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XBMC now installable on jailbroken AppleTV2

Ok this is some fantastic news. So here are some questions I have:

1. Will XBMC read the files drag / dropped onto an iPhone when in mass storage mode? Aka completely avoiding the need to use iTunes?

2. Is the iPhone4 powerful enough to output the video in 1080p (or 720p) via apple connector dock -> HDMI cable?

3. Is all HD content (x264,H.264, etc) hardware decoded, and smooth?

4. If hardware accelleration is enabled, what is the impact on battery by watching a 8gig x264 MKV file? Should it be similar to watching a native iPhone video?

5. No 5th question, but a massive thanks to the XBMC team for once again kicking ass!
 
Seems to be easier to boot when you just plug the USB & then do the remote buttons, then when it goes into DFU plug the power straight in.

SO much simpler than all that remote rage I just experienced!
 
macadam212 said:
I have it on my Apple TV 1. It looks nice but doesn't seem to do a lot, is it supposed to find my iTunes library????? I use Hand brake to rip content so that it is Apple TV compatible, so I guess it's just not for me. Boxee is cool though!
Click to expand...

You probably need to add a source in the videos section. Use your computers ip address as the source. Then if you have a Mac, make sure to turn on file sharing in system preferences. Then designate a folder to share, again in system preferences. Then go to XBMC on the ATV and use that folder as the source in the add sources section.
 
anim8or said:
Slightly off topic but very relevant...

Does anyone know if the tethered jailbreak means tethered during a full boot from a complete power off at the mains startup

or

tethered when booting from standby???

If its from standby then i think i will wait until some nice people discover an untethered jailbreak for my appletv2... having to turn on my laptop and connect the appletv everytime i wanna use it kinda defeats the purpose... i would be better just running xbmc from my laptop connected to my tv!
Click to expand...

A tethered reboot is not needed when waking from standby. You only need a tethered reboot from fully powered off ATV.
 
BlackMangoTree said:
Plex requires everything to be converted xbmc doesnt. this is by far better
Click to expand...

Respectfully, it doesn't. If the hardware cannot output the video in it's native format, then it gets transcoded on the fly. Example, if I'm viewing on another computer, it's going to be full resolution full everything. But if viewed on a appletv or iphone, ipad, ipod... it will transcode it to the max output of that device. Edit: Which is no different from how the new XMBC is doing it. As stated above, the AppleTV cannot output in 1080, as of now, but Firecore is working on that one.

As far as the iOS app, it's not just a remote, it can stream over wifi/3g any music and/or movies/ plex app's that you want. I've shown coworkers it and it has started streaming my movies/shows faster (on my iphone 4) than the netflix app that my coworker had on his iPhone 4.

At the end of the day, to each his own, but the plex media server in .9 is absolutely amazing. There's a reason that LG is using it to power all their Smart TV's and bluray players. By powering, I mean their network streaming capability.
 
drewyboy said:
Respectfully, it doesn't. If the hardware cannot output the video in it's native format, then it gets transcoded on the fly. Example, if I'm viewing on another computer, it's going to be full resolution full everything. But if viewed on a appletv or iphone, ipad, ipod... it will transcode it to the max output of that device. Edit: Which is no different from how the new XMBC is doing it. As stated above, the AppleTV cannot output in 1080, as of now, but Firecore is working on that one.

As far as the iOS app, it's not just a remote, it can stream over wifi/3g any music and/or movies/ plex app's that you want. I've shown coworkers it and it has started streaming my movies/shows faster (on my iphone 4) than the netflix app that my coworker had on his iPhone 4.

At the end of the day, to each his own, but the plex media server in .9 is absolutely amazing. There's a reason that LG is using it to power all their Smart TV's and bluray players. By powering, I mean their network streaming capability.
Click to expand...

The only difference is that with XBMC the transcoding part happens on ATV and not on the host machine. Depending on what profile XBMC uses, it is likely to result in higher quality and less buffering problems than the model that Plex uses for iOS devices, especially when PMS is running on a less capable Mac Minis. As far as I understand it, Plex transcodes HD files into 1.5Mbps, while XBMC will reduce the resolution but keep the quality close to original...
 
Thank you, finally!!
Now I can sell my underwhelming WDTV Live and get the ATV2!
 
