depmode18

Hey guys, I appreciate the help everyone gets on this page.

I'm quite new to the Apple video and tv game, so I need some big help if you dont mind.

I have a huge DVD collection of movies that I want to put into one of the apple devices, such as the Apple TV or Video Ipod. Which product would be good enough? And when I say HUGE collection, I mean like 400+ movies. I have a mini blockbuster in my closet.

Anyway, I understand how to convert the dvds into itunes format. But I was wondering if it's possible to have everything in one device, and be able to play that on my TV?

What I want is a device that I can just keep next to the television, and when I want to play a movie, I just turn it on and and pick the movie I want from the device. And it will play on my television. I'm sure that with my collection it would far exceed the maximum capacity of 160GB which is the limit for Apple TV or Video Ipod. Would I also need an external hardrive to store all the movies?
I was thinking of storing all the movies on the external hardrive, connecting the drive to the itunes on my laptop, and then broadcasting that through Apple TV.

Please help me out guys, I'm trying to learn before I make the purchases.

ejsjrnc

This can be answered by asking yourself these questions...
1. Do I want to be able to take my media with me wherever I go?
2. Do I want to have to spend money on 1 device to store the files and another to be able to output to the TV?

If you go the video iPod route, you would have to purchase the iPod as well as an apple certified dock to allow video output to the TV. The newest generation of ipods have the video output from the headphone jack disabled without the proper dock connection. The iPod would allow you to take your movies with you and allow you to watch them on your tv with the right accessories.

If you go the AppleTV route, you would not need to purchase additional hardware aside from cables to output to tv, but it's not portable.

Short answer, yes. See above....

This sentence alone would point to an AppleTV as your solution.

Yes, you would need the hard drive space to store your itunes formatted movies regardless of which device you pick. If you go iPod, you would have to copy it to the iPod and you could then delete it from your hard drive if you were OK with losing it in the event of an iPod failure. With AppleTV, you have to sync content to the device or your can stream it from itunes on a computer. You would also have to have the disk space to store the media files on the computer. And also, mp4 movies don't take up 4-9GB like DVD's do. I've got 150 movies in a folder right now that is just topping 60GB in size.
If you like all of the extras that are on DVD's, then you may want to consider turning a Mac Mini into a home theater pc and you'd be able to playback DVD's or rip them to iso format to the hard drive and playback from there.

You can stream ALL of your media to an AppleTV and not sync any of it, but FF and REW don't work quite as well via streaming as they do playing from the device storage.

The other thing that AppleTV has over the iPod would be the ability to navigate the content via the couch as opposed to scrolling through the content on the iPod screen and then outputting to TV.

I myself have both an iPod and AppleTV, but I started with a 5G 60GB ipod first and started outputting it via headphone jack to my TV and got tired of not being able to pause, adjust volume, FF or REW from the couch.

depmode18

thank you for the answers esj, i really appreciate it.

i've studied quite a bit on the apple tv since i posted here, and i eventually got one. lol, i've learned how to input 5.1 on the apple tv, and sync everything from the external hardrive. the resources and information on the internet is astounding. the apple tv is really the future, and if apple markets and adds additional necessity features, then the apple tv will be as successful as the ipod, no doubt about it.

thanks a lot for your help once again.