Took the plunge..Apple TV & Apple Time Capsule..Help

john1000000boy

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Hello Everyone. I took a trip to PC World last night and picked up the 2 apple devices(further slavery to the half chewed pomme)

Now i need to get it settup. Having spent a couple of hours trying to get folders settup on my tc i kept on hitting dead ends. Watched the WHF video and hit dead ends there too. Googled and got the apple tutorial. Hit a dead end.

Seem to be conflicting arguments on whether my macbook has to be fired up at the same time to run the itunes??

Plan is to use tc for music/photos/movies and pipe it over ethernet to apple tv using ipad to control the lot and freeing up space on my macbook!!

I need to establish where on my mac itunes are stored(looked on apple support and it gives details there but setting up a folder in time capsule (seperate from time machine is proving impossible!!) HELP!!

I am a computer novice, go easy

Thanks
 
A

Anonymous

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Hi

You can get i-tunes to do the work for you. The insructions can be found here

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/
 

amcluesent

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Can you get a refund on the Time Capsule? It's not much use as general purpose NAS and it's not able to stream to ExpressApple TV by itself since it doen't run iTunes. You may do better with a Mac mini.
 

john1000000boy

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:pray:
sol_prior said:
Hi

You can get i-tunes to do the work for you. The insructions can be found here

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

Had a quick look and this looks idiot proof!! :pray: Will give it a try in the morning with a sore head and a Jeigger shot for a brain!!

Will let you know how i get on!!

A very happy Hogmannay from me!! :cheers:
 

john1000000boy

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:cheers: :beer: :cheers:
amcluesent said:
Can you get a refund on the Time Capsule? It's not much use as general purpose NAS and it's not able to stream to ExpressApple TV by itself since it doen't run iTunes. You may do better with a Mac mini.

Not sure if i can (purchased in PC World). Did look at the Mac Mini, whole point was to get wifi router in lounge again- with the bonus of 2tb of hard drive :wall: There is a NAS feature on it but needs configuring... Was hoping to access from @tv though

Happy New Year!! :dance: :cheers: :beer: :cheer:
 

rjb70stoke

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What about using the iTunes match service. Upload all your music to iCloud, then use the Remote app on your iPad, to play all your music from the cloud.

The only issue with this is the quality of the MP3's, if thats an issue for you. A friend has it set up and working, and but for a second or two of buffering for the first track, he says it works and sounds excellent.

Then if you can return the time capsule, buy a cheaper NAS drive and spend the change on :beer: :cheer:
 

DavieCee

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rjb70stoke said:
What about using the iTunes match service. Upload all your music to iCloud, then use the Remote app on your iPad, to play all your music from the cloud.

What if like me you have over 200Gb of music, plus 25Gb of movies and 37Gb of photos?

Apple haven't really considered enthusiasts for the Cloud. I will be sticking with my upgraded ATV1 thnks very much.
 

john1000000boy

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Thanks for the comments, I am trying to create a separate iTunes folder right now just copying from MacBook to tc right now. This is possible so in effect a nas with separate folder that the @tv will see. So will get a photo folder an iTunes folder and a movies folder, which should be seen by my @tv with my MacBook switched on running iTunes.....CORRECT or am I wrong??

I am getting increasingly worried that the time capsule was the wrong option. Should I have gone for a synology nas? If so what would the difference be?
Surely the ability to set folders on the time capsule is the same as "mapping a hard drive"

Copying about half way through it's 47gb apple lossless files....

Am i missing something here???

Thanks
John
 

rjb70stoke

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DavieCee said:
rjb70stoke said:
What about using the iTunes match service. Upload all your music to iCloud, then use the Remote app on your iPad, to play all your music from the cloud.

What if like me you have over 200Gb of music, plus 25Gb of movies and 37Gb of photos?

Apple haven't really considered enthusiasts for the Cloud. I will be sticking with my upgraded ATV1 thnks very much.

Davie, no doubt more will follow, we have to remember cloud services are still in their infancy. I'm with you fella, I'm sticking with my ATV1 with attached HDD, the idea of leaving a computer on constantly irks me, both in a usability sense and financially.
 

rjb70stoke

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john1000000boy said:
Thanks for the comments, I am trying to create a separate iTunes folder right now just copying from MacBook to tc right now. This is possible so in effect a nas with separate folder that the @tv will see. So will get a photo folder an iTunes folder and a movies folder, which should be seen by my @tv with my MacBook switched on running iTunes.....CORRECT or am I wrong?? I am getting increasingly worried that the time capsule was the wrong option. Should I have gone for a synology nas? If so what would the difference be? Surely the ability to set folders on the time capsule is the same as "mapping a hard drive" Copying about half way through it's 47gb apple lossless files.... Am i missing something here??? Thanks John

John, as far as I see it, the Time Capsule, is really the perfect companion to Time Machine on your Mac. Personally I prefer to back up what I want and to where I want it, rather than be ring fenced by Apples system. Maybe the ATV jailbreak would be your answer. I use it to play movies on my ATV1 from my NAS, as the conversion then transfer to my ATV is a bit of a drag, to get the right, working format.

