Apple TV as Ethernet NAS

[MacDSmith2]

I'm thinking of buying an Apple TV for Christmas as an ethernet based NAS for my home network of (2) Mac Mini's and (2) PC's. The Apple TV would hold my iTunes video library and ripped DVDs, with an attached USB HDD for extended storage. The idea would be that I would rip DVD's and buy iTunes movies from my Mac Mini and save them to the Apple TV, from which I would watch them on my HDTV. Anyone have comments or suggestions on this plan? I assume the Mac Mini can "see" the Apple TV on the network as a hard disk drive.
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Retired: Altair 8800, PET, TI 99/4A, Apple II
Mac Plus, Mac II, Mac SE/30, Quadra,
20th Anniversary Mac, iMac Purple, G4 Blue & White, iBook Clamshell
Active: Mac Mini (OCT 09) 4 GB RAM, 2.66 GHz, 500 GB HDD

[TonyMontana]

I had an Apple TV a while back and I just got tired of the restrictions. Sure I could spend hours upon hours converting to an atv friendly format. But my time is precious and I couldn't keep up with the hacking and patches it took to play my current library. But to comment on your post, no I don't believe that the atv will mount as a drive like a normal NAS would. It ended up on eBay and I bought another mini.
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MacMini 2.0GHz C2D (2009)
MacMini 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo
Dell Mini 10v *OSX 10.6.4*

[ez061111]

I agree with Tony, the ATV is very restrictive. For it to work as you describe as an NAS, you will have to mod it and I don't know if a mod exists for that purpose. I bought one a while ago with the smallest drive available and utilized a shared drive on my home network that it would stream from without issues via gigabit ethernet; it currently resides on a TV in the garage that doesn't get used often. I'm not against them, but I would suggest buying the least expensive model.
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2.0 GHz i7 Mini 8 GB RAM, OWC Merc Extreme SSD & Samsung Spinpoint
2.6 GHz i7 Mini 16 GB RAM, Samsung 830 & Hitachi
15" 2.3 GHz i7 MBP 16 GB RAM, OWC Extreme Pro 6G SSD & WD Black

[thepainter]

I would nix that idea and go with a regular NAS. I've had a Buffalo NAS for years and it has yet to fail or drop off my network (knock on wood) which is more than I can say for the Drobo that I got (1st Gen). If you are into hacking, a Linksys NSLU2 can be had at a steal and with open source 'UNSLUNG' can be put on to give you all kinds of additional goodies - email server, ftp, asterisk, music server etc, etc.

[MacDSmith2]

OK, thanks guys! I'll re-think that plan!
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Retired: Altair 8800, PET, TI 99/4A, Apple II
Mac Plus, Mac II, Mac SE/30, Quadra,
20th Anniversary Mac, iMac Purple, G4 Blue & White, iBook Clamshell
Active: Mac Mini (OCT 09) 4 GB RAM, 2.66 GHz, 500 GB HDD

[orionjett]

I recently purchased a Hammer MyShare NAS N1200 and mirror mode. in a network with Mac and PC. great works, the value quiet, very well.
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dreambox 800s