How to stream the .wmv movies to Apple TV using VLC with MacOS Lion

My iTunes music folder and all of my movies (in separate folders) are on an external drive. In fact, it's a NAS RAID box, but it's mounted on my Mac mini.

You just have to load the movies into iTunes. When you do, they'll be visible to the Apple TV. Of course, they have to be in the MP4/M4V favored by Apple. If you want to watch AVIs, etc., you'd have to "hack" your Apple TV. Haven't done this, but it sounds pretty easy these days.

Maybe we'll get an ATV Apps Store soon, and it will be easy to load other apps and stream all sorts of stuff to the ATV...

I'd recommend the Plex approach, not the Airplay solution. If you can handle the jailbreak (ATV2 only!), it's the best approach out there for non-iTunes movies on your ATV. And, I hate to say it here, consider the Roku, which is really cheap, officially supports Plex, and should be able to play anything you throw at it.