and share the folder their in (with or without requiring login) and add the share to the new Media menu on the aTV. No more worrying about if iTunes is running or not.
Problem solved and the best part is that aTV Flash (black) Media Player supports almost all video formats!
Great product worth twice the price!
