Tag Archives: apple tv

XBMC on Apple TV 2, part II (yes, it works now)

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Some time ago I tried XBMC on my jailbroken Apple TV 2 and I was very dissapointed. Since then there’s been a beta release of XBMC 11.0 Eden and I just had to try it out.

Just like last time I followed this guide and jailbroke the ATV 2. The only difference was that I was now able to do an untethered jailbreak of iOS 4.4.4 on the ATV.

When it was jailbroken i followed the offical XBMC guide to install XBMC 11.0 Eden beta 1.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Install_XBMC_on_Apple_TV_2

New thoughts

Any difference since last time? Oh yes.

  1. Dolby Digital and DTS works
  2. The menus are not perfect yet, but I can live with it
I probably figured out why it started buffering last time, I was doing library updates/scraping in the background. This and playing a HD movie was too much. Update library first, play movie after this. I’ll probably try using the Apple TV 2 as my main media center for a couple of days just to see if there are any more problems.

What about XBMC on Apple TV gen 2?

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Yesterday I tried Plex on my Apple TV gen 2 and I wasn’t satisfied. Today I thought I’d try XBMC out instead. I followed the guide found at http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Install_XBMC_on_Apple_TV_2 and installed the latest nightly build.

The installation works fine, but there are a few problems. To start with the UI is sluggish and slow compared to my HTPC. Although this isn’t a deal breaker it irritates me and I find it hard to accept. But that’s not the worst, the ATV seems to be unable to send Dolby Digital or DTS sound streams to my reciever, the sound is just disturbing and sounds like a big bowl of sound pollution. Accept 2.0 sound? Don’t think so. And last, when I’m play ing 1080p movies it buffers for 3-4 seconds now and then, this never happens on the HTPC.

So the conclusion is about the same as with Plex, it’s promising… but not there just yet.

Running Plex on Apple TV gen 2

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I’ve been a fan of XBMC for many years, first on the original Xbox when it was called Xbox Media Center and now I’m using an ASrock ION330 with XBMC Live. Although there’s a small problem with my setup, it isn’t quiet. It doesn’t make a loud noise, but it’s far from silent. I thought to myself “hmm, maybe I should give Plex on my Apple TV gen 2 another go”. And that’s what I did.

Step 1 – Jailbreak

I used Seas0npass, you can read the jailbreak instructions here: http://support.firecore.com/entries/387605-jailbreaking-101-seas0npass

This was pretty much straight forward.

Step 2 – Configuring the ATV

Start by logging in to the ATV via SSH.

> ssh root@172.16.0.51

Change to your ATVs IP and use the password alpine.

A jailbroken ATV uses the APT-system (same as Debian and Ubuntu) to install packages. There’s a repository for Plex that has to be added.

echo "deb http://www.ambertation.de ./downloads/PLEX/" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plex.list
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install com.plex.client-plugin

Plex is now installed. Make sure your Plex Media Server is running on your computer and then restart your ATV. Hopefully you’ll have a menu in your ATV that says “Plex” and you’ll be able to access your media.

My thoughts

Plex on ATV sure has a lot of good stuff going on, but it just isn’t there yet. I wasn’t able to play mkv-files, only XviD. The program itself is a bit buggy and crashes now and they, but the future for the project looks good. Can’t wait to throw my XBMC box out, but I think I’ll wait a while. :)