With jailbreak you could use it for XBMC, which is a truly excellent media manager and player. IF (big IF) XBMC, could then see your time capsule folders, you could easily stream music and movies and a whole lot more to the ATV2. As it stands, you will still always need you MacBook on to access your files through your iTunes library.
 

john1000000boy

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So does that mean there is no way for @tv can see my itunes on the tc?? I think i have managed to create itunes folder on the time capsule. I think it is still under the data file in the 1st checkbox on the tc.
 

landzw

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No at current you need something like a PC or Mac running iTunes, though this might change in the future.

You can flash the ATV then it will read straight from the TC but it is a bit daughting for people who have never flashed stuff before.
 

The_Lhc

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I'm not a Mac user and I'm only reading this thread because I'm bored but my understanding of the TC is that it is a backup device, NOT a NAS device and as such isn't designed to share out its contents in the way a NAS would, so yes I think you've bought the wrong device.
 

landzw

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The TC can be used in the same way as a nas drive but it's just wireless, many partition the hdd for backing up and there own files, the problem is the costs of purchasing more than one TC starts to get expensive and you can get a lot more nas for your money
 

Paul.

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Ive always felt TC was a bit overpriced, airport extreme with a hd caddy plugged in via the handy USB slot is much better value and infinitely more upgrade able. TC is pretty though :)
 

john1000000boy

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landzw said:
The TC can be used in the same way as a nas drive but it's just wireless, many partition the hdd for backing up and there own files, the problem is the costs of purchasing more than one TC starts to get expensive and you can get a lot more nas for your money

Does this mean I cannot divide the content of the tc into folders like say music, photos,movies etc? If so this product does seem to be very limited... I really should have done a bit more research... So if this did my backups and I really wanted to be able to stream movies, music etc then a single bay nas drive would be the way to go then?

It seems crazy that the tc cannot be divided into smart folders and the content you want to access easily achievable... So in an office environment, the RCA content is only available as 1 folder in my case- data??

Seems nuts. Or am I missing something??
 

john1000000boy

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Paul Hobbs said:
Ive always felt TC was a bit overpriced, airport extreme with a hd caddy plugged in via the handy USB slot is much better value and infinitely more upgrade able. TC is pretty though :)

Another apple lover then Paul?

I really need to get this sorted out as it is making me crazeeeeeee
 

landzw

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Would you like you TC to be used as a backup and have your itunes folder on it too ?

Firstly you want to think about how much space you have on your computer v TC

e.g 500gb PC and a 2TB TC you would want to partition the TC 750GB and 1.25TB so the backing up can cover both amounts

are you using PC or MAC?
 

Paul.

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If you want a stable commercial quality jailbreak for atv, google firecore. It's really very good, enables a plethora of codecs and most importantly will enable the atv to view nas drives.
 

Ryan92

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You should be able to get a refund if the guy at PC world told you you'd be able to use your stuff in the way you originally wanted, I've done countless refund because collegues of mine have "blagged" to customers about something because they didn't know the answer. The last one I remember was an opened copy of android that was sold to someone with an iPad by one of my collegues. (I work in Currys BTW, as it says in my sig). Then maybe a NAS or as other have said, a Mac mini.
 

john1000000boy

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landzw said:
Would you like you TC to be used as a backup and have your itunes folder on it too ?

Firstly you want to think about how much space you have on your computer v TC

e.g 500gb PC and a 2TB TC you would want to partition the TC 750GB and 1.25TB so the backing up can cover both amounts

are you using PC or MAC?

I am using macbook for all media and it will be used exclusively with the tc. The macbook has a 160gb hard drive in it.

Ideally yes i want to organise my tc into folders say itunes music, Iphoto photos and any movies both home and bought in (wont happen a lot)

I do have a iomega 1.5 tb usb hard drive as well which i used for moving all media onto via time machine. It is tucked away safe. Would this be useful for say plugging into my tc??

Thanks

John
 

landzw

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Not that i have much experiance with the TC but i believe you can connect other external HDD to it.

So once you connect your TC you need to go to your Utilities and open up Disk Utility, this will show all your HDD connected to your mac. From there you can partition the TC .

So click on TC, go to partition and partition layout and set it to 2 partitions, you then have to work out how much you want to use for backing up and how much you want to use for remote storage for your mac

You can name each partition so you know what they are.

You then simply copy the files you want from your mac but the hole file like all of iTunes that contains all of the sub folders and then paste it to your correct partition.

