Want to play AVI on Apple TV (Apple TV 3) but have some problems? Well, Apple TV undoubtedly provides a great experience in enjoying videos, movies, TV shows and music in your living room on your television. However, when you want to play some AVI videos on your HDTV through Apple TV, you'll find it's difficult to do that since iTunes doesn't allow those AVI files to be added. That's because Apple TV supported video formats are quite limited and AVI videos are generally unaccepted. Here some simple ways to play AVI files on Apple TV (Apple TV 3) are introduced.

Since AVI is not a format supported by Apple TV, in order to watch AVI movies on Apple TV, you need to convert AVI to Apple TV formats (MP4, MOV or M4V). Here Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate is recommended to make AVI playable on Apple TV, Apple TV 2 and Apple TV 3. In just a few mouse clicks, you'll be able to view the AVI video clips on your Apple TV smoothly. Both Windows version and Mac version of this converter is available. The Mac equivalence is Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate for Mac. Just download the program and follow the tips below to easily make Apple TV play AVI files.

Download AVI to Apple TV Converter:

I have a lot of old.avi movies from the days when I was using a Windows PC. I’d like to play them on my Mac but I can’t seem to when running Mavericks. Drag in the movie you want to watch.

  1. Playing AVI and DivX files. This chapter from our book Troubleshooting Mac® OS X discusses why some Audio Video Interleaved (AVI) multimedia files do not play in QuickTime and provides methods for playing AVIs on Mac OS X. There has been confusion over AVI files since QuickTime® added support for such. AVI is a media container.
  2. Go to the official site and click on the “Download AVI player for Mac”. When the download is done, install the package properly. Launch the free AVI player for Mac and add AVI content. There is a big box of “Open File” in the middle of the screen. Simply click it to search for AVI files and open.

How to converting AVI vidoes to play on Apple TV

HowHow To Watch Avi Files On Mac

1Load AVI files to the converter

Launch the converter and click Add Files to import the AVI movies you need to convert. Or directly drag videos to the left item bar to load them. Batch conversion is supported so you can add multiple files for converting at a time. Besides AVI, this video converter can also convert MKV, WMV, MTS, FLV, VOB and more formats to Apple TV compatible formats.

2Choose Apple TV compatible format for output file

To view AVI on Apple TV, next you need to choose an output video format. This smart program provides the video presets for Apple TV, Apple TV 2 and the New Apple TV (Apple TV 3). What does that mean? That means you can convert AVI to videos with optimized settings for different Apple TVs and you don't need to worry about the incompatibility anymore! Simply select your Apple TV model as the output file format and click Convert to start converting the videos.

3Activate AVI to Apple TV conversion

When then conversion completes, click Open Folder to get the converted video files. Then, open iTunes and click File > Add File to Library to add the video clips to your iTunes library. After that, simply drag the video from your iTunes library to Apple TV in the Devices source list. After that, you can play and watch AVI videos on Apple TV without any problems.

Below is the video tutorial on how to play AVI files on Apple TV:

Download AVI to Apple TV converter:

How To Play Avi Files On Macbook

Tips: The other easy way to play AVI files on Apple TV is to use a third-party player. For watching AVI videos, you can use Beamer, ATV Flash or StreamtoMe. All of them are quite easy to use. You just need to install them following the instructions and then you'll be able to watch AVI movies on your Apple TV.

1. Beamer

Beamer is a media player that can be used with the Apple TV (2nd or 3rd generation) and play any movie file on it. It accepts all kinds of movie file formats like AVI, MKV, MOV, MP4, WMV, and FLV etc. just like any desktop movie player. Besides, it plays your videos and movies with very high quality playback, without any glitches. It’s optimized to give you the best quality movie screening. What's more, Beamer can be connected to your home theatre and enjoy the surround sound effect in the movie files. It can also automatically detect embedded subtitles and selects your preferred language. The last but not least, you can use the Apple TV remote control on Beamer.

2. ATV Flash

The ATV Flash supercharges your Apple TV to become an effective streaming multimedia platform for all your entertainment needs. You don’t need to change any physical aspects of your Apple TV to use the ATV Flash and it is very safe and simple to use. You can now stream media stored in your Mac or PC onto the Apple TV directly. Besides, you can play any music file like AVI, MP4, etc. and not just the ones from iTunes. You can use the Apple TV to surf the web, update your Twitter or Facebook accounts and use it just like your laptop or PC. ATV Flash will store all your settings and information by using the cloud backups with a single click.

