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XBMC now installable on jailbroken AppleTV2
- Thread starter spencers
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I perused through the posts and tried to find the answer(s) so if they were there, sorry I may have missed it.
1. Will XBMC play nice with your existing iTunes library and will it stream moveis via iTunes? iTunes is just one of our sources for movies since we ditched cable.
2. Can you hook up an external HD and browse it like an iTunes libarary?
3. Will the Apple TV Remote and app work with it?
Thanks!
1. Will XBMC play nice with your existing iTunes library and will it stream moveis via iTunes? iTunes is just one of our sources for movies since we ditched cable.
2. Can you hook up an external HD and browse it like an iTunes libarary?
3. Will the Apple TV Remote and app work with it?
Thanks!
1. Yes, XBMC is added as an extra menu within the normal ATV2 interface you are used to. Everything is intact. So for iTunes content you can just stick to using the normal way you are used to. I would only use XBMC for content iTunes can't play.
2. Don't know about that, if it's not there now I'm sure it's a possibility later. EDIT: looks like this will never happen, the ATV2 doesnt have a USB host controller in its hardware so it won't be able to read or write to an external USB disk
3. The Apple TV Remote does work with XBMC, I don't know about the Remote app though.
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Can anyone explain to me why I would buy an ATV2 if I already own an XBox360 which resides in my living room? I feel like a lot of people love this thing, but I'm not seeing it do anything that I can't already do with my Xbox...
All my movies, music, TV Shows, and pics are saved on a NAS (ReadyNAS Duo). No PC running to stream my stuff. Turn on Xbox, go to videos, NAS, BAM. Am I missing something here that the ATV2 would excel at, or do differently?
All my movies, music, TV Shows, and pics are saved on a NAS (ReadyNAS Duo). No PC running to stream my stuff. Turn on Xbox, go to videos, NAS, BAM. Am I missing something here that the ATV2 would excel at, or do differently?
You're not missing anything, if the Xbox360 works for you, then stick with it. The ATV2 is completely silent though. Depending on the model 360's can be pretty noisy.
The physical remote will work with both. However, the Apple Remote app will only work with the ATV side of things. You'd need an XBMC Remote app to control the XBMC side if you want to control it with your phone.
Unfortunately I've found both 1080 and 720 video to stutter A LOT. Even 480p isn't particularly smooth. The atv2 CPU sits at between 20-30% utilised with XBMC at idle, before you even attempt to play a video.
Early days I guess so I'll watch and see how it develops, but in the meantime PLEX suits my requirements perfectly.
Early days I guess so I'll watch and see how it develops, but in the meantime PLEX suits my requirements perfectly.
I intsalled XBMC and it is nice, but it is a lot more hassle than Plex. The way that Plex just works and sets the server up with all the metadata is just brilliant. I am going to persevere with XBMC, but setting up the all the folders and getting the metadata is starting to annoy me!
Perhaps I am wrong, but the main advantage of XBMC over plex at the moment appears to be the ability to work from a NAS drive. As I do not have a NAS drive yet, I think Plex is going to do for me for the time being.
Perhaps I am wrong, but the main advantage of XBMC over plex at the moment appears to be the ability to work from a NAS drive. As I do not have a NAS drive yet, I think Plex is going to do for me for the time being.
Wirelessly posted (This odd thing that I hold: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)
This looks like wonderful stuff. However I have a question of my own. I only watch films / tv about once or twice a week. So I don't want a server or NAS drive on and spinning all the time. I set up a MythTV box a long time ago and I don't really want to go through that again
I also don't want to have to connect to a laptop or pc to run it. Partner and kids can't handle that kind of geekery.
So what are my best / cheapest options for a low-power xbmc with a few TB of storage? Apple TV with a NAS that supports spindown? (Which ones do?) Or a G4 mac mini, opened with a larger HD in it plus a USB drive?
Seems Plex needs a server so xbmc would be better for this. I also need utterly strong subtitle support and video_ts support. I don't have the time or the hardware to transcode all my DVDs plus sort out their subtitles.
This looks like wonderful stuff. However I have a question of my own. I only watch films / tv about once or twice a week. So I don't want a server or NAS drive on and spinning all the time. I set up a MythTV box a long time ago and I don't really want to go through that again
I also don't want to have to connect to a laptop or pc to run it. Partner and kids can't handle that kind of geekery.