Once done you will need to go into iTunes and redirect the folder to the TC and then the iTunes folder.

Personally i would not delete the files on the mac until you have downloaded a song or something and made sure its ended up in the correct sub folder on the TC.

Once your happy you can remove the folder from the mac

This also applies for all files, you just copy and paste and then redirect the application like iPhoto to the TC and folder

Setting up the Time Machine is easy enough, just direct it to the TC and the correct partition
 

john1000000boy

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landzw said:
Not that i have much experiance with the TC but i believe you can connect other external HDD to it.

So once you connect your TC you need to go to your Utilities and open up Disk Utility, this will show all your HDD connected to your mac. From there you can partition the TC .

So click on TC, go to partition and partition layout and set it to 2 partitions, you then have to work out how much you want to use for backing up and how much you want to use for remote storage for your mac

This makes it look like a conventional nas then??

You can name each partition so you know what they are.

You then simply copy the files you want from your mac but the hole file like all of iTunes that contains all of the sub folders and then paste it to your correct partition.

Once done you will need to go into iTunes and redirect the folder to the TC and then the iTunes folder.

Personally i would not delete the files on the mac until you have downloaded a song or something and made sure its ended up in the correct sub folder on the TC.

Once your happy you can remove the folder from the mac

This also applies for all files, you just copy and paste and then redirect the application like iPhoto to the TC and folder

Setting up the Time Machine is easy enough, just direct it to the TC and the correct partition

Will try this again and let you know how it goes...

Thanks

John
 
A

Anonymous

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John, a vanilla ATV will not work in the way you want because Apple hard code ATV's to have a local relationship with a Mac running iTunes and a cloud relationship with the iTunes store: You will need to jailbreak your ATV for it be able to see a NAS on your network. XBMC and FireCore have quite devoted followings though I've never attempted this personally.

I ran a TC as a NAS for a while, but the disk speed is too slow for it to be useful as a media server IMO. It will work, and partitioning the drive through Disk Utility (which is in your applications/utilities folder) will allow you to create the partitions you're seeking (photos, music, movies etc). However until you jailbreak your ATV this will essentially be meaningless (since, as mentioned, ATV is designed NOT to be aware of NAS drives).

You are also starting to encounter the walled garden of Apple's design "philosophy": Apple wants you to store your content in iTunes on your Mac, this is why its ridiculously easy to get content on an iphone, or an ipad, or streamed to your hifi through an Airport Express. What you're trying to do is outside the design philosophy of "the average Apple user" and hence the pain curve increases exponentially.

I would strongly recommend returning your TC if you have no desire to use it for your Time Machine Backups: It excels at this function and frankly is only adequate at being a NAS: It sucks as a media server so that money could be better deployed elsewhere in your setup.

I would consider taking a look at a dedicated NAS, Buffalo are good and relatively price sensitive, Qnap would be better since their software now supports the Lion architecture and they have a dedicated iTunes server mode, which means you don't need to have your macbook running to stream music around your house (though not Movies and TV shows - which isnt a problem if you jailbreak your ATV).

Finally, the iLife apps on your Macbbok are all designed to work locally from your Mac, you CAN have remote libraries but again you're now outside the design philosophy of the "average Apple user" (Apple considers running an external photo library a pro requirement, and therefore THAT customer would use the pro photo app, which is Aperture - the net result, iPhoto sucks at managing libraries on a NAS). Check out iPhoto Manager, its around £20 and helps get round this problem.

This is a very long and waffly answer to your question, your next steps IMO should be:

1). Partition your TC thruogh Disk Utility.

2). Create the folders you want in your TC partition (Music / Movies / TV Shows / Photos).

3). Copy your content from your Macbook to the corresponding folder (do NOT delete the content fro yoru macbook).

4). Jailbreak your ATV.

5). Test your ATV to make sure it can see the volumes in your TC NAS.

6). Holding down the option key: Load iPhoto.

7). Select "other library" and navigate to the Photo's volume in your TC NAS.

8). Update the iTunes Media Folder location (preferences/ advanced/ change)

TEST, TEST, TEST and make sure all your photos are there, they sync to your iPhone etc (in fact, do this for all your content).

For safety's sake, I would take a complete backup of all your content, ideally either into the other TC partition, or to an external hard drive and only then, consider deleting the content from your mac.

I hope this helps.
 

john1000000boy

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Thanks for all of that... It does seem to be a bit of a faff with the tc, just cannot believe that pc world would take back the tc at this stage. The guy in the shop did say that i would be able to access the tc content via my ipad...

I think i bought them on boxing day, but will need to check the receipt

This does seem the best option although i could go down a single bay NAS device while keeping the tc for backups alone

Are there any NAS devices that will allow me to run itunes without having macbook switched on??
 

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