I try to spend as much time as possible out of the apple sandbox.  I have used plex with AppleTV, and it works.  I just wish apple would pull their heads out of the sand and realize that I do not want to convert everything into an apple format, to get it to play with apple products.  Sony went this route, with mini-disc and their proprietary memory stick, and look where it got them.  They used to be the dominant personal audio player, ie: walkman, and now they are in last place.

Apple TV is great for certain things, but i don't want a PC running with iTunes open just to watch a movie once in a while. If i could connect my AppleTV V3 to a NAS and play my movies, I wouldn't look at anything else.

i recently purchased a WD TV Live for $100. it connects to a share on my Synology NAS it plays my movies, mp3, and shows my photos. But the interface is somewhat clunky. If the interface was similar to AppleTV V3, then it would be a winner.

going to try a popbox with the Extra Veggies driver soon. (I'm a Control4 dealer)

Can the WD Live pull directly from the NAS without a computer in the mix?

The thing that I don't enjoy, and refuse to implement for a client, is the whole "You need to load the DVD into the computer, rip it, convert it, sync to NAS...then after all that you can view it on this crappy 99 dollar black box." They just don't have the time or desire or knowledge to do that. So, for the most part they get an ATV since nearly 100% of them are already Apple people. Most are OK with that as they "own" the content and can then view at vacation homes or wherever since the movies are now referenced via the purchase history on their account.

I've been playing around with AirParrot a little and it streams DVD to my ATV fine but for the annoying interlacing artifacts issue that I haven't had time or motivation to figure out.

Yes it will play them without a PC in the mix


I use AnyDVD to ditch the encryption and Handbrake to make a single MP4 file. its a few steps, but its simple to use. AnyDVD runs in the tray, handbrake has presets for Apple products and will automatically remove the menus. all of my movies are ripped for Apple V1, but they play on my WD TV Live box. The movies are DVD and file size average 1GB.

The above is one of the reasons I really like MyMovies with AnyDVD. Put the movie in the drive, and up up pops the dialog box asking if I want to rip the movie. I push the button, and walk away. So your really think your customers are that stupid or lazy they couldn't handle that?

To me, the problem with the Apple products, is their love of formats that makes the need to transcode a necessity.

I gave OpenElec a try last night... love the boot time, but I found video performance on an old GMA945-based system was sub-standard compared to the same system running windows... even at 720p.

Besides for the color range being wrong (full instead of limited, but from what I read I could probably adjust that in a config file), if I tried to use subtitles the video became all laggy and out-of-sync with audio. It also seemed to drop frames at the best of times. No similar issues with the Windows version, even at 1080... overall, I blame the low-end hardware.

OpenElec is awesome, especially on current thin clients.  I have it running on an Zotac ID-41 Plus and it just works,  I use a Vortexbox for the backend, and it boots up faster than any BD player.  I evicted my cablebox as well, and use the PVR version of OpenElec to work with my HD Homerun Prime.