How To Watch Avi Files On Macbook Pro

3. StreamToMe

StreamToMe plays music files; videos and photos stored on your Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, PC or Mac and can be streamed over Wi-Fi or cellular network too. It supports large number of formats – All kinds of file formats like AVI, MP4, WMV, etc. can be played. No prior conversion or sync required. Just tap the file to play it. It also integrates with iTunes Library. You can browse your iTunes files and playlists. Apart from that, StramToMe also streams movies up to HD quality. It plays movies and streams them over Wi-Fi with ease. It still offers flexible playlist modes. It supports single, continuous and random playlists. What’s more, it is compatible with a variety of devices. You can use the StreamToMe application on any PC using Pentium 4 or greater processors.

Considering that most people also would like to play AVI files on other Apple devices like iPhone, iPad and iPod, converting AVI to Apple TV acceptable format with Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate is recommended as a better solution to view AVI on Apple TV and virtually anywhere you like.

Apple TV compatible video formats:

AVI is a very popular video format which is widely used today. However, many QuickTime users just realized that it's always not easy to play AVI files with QuickTime player, especially when you have upgraded to the latest OS X 10.11 El Capitan. What's the matter? Why can't QuickTime play AVI videos? Just read on to find the reason and 3 possible solutions to solve your problems without any trouble.

An AVI is a free and open source container format. It can hold different types and unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks in one file. If you can't play AVI with QuickTime in Mac OS X, it's probably the video or audio codec problem. Frankly, there are a lot of options to help you play an AVI file in the Mac OS X (EI Capitan and Yosemite included), here are some solutions:

Solution 1: Convert AVI in Mac OS X

If you have a lot of AVI files and want to play them on more players like the iPhone, iPad or iPod, you'd better convert the AVI to other formats like the MP4, MOV, M4V or etc. Here, I'll recommend the Video Converter for Mac (EI Capitan and Yosemite compatible), which enables you to convert an AVI to any popular video format for various players, devices and applications. For QuickTime, you can convert the AVI to an MOV file that is associated with QuickTime. See more tips below.

How To Play Avi Files On Mac Quicktime

Step 1: Drag the AVI files onto the interface.
Step 2: Choose any format or device you want (most popular format or devices are also supported here).
Step 3: Simply hit Convert at the lower-right corner of its interface.

Solution 2: Play AVI in QuickTime by installing Perian plugin

The QuickTime player is mostly used in Mac OS, if you don't want to use the first solution to convert the AVI files to QuickTime compatible formats, you can try this solution, but no 100% work guarantee.

Perian, is a great open-source QuickTime component that allows playback of different video formats that cannot be played natively on your Mac computer. If you want to use QuickTime as your main video player, you may choose to download Perian because it provides the necessary codecs or components that will allow you to play AVI on Mac. If you have QuickTime 7, you may be glad to discover that it can actually play AVI files without needing any additional plug-ins and codecs.

What you need to know before downloading Perian:
1. The latest version 1.2.3 of Perian doesn't work on Mac OS X Mavericks, let alone Yosemite and Mac 10.11 EI Capitan because Perian requires installation of quicktime 7, which doesn't exist for Mavericks and above. It also doesn't work on Mac OS X Mountain Lion.
2. With a Mac running Mac OS X 10.7, say, Lion, you have to downgrade to the previous version, say 1.2.2. The version of 1.2.3 of Perian does not support QuickTime 10 in Lion and fails to fix the loss of audio after one second in xvid files with ac3.
3. Before installing Perian, you need to remove all QuickTime Components installed on your Mac, like FFusion, Xvid Delegate, 3ivX, DivX, DivX Decoder, XviD, msmpeg4v1, msmpeg4v2, AviImporter, EX_M4S2, Casio AVI Importer, AC3 Codec, and MatroskaQT.
4. For a Mac running Lion or Mountain Lion, converting AVI video to QuickTime is highly recommended.

Solution 3: Play AVI with a AVI player Mac

The VLC media player, is an excellent open-source media player that is known for supporting a wide range of audio and video files. Unlike other media players which have limited format-support, you will be surprised that VLC can play a video or audio file that you didn't even know existed. If your OS is Snow Leopard or higher, installing VLC is definitely a good choice especially if you only plan on watching AVI files on your computer.

Cons of this AVI player (VLC media player):

1. VLC player doesn't play AVI videos with high qualities.
2. VLC player doesn't support EI Capitan.

How To Watch Avi Files On Mac
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