[goMac]

Hi,

My iTunes collection is overflowing (tv shows), and I've started backing some of it up to external drives. This isn't the ideal solution, so I was wondering if I bought an Apple TV, if there was a method to archiving media to it. That is, I want to remove the media from my hard drive, and only keep it on the Apple TV. I know the Apple TV can sync like an iPod, but I just want to keep the media permanently on my Apple TV.

Which leads me to a few more questions. Can I stream from the Apple TV? Can I move my media back from an Apple TV to my computer if needed?

[vmarks]

Depends on what you do to it.

As it comes from Apple? No. From Apple, it's a video iPod on steroids. Media in iTunes syncs there. Delete from hard drive, it's gone from AppleTV.

However -- awkwardtv.org plugins and hacks let you turn on ssh/sftp and you can put media onto it and pull it back off.

[mdc]

There are 2 ways that I know of.

1.
* Find your TV Shows / Movies in your iTunes folder and move them to your external drive.
* Delete the TV Shows out of iTunes.
* Apple + Option drag your movies from your external drive into iTunes. When you hold Apple + Option the green (+) circle will disappear while you're dragging files into iTunes.

By Apple + Option dragging you tell iTunes to create aliases to the files and not copy them into your iTunes Library. If you go into you Apple TV you will see your TV Shows and they'll stream off your external drive.

2.
* Move your TV Shows to your external drive.
* Install the ATVFiles plugin.
* Mount your external drive on your Apple TV.