Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater I think I finally found the right solution

I use an AppleTV to do what you're doing. My entire music collection resides on the AppleTV, so no PC/Mac has to be running to play it, nor do I have to tie up an iPod Touch on a dock. Plus it does movie + TV rentals & purchases.

It all works perfectly & seamlessly. With HDMI & toslink outputs to my TV/AVR, and lovely on-HDTV screen artist/album/playlist navigation. And the software to control it is free from Apple, which lets me roam around the house and choose music wirelessly on my iPhone, no dongle required.

And it supposedly does support internet radio streaming too, though I have not tried it and it is not really a documented feature. http://www.macworld.com/article/135380/2008/09/addradiotoappletv.html

Everyone's opinion differs, but in my iTunes/iPod-centric household, the AppleTV has been a fantastic piece of technology that was well-worth the cost. IMHO, if you're living with and content with iTunes and iPods, the AppleTV is the best solution for bringing that experience to your home theater.

Is the remote app as fluid as using the regular ipod interface? Does it allow you to rate songs etc..? Thanks.

Almost. It looks and feels about the same as picking songs on the iPhone/iPod itself. The big difference is that there are a few delays in the process as data is fetched across the network. There is a must-wait couple-second delay when you first fire up the app as it links up with the ATV. Then when you pick a browsing mode (Album, Artist, Song, Genre, Playlist, etc), there is another must-wait second or two delay as the data is fetched. After that, smooth sailing. Album artwork takes an additional couple of seconds to load while you're looking at albums or when you select a song, but it is done in the background while you navigate - you don't have to wait for it to load.

I can't remember if the horizontal "Cover Art" display mode works or not. I don't think it does.


I don't think so, but I could be wrong. I'll check it out tonight when I get a chance to confirm/deny. I want to see if that streaming radio trick actually works anyway.

Maybe I'll even bust out the video camera and take a video of how the UI behaves.

No, the Remote App doesn't do Cover Flow, but otherwise it's exactly like selecting music on the iPod.

And internet radio works great! I didn't even know the ATV would do streaming internet radio until your post made me wonder. Just add stations to playlist(s), sync the playlist to the ATV, then just select them like any other song in a playlist. Just works. However, one minor disappointment is that it doesn't give you any Song/Artist info on the stream. You just get the radio station name.

Now you are making me want to get an Apple TV.

Now you are making me want a snack except all I have is grapes...

Doh! I knew there was something that I forgot to check...

If you wait long enough, you can have a glass of wine.

Ah USB to optical... BRILLIANT!!! How do you route it through the USB port though?

What Peter said.

I also have an Apple TV that I use for all my music. I've ripped all my CD's to Apple Lossless and it sounds great. You can pick up an older 40 gig Apple TV pretty cheap. You can then buy a large 320 gig hard drive on ebay for it with the software pre-installed for around $120, then you can load it up. I just added the large hard drive to mine and I'm real happy with it.