We were talking about installing a traditional closed circuit video system for our Youth Ministry to push out announcements, photos, and videos to our 5-6 classes each Sunday. We would hook up the closed circuit to the existing tv's in the classrooms and a few new tv's in the hall. We would broadcast the same content to all locations.

Then, we wondered... what if we installed an Apple TV in each location and allowed each class to pull content that was relevant to them. They could watch it whenever was convenient for the class and just watch the announcements or videos that were relevant to them.

In our situation the cost between a traditional closed circuit system and the Apple TV set up would be comparable. We are just trying to get our heads around a different mindset of letting each class pull the content they need/want versus pushing out the same content to every class. Of course, we are exploring options for filtering things that would be distracting or inappropriate, but what an amazing opportunity to communicate various messages to the ministry.

Do you have any thoughts on the idea? Resources? Extra cash?

Thanks,
Lee J.

I had a first gen apple tv and brought it back. The thing that made me really mad about it was it didn't support looping playlists I also thought apple tv was really hard to encode HD quality for as well. My last complaint about apple tv was it was a pain to use itunes to control it.

The biggest killer was you couldn't have a video or videos play infinitely. This is a crazy feature to not have. I am pretty sure it still doesn't support it.

A perhaps more radical approach would be to buy a $400 ps3 unit. It will stream and copy from any DNLA server. You can use multiple programs to enable DNLA if you have a mac as a server, and windows media 11 has it built in.

You also could save a bit more and use an xbox360, but it has pretty bad reliability if left on for extended periods of time.

The downside to the ps3 is it would take a few minutes to train volunteers, and apple tv is easy enough that people will automatically be able to use it with no training at all (from the client end that is).

Anyway, I suggest you check out the consoles....