Can Apple TV play movies from another source?

"While Boxee and XMBC can certainly enable the Apple TV product to play remote content, the answer I was looking for was more about the native capabilities. The main reason for the native capability requirement is ease of use and supportability (me supporting my wife).

So after my research and testing it became clear that Apple doesn't natively support streaming content from a NAS device.

Another point worth mentioning is the limited graphic capabilities on the Apple TV. When trying to display a streaming video from a full DVD rip produced significant chatter/jittering on the television. Not suprising considering the Apple TV is designed to display compressed content instead of uncompressed high resolution video files.

In the end the Apple TV is a smooth product for Apple users who like living in the iTunes integrated world. Unfortunately it's not so nice as a stand-alone media center device."

"You can also add XBMC on an Apple TV. It's one of the best media players around and supports most files. No harm is done to the original software:

XBMC is installed onto the Apple TV
built-in harddrive but you will still
be able you use your Apple TV software
as normal, XBMC will only be an extra
option that you can launch from the
Apple TV's original menu when you want
to utilize the extra features and
functions that are available in XBMC
compared to the original Apple TV
software. So XBMC will not replace the
original Apple TV software, it instead
works as complement the existing Apple
TV software.

Here's the wiki on how to install it:

http://xbmcdotorg/wiki/?title=XBMC_for_Mac_on_Apple_TV"