So what are my best / cheapest options for a low-power xbmc with a few TB of storage? Apple TV with a NAS that supports spindown? (Which ones do?) Or a G4 mac mini, opened with a larger HD in it plus a USB drive?
Seems Plex needs a server so xbmc would be better for this. I also need utterly strong subtitle support and video_ts support. I don't have the time or the hardware to transcode all my DVDs plus sort out their subtitles.
Really? Were you not around for the divorce ????
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=20916311640&topic=4152
http://www.osxbmc.com/
Original OSXBMC was good but a buggy and the original OSX team has split, and the developers formed PLEX.
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This is the most important question. Can anyone answer it!
I don't want to buy a NAS or have another computer on
I have plex working from a NAS and it works fine. Setup took a minute to figure out but in short I have OSX mount the NAS drive 1st as it boots then loads plex 2nd. The to ensure it all stays running I have a cron job run every minute that makes sure plex and the drive are mounted. That way if plex ever crashes on my mini im never 60 seconds away from it being back up. Agree on XBMC being a pain to setup. Not only is it a pain but its a pain because you have to do it to every device you have where plex goes back and connects to the main server and sees all of your content whether its ATV or iOS its seamless.
He probably was, which is why he said what he said
This picture (taken from the plex website) says a fair amount:
Plex is an basically an outdated version of xbmc with a dumbed down skin engine, simplified settings and a closed source media server - It has nowhere near the development pace, quality, community, features, etcetc
It's absolutely fine to prefer one over the other (plex's roots and closed course media server may cause a raised an eyebrow to most htpc/oss followers, but it obviously suits those heavily invested in the itunes-centric/mac drm world), but I wouldn't post silly assumptions as fact
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Ok, so for the last 12 hours, here I am trying to get this thing connected. What is interesting is all of your protocols are for PC!!!
And your manuals just waffle on about how you can get the listing of the actors names and directors, but FAILS to mention how to connect the 2 machines together wireless.
What is also interesting is that the wiki is so dissorganised that it is impossible to actually get any step by step instructions.
So please accept my apologies for my clear impatience at this point & frustration. Clearly we are the guinea pigs. Geez there we go again.
Gowin for a shmoke!!
And your manuals just waffle on about how you can get the listing of the actors names and directors, but FAILS to mention how to connect the 2 machines together wireless.
What is also interesting is that the wiki is so dissorganised that it is impossible to actually get any step by step instructions.
So please accept my apologies for my clear impatience at this point & frustration. Clearly we are the guinea pigs. Geez there we go again.
Gowin for a shmoke!!
Unless I missed it somewhere, I don't think this question was addressed. So what's the deal? By jailbreaking the AppleTV do you lose the ability to purchase shows and stuff from iTMS or play things you have already purchased?
No.
By installing XBMC you are simply adding an additional option to the Apple TV's standard menu.
So you have Movies, Tv Shows, Internet, XBMC, Computers and Settings.
By selecting XBMC you launch the application and then can view media that streamed from you mac that the Apple Tv would not natively be able to play like .mkv or .avi files.
The original Apple TV functionality is still intact and can be used as usual.
Can't you get a scraper for XMBC? I admit that setting up Plex for the first time isn't exactly a 5 minute ordeal, but the scraping is totally automated.
Does XMBC do scraping???
I won't lie, there's learning curve for setting up XBMC. And yes, the Wiki is a little outdated.
Just sign up for the forums on http://forums.xbmc.org and search until you find your answer.
There's lots of folks with XBMC set up. The age of guinea pigs with this software has long since passed.
Yes, it scrapes. Default settings show that it scrapes movies from themoviedb.org and tv shows from thetvdb.com
Typically, the naming scheme for movies is:
Code:
Name.of.Movie.YEAR.QUALITY
Code:
Avatar.2009.720p.BluRay.x264and tv shows:
Code:
/Name of Show/Season x/Name of Show - SeasonxEpisode - Title
^meaning the file is inside the Season x folder, which is inside the Name of Show folder
Code:
/Modern Family/Season 1/Modern Family - 1x01 - PilotHope that helps!
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Awesome. So I finally have a good excuse to buy an AppleTV and build a NAS? My wife is gonna be pissed! LOL!
Yup....
As soon as this process is a little easier then i will dive right in... I havent jailbroken a device since the 1st gen iPod Touch...LOL