Can Apple TV play movies from another source?

Question

Does anyone know if an Apple TV can play movies that are located on a remote share? For example, I rip my movies and store them on a NAS device. Can Apple TV be configured to play the movies over the network?

Solution

While Boxee and XMBC can certainly enable the Apple TV product to play remote content, the answer I was looking for was more about the native capabilities. The main reason for the native capability requirement is ease of use and supportability (me supporting my wife).

So after my research and testing it became clear that Apple doesn't natively support streaming content from a NAS device.

Another point worth mentioning is the limited graphic capabilities on the Apple TV. When trying to display a streaming video from a full DVD rip produced significant chatter/jittering on the television. Not suprising considering the Apple TV is designed to display compressed content instead of uncompressed high resolution video files.

In the end the Apple TV is a smooth product for Apple users who like living in the iTunes integrated world. Unfortunately it's not so nice as a stand-alone media center device.

Comments

[sapbucket]

Thanks for the info, but I was looking for info if Apple TV could do this natively...

[John T]

AFAIK no, it must use iTunes natively.