[Vaevictus2]

Hi guys,

havent lurked around here for a few months, just placed an order for 500 GBP worth of HTPC equipment yesterday and today I find out that Appletv2s run XBMC

I think it may be possible to cancel my order and instead by 3 AppleTvs and put xbmc on them, 3 rooms with htpc for the price of 1.

Now, what I need to know is, and I have had trouble finding anything definitive on the net, is if I can hook up a couple of 2TB hard drives via USB to one of the appleTVs and let one of the AppleTVs act as the NAS.

Thanks for the info,
Vae

edit: sorry didnt see it in the FAQ (blind)

Can I hook up my external harddrive or other USB device to the ATV2?
Unfortunately, the ATV2 can not operate as a USB host, so hooking an external drive or any other USB device to it will not work. Only media physically on the ATV2 and media hosted on the network will be available.

[nuggyblake]

Hi guys,

havent lurked around here for a few months, just placed an order for 500 GBP worth of HTPC equipment yesterday and today I find out that Appletv2s run XBMC

I think it may be possible to cancel my order and instead by 3 AppleTvs and put xbmc on them, 3 rooms with htpc for the price of 1.

Now, what I need to know is, and I have had trouble finding anything definitive on the net, is if I can hook up a couple of 2TB hard drives via USB to one of the appleTVs and let one of the AppleTVs act as the NAS.

Thanks for the info,
Vae

The 2nd gen ATV has a micro usb port which acts as a slave (diagnostics according to apple) NOT a host usb port, so NO you can not attach a NAS directly to the 2nd Gen. You can do this with the first gen atv ONLY. You can of course host the NAS from a Router/ win-box/ mac/ linux and use SMB to share.

[Vaevictus2]

ahh interesting, you would think that the atv2 would have more functionality than the 1st gen.

I dont care about the size improvement of the atv2. Performance wise, and particularly XBMC wise, is there a difference between ATV1 and ATV2?

If they are the same I may instead buy a couple of ATV1stGens and use the fileshare functionality, as I have no other way of conveniently sharing my drives over the network (router has no usb port and have a laptop)

Vae

[TheRealDL]

From a financial standpoint you might be better off to get a cheep used PC, load a minimal linux with MySQL, and go from there

Cheers!

[nuggyblake]

ahh interesting, you would think that the atv2 would have more functionality than the 1st gen.

I dont care about the size improvement of the atv2. Performance wise, and particularly XBMC wise, is there a difference between ATV1 and ATV2?

If they are the same I may instead buy a couple of ATV1stGens and use the fileshare functionality, as I have no other way of conveniently sharing my drives over the network (router has no usb port and have a laptop)

Vae

2 very different setup's, 1st gen runs Tiger 10.4.9 (with a bunch of stuff missing that you add back with atvusb-creator and Nito), 2nd gen uses IOS (4.x). 1st gen has a disk drive 40gb to 160bg and can be updated). 2nd gen has 8gb flash with approx 6gb useable. If all you want to do is stream ripped avi's etc directly from the USB port, go 1st gen. Hardware isnt dramatically different. However if you want netflix, use frontrow, use airplay and can stream from an SMB connected NAS, then 2nd gen is the way to go.

http://support.apple.com/kb/SP19
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP598

[Vaevictus2]

great thanks guys,

looks like I am going to go with HTPC for xbmc + 2tb disk for the living room and an appletv2 running xbmc for the bedroom

Cheers,
Vae

[joshua.lyon]

great thanks guys,

looks like I am going to go with HTPC for xbmc + 2tb disk for the living room and an appletv2 running xbmc for the bedroom

Cheers,
Vae

You may even be able to pick up an ION system, a 2TB HDD, and an AppleTV 2 for under the price of your original system... The ION systems can be had for ~$200 USD and XBMC now supports hardware HD decoding on those chips (VDPAU and DXVA).

I'm running a Revo 1600 in the living room which has a 3TB hdd hooked up to it. It plays the 1080p content silky smooth and it acts as my main server (NAS, Downloads, Web Server, etc) with no problems.

[Jamin]

The Apple TV 2 is very much just a front end to the entire entertainment system.

Have 4TB (7200rpm SATA2 only) on a decent gigabit NAS box hidden in the roof, then use a ATV2 in each room to access all the content and to control it.

No one wants a loud PC with harddrives and fans running in the same room while a good movie is on! hah

[bircoe]

is there a difference between ATV1 and ATV2?

They are 2 very different beasts...

Apple TV 1 is based off PC hardware (Pentium M CPU and nVidia GPU)
Apple TV 2 is based off iPad hardware (ARM CPU and PowerVR GPU)

Apple TV 1 is essentially a low spec Mac Mini running a trimmed down version of Mac OSX, enough grunt to playback 720p video's and has inbuilt hard drive, 160gb out of the box and can be upgraded using standard laptop hard drives plus full USB host capabilities.

Apple TV 2 uses the same operating system and hardware platform as the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad, has 8gb of built in flash storage which is used for firmware and apps, can be used for storage but only after jailbreak, has NO USB host so cannot support "client" USB devices like Keyboard's, Mice, Hard Drives, Flash Drives, pretty much anything you can plug into a computer via USB.

Apple TV 2 is meant for streaming media, it's not meant to do the same or more than the Apple TV 1 it's a completely different product.

For more indepth info have a read of the wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_TV