Stream media from NAS to Apple TV without iTunes

When I got my first Apple TV I had my library full of music and pictures, soon I was growing that library with music videos, movies and tv shows.  The hard drive from my MacBook Pro (500GB) was beginning to run out of free space, that is normal since most of my videos are in HD mode. Well that made me think on some extra storage for my media files, I though of an USB drive as the first choice but then I realized that I didn't want to move around the house with my laptop attached to a USB cable so I decided to get a network drive (NAS), that is just a hard drive with an ethernet port that lets me map the folder through my home network to my laptop or any other device that is on the same network.  
Well I soon moved my video files from the laptop drive to the NAS drive, I linked the files with the new location on my iTunes library and I could play the videos on my Apple TV streaming from the MacBook Pro using the home sharing feature included in the Apple TV.  That worked very nice and I could enjoy my files and I didn't worry about space anymore.  

This was working like this:

The MacBook Pro was connected to the NAS and iTunes was reading the files from this NAS and presenting those files to the Apple TV.

As you can see on the image above, I have a mapped folder called OpenShare and inside that folder I have the Music Videos folder, so iTunes is reading the files from that folder. When the Apple TV needs to play a file, just asks the iTunes server on the MacBook and this presents the files, in this case the Apple TV doesn't connect direct to the NAS, well, now is the main point of this article, why can't I avoid the use of the MacBook since the Apple TV is on the same network than the NAS?  Well, it just a matter of Apple closing policy.  Most devices these days have the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) feature that lets them stream media from any DLNA server.  Well my NAS drive has DLNA server running by default so it's a shame I can not stream media on the Apple TV from the NAS.  Fortunately there is a workaround that I could accomplish after a long research on different mac blogs.  Here it is:

1. Copy all your media content to the NAS drive.
2. Assure that your NAS drive has a DLNA server software running (must of NAS have it)
3. (You need an iPod, iPhone or iPad for this one) Get the App 8player on the App Store. You can get the lite version first to test it and if you like it get the paid version (less than 5 bucks).

The free version:

The Paid version:

This App will let you play all you content inside your NAS on your IOS device.  But since IOS has the AirPlay feature you can send that media to your Apple TV.

4. After you open for the first time the App it will scan your network and find all your DLNA servers and you will get an icon depending on the brand of your NAS, mine is a LaCie device so I get this:

Note: Background colors and icons may be different since the App lets you customize them.

When you press on you NAS icon you will get the option of browse Music, Photos or Videos and then you can continue browsing all your content:

5. When you star playing a video, the AirPlay icon will show at the right botton of the screen:

When yo press the AirPlay icon you'll see this:

An then you'll be able to send the video, music or photo content to your Apple TV.


6. You do all this from your home network but there is a way that you can access your NAS from outside your home.  That is not part of this article but you can take a look at this link to do that:  http://08software.com/products/8player/3g.