Some advice please as i have a horrible feeling i've misunderstood what i could actually achieve with a NAS/ITunes/ATV 2 set up.
I already had a gen 1 ATV in my living room,and it soon became my favoured music playing device as it stored all my ITunes library (mostly ripped in Apple Lossless) on its hard drive which could easily be accessed using the IPhone remote app.It was linked to a Denon 4310 and usually sounded very good.Not as good as CD's but more than good enough given the ease of use.I also liked the fact that i didn't need to have my laptop running in order to access my ITunes library.
I wanted a similar set up for the bedroom,with the ability to listen to or watch anything stored in my ITunes library (and as an added bonus i also wanted to make sure my music was 'safe' as my laptop had been playing up recently and my external backups weren't done as often as they should be).
I did some research,looking through suggestions/opinions and reviews of products and set ups in What Hi-Fi and on this forum and eventually purchased an ATV gen 2 (jailbroken so i could watch more sport,which was important) and a Synology DS213j to hold (and back up) my ITunes library so that my laptop didn't need to be on. Note:It's probably worth pointing out that i did consider just buying a second hand gen 1 ATV and hooking that up to the amp/tv in the bedroom but it was the jailbreak features on the ATV 2 that also interested me.
As i'm not as computer savvy as most of the forumites seem to be i contacted a local IT guy and sent him details of the DS213j,told him what i wanted to achieve - i.e to have my whole ITunes library available to be streamed to my bedroom ATV 2 without the need for the laptop to be running - and asked him to double check that the products were capable of doing this,and if so was he capable installing it and getting it up and running.
From what i had understood,i'd have the synology holding all my ITunes library,sat in a corner and always turned on,ready to send it's music or video files to any Apple product that wanted to see/hear them.The IT guy said this was achievable.
But that is not what i have at present - i can listen to my complete music library through the DS Audio app on my IPhone,and i can listen to or watch purchased ITunes songs/films through my ATV 2,but i cannot access the complete library like i assumed i would be able to.In fact at present i can't even access the complete ITunes library when my laptop IS running ITunes ! (although i'm guessing that's something minor and easily fixed?).
Have i blundered in assuming the DiskStation would serve up my complete library of music (purchased through ITunes and ripped from cd's) or has the IT guy not set things up properly ?
If i want access to all of my music library in my bedroom,at night when my laptop is off,should i just buy an old gen 1 ATV ?
Sorry for the length of this post but i wanted to make sure i explained things properly - any advice would be gratefully received,even if it is bad news !
p.s i am hoping that even if i have blundered,some clever forumite may be able to tell me that the jailbroken ATV can stream the contents from my DiskStation using some of it's other software ? I sort of understood this might be the case but lack of computer savvy is seriously hindering me (and costing me a lot more money than i probably need to spend).
I already had a gen 1 ATV in my living room,and it soon became my favoured music playing device as it stored all my ITunes library (mostly ripped in Apple Lossless) on its hard drive which could easily be accessed using the IPhone remote app.It was linked to a Denon 4310 and usually sounded very good.Not as good as CD's but more than good enough given the ease of use.I also liked the fact that i didn't need to have my laptop running in order to access my ITunes library.
I wanted a similar set up for the bedroom,with the ability to listen to or watch anything stored in my ITunes library (and as an added bonus i also wanted to make sure my music was 'safe' as my laptop had been playing up recently and my external backups weren't done as often as they should be).
I did some research,looking through suggestions/opinions and reviews of products and set ups in What Hi-Fi and on this forum and eventually purchased an ATV gen 2 (jailbroken so i could watch more sport,which was important) and a Synology DS213j to hold (and back up) my ITunes library so that my laptop didn't need to be on. Note:It's probably worth pointing out that i did consider just buying a second hand gen 1 ATV and hooking that up to the amp/tv in the bedroom but it was the jailbreak features on the ATV 2 that also interested me.
As i'm not as computer savvy as most of the forumites seem to be i contacted a local IT guy and sent him details of the DS213j,told him what i wanted to achieve - i.e to have my whole ITunes library available to be streamed to my bedroom ATV 2 without the need for the laptop to be running - and asked him to double check that the products were capable of doing this,and if so was he capable installing it and getting it up and running.
From what i had understood,i'd have the synology holding all my ITunes library,sat in a corner and always turned on,ready to send it's music or video files to any Apple product that wanted to see/hear them.The IT guy said this was achievable.
But that is not what i have at present - i can listen to my complete music library through the DS Audio app on my IPhone,and i can listen to or watch purchased ITunes songs/films through my ATV 2,but i cannot access the complete library like i assumed i would be able to.In fact at present i can't even access the complete ITunes library when my laptop IS running ITunes ! (although i'm guessing that's something minor and easily fixed?).
Have i blundered in assuming the DiskStation would serve up my complete library of music (purchased through ITunes and ripped from cd's) or has the IT guy not set things up properly ?
If i want access to all of my music library in my bedroom,at night when my laptop is off,should i just buy an old gen 1 ATV ?
Sorry for the length of this post but i wanted to make sure i explained things properly - any advice would be gratefully received,even if it is bad news !
p.s i am hoping that even if i have blundered,some clever forumite may be able to tell me that the jailbroken ATV can stream the contents from my DiskStation using some of it's other software ? I sort of understood this might be the case but lack of computer savvy is seriously hindering me (and costing me a lot more money than i probably need to spend).