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7DSniper

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 15, 2012
130
0
South Florida
With Airplay from the Mac now avaliable, is a ATV 3 jailbreak really necessary? Maybe I'm missing something as I am pretty new to ATV but what ever I can get on my MacBook I can now get on my ATV. Please enlighten me as to what a jailbreak for ATV3 means now.
 
My late 2009 MacBook Pro is not Air Play compatible, so jail break is a huge plus for me and others with older machines.
 
Jailbreaking adds additional capabilities to the device, instead of being stuck with what it ships with. It can playback additional media formats, can stream directly from a server or NAS without iTunes, can run actual OS X applications (only the ATV1 can do this, since it is powered by an Intel CPU and a version of OS X 10.4.7), etc... Having the ability to customize your device and be control of what you can do with your product is something I love about jailbreaking.

There is a lot to gain from a jailbreak. If you can get along without one, great! But some of us, like myself, would not be interested in an ATV3 unless we had a jailbreak available. Alone, the ATV3 is too locked down into Apple's world. With a jailbreak, the device is more useful.
 
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Here is what i hope for my ATV3 to be do after a jailbreak, including but not limited to.

Features:
Filesupport for AVI, DVR-MS, FLV, M2TS, M4V, MKV, MOD, MOV, MP4, MPEG, MPG, MTS, TS, WMV, DVDMEDIA, IMG, ISO and VIDEO_TS/VOB, AAC, AC3, AIFF, CAF, DTS, FLAC, MP3, M4A, OGG, WAV, WMA
Acces files on NAS and SMB and more network options (no computer on with itunes needed)
Weather

Run graphical apps:
XBMC
XBMC plugin to control Transmission at home
WebGUI for Transmission to control it from work or home
Facebook
ATV Flash (Black)
Webbrowser

Commandline Apps i want:
nmap
Transmission
SSH
FTP server
Aptitude
 
I want apple tv to do these main things:

1 - access content on a NAS device
(who the heck wants to rely on having a pc/mac on all the time?!??)

2 - access content that is not in an itunes library
(same comments as above really)

3 - support for all file formats
( I just want to click and watch, no faffing with conversions)

If Apple could do all this natively then I wouldnt have a need to JB.

In summary: flexibility, choice.
 
My late 2009 MacBook Pro is not Air Play compatible, so jail break is a huge plus for me and others with older machines.

Yea this was such an apple move which really sucks. I feel for ya.

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Thanks for the replies guys. I guess controlling all if the features above natively would be huge but I guess I will see how I get along with Airplay and my Mac.

I just look at my laptop being capable of a lot of things and if my laptop can get then so can my TV.

Maybe there will be a jailbreak for the ATV3 someday and I can see the capabilities.
 
With Airplay from the Mac now avaliable, is a ATV 3 jailbreak really necessary? Maybe I'm missing something as I am pretty new to ATV but what ever I can get on my MacBook I can now get on my ATV. Please enlighten me as to what a jailbreak for ATV3 means now.



LOL

Free stuff?
 
Yea this was such an apple move which really sucks. I feel for ya.

It wasn't "an Apple move." The CPU in older Macs isn't capable of encoding a stream of H.264 video without slowing everything else down too much. It's not an artificial limitation, it's actually a hardware limitation.
 
Is it ever "necessary" - of course not, why even bother asking this question?

If you're looking for bad design decisions such as pushing processors too far and getting garbage performance and stability, I hear there are some android TV devices..
 
It wasn't "an Apple move." The CPU in older Macs isn't capable of encoding a stream of H.264 video without slowing everything else down too much. It's not an artificial limitation, it's actually a hardware limitation.

Really? You believe that? So an iPhone can mirror to airplay but my 2009 Quad Xeon Mac Pro can't? Right
 
Really? You believe that? So an iPhone can mirror to airplay but my 2009 Quad Xeon Mac Pro can't? Right

The compatible iPhone models have hardware H.264 encoding, the earlier non-Core i5/i7 based Macs do not.

Additionally, I didn't say that your MacPro couldn't do it. I said: "The CPU in older Macs isn't capable of encoding a stream of H.264 video without slowing everything else down too much." Go ahead and use Air Parrot if you want to stream to your Mac Pro to your Apple TV.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/mountain-lion-airplay-mirroring-v-airparrot-fight/
 
Its really hysterical how everyone writing in this thread seem to have absolutely no idea what the jb atv2 can do, the literally thousansds of movies including whats in theaters NOW, foreign stations like uks bbc and ch 4 etc literally thousands of tv shows and series on and on to hardcore xxx. But you know what, figure it out just like i did. I have two atv2s that are jb and one i wil jb when i get around to it. The atv3 is junk and so is any atv2 that us not jb.
 
You obviously don't know what your talking about. Research the technology next time.

Thanks for adding your 2 cents to this thread it has been a big help.

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Its really hysterical how everyone writing in this thread seem to have absolutely no idea what the jb atv2 can do, the literally thousansds of movies including whats in theaters NOW, foreign stations like uks bbc and ch 4 etc literally thousands of tv shows and series on and on to hardcore xxx. But you know what, figure it out just like i did. I have two atv2s that are jb and one i wil jb when i get around to it. The atv3 is junk and so is any atv2 that us not jb.

This is why I posted the question, I have no clue what a jailbroken ATV is capable of. I enjoy mirroring my Macbook Pro that's worth the price of the device to me personally.
 
The new beta of Air Video Server no longer requires real-time transcoding of h264 files, which eliminates most of my jailbreak need.
 
My late 2009 MacBook Pro is not Air Play compatible, so jail break is a huge plus for me and others with older machines.

Wait a sec, why isn't a 2009 MBP running 10.8 airplay-able?

I'm considering getting an ATV, but what you say next may shatter my dreams of using my TV as a second monitor when I'm doing graphic design.
 
Wait a sec, why isn't a 2009 MBP running 10.8 airplay-able?

I'm considering getting an ATV, but what you say next may shatter my dreams of using my TV as a second monitor when I'm doing graphic design.

It lacks the hardware in the chipset that supports it. Only on Sandy or Ivy Bridge.

But you if you're close enough to the TV, there may well be a wired option.
 
Until I can use Airplay to extend the desktop rather than mirror, and until I can use it for more than an hour or so without the connection dropping, requiring a restart of my macbook, I would rather have my ATV3 jailbroken.

I just find it silly to have my TV playing the same thing my thunderbolt display is playing on the other side of the room, making my computer useless while hulu is streaming.
 
Until I can use Airplay to extend the desktop rather than mirror, and until I can use it for more than an hour or so without the connection dropping, requiring a restart of my macbook, I would rather have my ATV3 jailbroken.

I just find it silly to have my TV playing the same thing my thunderbolt display is playing on the other side of the room, making my computer useless while hulu is streaming.

That's why I use my iPad if I need to use a computer while mirroring my MacBook. And Hulu is on the appletv now so no need to use it on the computer. I only watch full screen movies from sites like movies2k now if I use mirroring. No need to jailbreak now because I have xbmc on my Mac and can mirror anything I want.
 
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