So I'm tech stupid and have outdated/stoneage electronics at home, but am updating/upgrading. I'm reading good stuff about Apple TV, but have some very specific Rockets related questions. 1. If I'm streaming the Rockets through Firstrow or ItsMyFault's site (H-Town Sports, which is awesome by the way) on a non-Mac PC, can Apple TV put that stream on my big TV. (I realize that the picture won't be HD and audio won't be surround, I just want to see it on a big TV. 2. Can I stream the Rockets through Firstrow or ItsMyFault through an Ipad? -- Also, is Apple TV compatible with a Kindle and the movies we have previously purchased on Amazon? (background: we have few dvd's, almost zero blueray dvd's, don't have a blueray dvd player and I'm thinking this Apple TV thing is better than buying a blueray dvd player).
As far as I know you have to be using a product with an apple operating system (i.e. iPhone uses iOS) in order to stream to Apple TV. iPad, iPhone or apple computers will stream to Apple TV. I have Apple TV and love it, I frequently stream from my iPad and iPhone. I would think you would have no problem streaming First Row from iPad to Apple TV but there are some video players that do not stream video to Apple TV but they are few and far between. Apple TV is not compatible with Kindle.
You'll need to "flash" your Apple TV to get those types of features. I used Firecore's aTV flash. Though its great for connecting a hard drive with movies of any file type it doesn't support those buggy, ad swarmed flash sites like Firstrow very well. The flash is still awesome though.
I don't know what Firstrow or Itsmyfault's stream is, but I just tested watching highlights from the first page of nba.com on my ipad and mirroring that on the appletv and it worked fine. Not great quality, but definitely watchable and the audio worked as well. If they use flash, that will be a problem (see suggestion above?) I'm not sure what the rules are on this, HBOgo for some reason can't stream from the ipad to the appletv (not when I tried), so there are issues with airplay and tv mirroring at times, but I would think it would work for the scenario you're talking about. If you have iTunes on a PC on your network, any movies should play on appletv from your itunes library. I can't be sure about that, as I have a mac, but with iTunes I would -think- it would work. I think.
You purchase a download from the fire core site (very trustworthy and great instructions) and load the package onto a blank USB thumb (flash) drive and insert it into the USB slot on the Apple TV. Once you turn the Apple TV on it will begin downloading the package from the USB drive. Here's a link with a video http://support.firecore.com/entries/259289-installing-atv-flash
from what I read that was an HBO issue (them not allowing it) as opposed to an Apple issue... but I'm no expert.
