Streaming Media from remote hard drives

Hi members - what's the best way to stream media (videos) from hard drives (connected to my iMac) to my Mac Book Pro?

Is Apple TV the answer or is there a better way?

Cheers, Mal

The best?? Not sure... But, an AppleTV would not be used for that. There is no input on your MBP for an AppleTV.

Just browse to the drive in Finder, double click the file to open it and play it.

Your iMac will have to be running since they are connected to it instead of directly to your network.

Thanks for your response bobtomay.

a : When I try to stream in the manner you described it buffers all the time and is unwatchable. That is by finding my iMac's external drive on my network and then clicking on the video file I want to view.

b : How do you connect your hard drives directly to your network (without them being plugged into a computer)? In other words, can you connect them directly to your router modem?

Cheers, Mal

I do with most of mine - it costs extra though.

You have to purchase external drives or enclosures that have an ethernet connection.

It's a lot slower and I never tried it having them connected via USB (2) to a computer and then streaming to another computer. You're limited by that USB connection. It should be fast enough, but in real world, I don't think it'll always work so well.

If your external has a FW connection, you might give that a try to see if it helps. I have one raid external that uses FW800 that does a pretty decent job.

Other thing - if using wifi - make sure you're running an 'n' only network - running a combo 'n' 'g' network and have some 'g' device connected can slow the network down to a crawl - especially if you try streaming any HD content. I keep two wifi networks in my house for this with 'n' only that goes to any device that will stream from another device. All devices where I have my data stored are hard wired into the network or the one FW device I have.

Thanks so much for your knowledge bobtomay.

So I'll go out and purchase hds that have an ethernet connection and put my current ones on eBay.

Finally, can you tell me more about "n" and "g" networks? I've never heard of this before. How do you ensure your network is "n" as opposed to 'n' 'g'?

Once again thanks for your help.

Cheers, Mal from AU