Evgenyy said:
The only difference is that with XBMC the transcoding part happens on ATV and not on the host machine. Depending on what profile XBMC uses, it is likely to result in higher quality and less buffering problems than the model that Plex uses for iOS devices, especially when PMS is running on a less capable Mac Minis. As far as I understand it, Plex transcodes HD files into 1.5Mbps, while XBMC will reduce the resolution but keep the quality close to original...
Click to expand...

That's very interesting that XMBC does transcoding on the client side. I can only speak for my iPhone for Plex's iOS capability but I checked my settings and it streams 2Mbps. I may take a look at XMBC, but I love what Plex has does w/ their media server, so it'll be hard for me to switch, but always gota keep an open mind.
 
drewyboy said:
That's very interesting that XMBC does transcoding on the client side. I can only speak for my iPhone for Plex's iOS capability but I checked my settings and it streams 2Mbps. I may take a look at XMBC, but I love what Plex has does w/ their media server, so it'll be hard for me to switch, but always gota keep an open mind.
Click to expand...

Indeed, I prefer to have the server/client since it makes it easier to maintain the library, however, until plex gets fully featured clients on other platforms, this XBMC port seems to be a better solution. I read on plex forums that XBMC outputs better quality and possibly does passthrough DD5.1 and DTS. See http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php...unning-on-atv/page__view__findpost__p__140959
To me, this alone is enough to be excited since Plex client on ATV only does stereo at the moment...
 
Looks like I have a project for the weekend. I had my ATV2 jailbroken back when the first jailbreak was released, but have since updated to the newest stock firmware for airplay.
 
Boy am I regretting upgrading my :apple:TV to the 4.3 beta. I really want to try this out! I have XBMC running on my :apple:TV1 with Crystalbuntu, and it's great. The scraping isn't as good as Plex (which I have running on my mini), but depending on the skin you use, the end experience can be more or less the same.
 
i just started using xbmc on my hackintosh and i love it! works better than plex IMO and only thing was i had to get unicode working but that's all. now to buy a atv2 :D
 
Can anyone confirm whether this will work with streaming from a NAS?

Wouldn't there be some transcoding required for filetypes that can't be played natively on the ATV2? Can a NAS do this?

Thanks.

Also, is there any Windows jailbreak at all for the ATV2?
 
mstruve said:
Can anyone confirm whether this will work with streaming from a NAS?

Wouldn't there be some transcoding required for filetypes that can't be played natively on the ATV2? Can a NAS do this?
Click to expand...

yes! Just add the NAS as a network share.
No transcoding needed. XBMC will decode it all!
 
This finally makes the Apple TV worth something, because just playing iTunes formatted nonsense made the device worthless in my opinion.

You'd think Apple would make jailbreaking these devices easy as they're going to sell a lot more of them now that you can actually use it. My guess is though Apple sells these devices at a break-even point with the hope that you'll spend some money in the iTunes store.

XBMC turned a worthless piece of crap into what will now be the center of my home theater system. Now if I could only find one running iOS 4.1 so I don't have to do a tethered jailbreak...
 
spencers said:
yes! Just add the NAS as a network share.
No transcoding needed. XBMC will decode it all!
Click to expand...

Great, thanks.

Sorry to sound thick, but what do you mean by adding it as a network share? Is that a mac term? I'm only really familiar with Windows networking (probably in a minority on these forums!)
 
Slightly off topic, but please bear with me!

I've tried the WDTV Live Plus (and everything everyone says about the menus is true - they are pretty cumbersome!) which was connected to an Airport Express base station by ethernet cable, and was reading content fairly well of a NAS drive connected to my BT Home hub (a router and modem combined).

I bought a new Home cinema system (Sony BDV IZ1000W) which streams content from my NAS (except Video_TS files - annoying) but they seem to be slow in loading up.

I'm wondering if this is an issue with the Sony box (in which case, an ATV2 with XBMC looks good) or if it could be the Airport Express, or my Home hub, and was looking for advice from others!

Cheers.
 
Spanky Deluxe said:
As soon as Plex gets on the bandwagon I'll be getting one of these.
Click to expand...

not sure what you mean on the bandwagon. Plex has a ATV2 app and a ios app for iphone/ipad. works great over wifi and 3g. I would much rather have my mac mini (new version 2.4 with 8 GB DDR) due the transcoding that the ATV2 doing it as XBMC does. Ive used both XBMC and plex, and plex has a much better interface to me.
 
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