Can I play non-apple video on appletv?

I'm sure this question has been asked but I couldn't find it.

I was wondering if you are able to play video/movie content that isn't bought through apple on your apple tv. For example a family video that you made or a DVD that you rip to your computer.

Alot of my dvd's i've ripped as video files onto my computer cause its easier when traveling and going to school then carrying around DVD's that get damaged.

Am I able to play these fine?

I can't comment on copyrighted DVDs, but as long as the video is in the correct format, it will generally play with no problem. I play home movies on my AppleTV all the time.

What if I made a DVD and then rip it do my computer as a video.ts file. I understand that it can be played by Front Row if you drop the file or an alias into the movies folder. Would this also work for Apple TV?

I don't think it would, as Apple TV, like iTunes, doesn't play mpeg-2 format. You'd have to convert it and drop it into iTunes before Apple TV can play it.

Thanks.

Re: Can I play non-Apple video on ATV?

Your best bets for converting unencrypted DVD video for use on your network/Mac/ATV would be one of the following:

EyeTV 3 (import video to Eye, then convert the resulting MPEG-2 muxed file to either DV, MP4, or a MOV file (all of which will be easily locatable with iTunes/Front Row/ATV...)

Roxio Toast 9 (same concept, different steps - Toast has help files to push you through)

or QTPro with the MPEG-2 playback codec (play it back in QTPro, then export in your format of choice...)

Hope that helps!

Patrick

You can use handbrake to convert the video files to ATV format. I jus told someone else how to do it go here:http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110067

I have three Apple TV's and I am in the process of ripping my home DVD collection to apple tv format.

I use Handbrake for my DVD's. I just click the appletv preset and it is pretty easy. You could use mac the ripper to rip a bunch of movies and then encode bunch of movies at once in handbrake. I have been to lazy to do this.

MetaX has been very helpful in making tagging very easy.

For any content that I had ripped to avi for my old XP box I use VisualHub.

Regards,
Blair