XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone

http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/xbmc-now-works-on-apple-tv-ipad-and-iphone-20110121/

by thomas • 16 years ago

60 45 16 years ago

sielskr• 16 years ago

This promises to remove the only obstacle to my spending $99 on an Apple TV box, namely, my fear of being locked into Apple's content distribution system.

Will someone unaffiliated with the project please describe their experiences with using this software to watch mp4s of movies? Any restrictions or gotchas?

binarysoul• 16 years ago

apple tv plain works fine with mp4.... but I'm going to try this with mkv files and all other kinds of stuff this weekend

chopsueyar• 16 years ago

Please let us know.

ZeroGravitas3• 16 years ago

I saw an independant report stating that 1080p had minor stutters. Don't know if that's fixable. This is an early release but on the other hand they're pushing beyond the boundaries of what the hardware is designed for.

I'm also not sure what profiles it supports. Apple's software specs says Main Profile only, but they sometimes software restrict their hardware to keep support homogeneous across their lines (this appears to be the case for the 1080 support, they're just calling Apple's code).

illumin8• 16 years ago

If you wait about 6 months, Apple will most likely release rev. 2 of the ARM based AppleTV, which is rumored to contain the A5 processor, which is based on ARM's dual-core design A9 architecture, and is supposed to be fully capable of hardware accelerated 1080p playback.

The newer hardware should be much more future-proof. It remains to be seen whether it will be easily jailbroken, or whether Apple will get tougher with security.

patrickgzill• 16 years ago

Does the AppleTV do full 1080p?

vibragiel2• 16 years ago

Not out-of-the-box. XBMC on the AppleTV(2) does, though.

ZeroGravitas3• 16 years ago

To be precise the hardware is outputting 720p, but XBMC can decode 1080p files and scale them down. I'm not sure if the output can be hacked or not, but the developers claim it's "not a priority" at the moment.

yardie2• 16 years ago

I just wish the tetherless JB would be released already.

Xuzz• 16 years ago

Maybe they aren't evil and keeping it from you (not "releasing" it), instead, don't have a working version they could just press a button and release?

yardie2• 16 years ago

I didn't mean to imply they are evil. It's just my only option is OFW or tethered. The tethered part doesn't bother me as much as the fact that I don't have a laptop anymore so ,short of dragging the entire desk across the flat, I can't jailbreak. And I really want to because there is a lot of great stuff that's being released.

I'm sure I'm not the only person in this predicament.

AndrewDucker2• 16 years ago

I've been running XBMC as my media centre for years now, first on a hacked XBox (original) and then on a hacked Apple TV (first gen).

It's a great piece of software, happily streaming from my NAS box, playing music, etc. Not found anything it doesn't play yet.

And there are remote control apps for iPhone and Android too!

kenjackson• 16 years ago

How well does it handle TS_Video folders over the network?

emehrkay• 16 years ago

I've always said that it is the best piece of software ever created :)

Does the ios version browse your local network for shares? If it does, it will be the best ios software ever created.

empire29• 16 years ago

What apps have you found for the iPhone that work will to control XBMC? I've tried a a few for iPad and iPhone and they've been pretty terrible -- I've been using my Logitech Harmony One and AirMouse (iPhone/iPad) but would like a slick iphone/ipad app that would let me use the library features, etc.

I've been running XBMC on a 1st gen Xbox as well (those were the days), then moved to a fullsize HTPC, and now down to a Dell Zino.

If you've got a HTPC setup, you should absolutely give XBMC a try.

AndrewDucker2• 16 years ago

Aaah, I've got Android myself, so I use an app on my Desire. I haven't tried the iPhone ones, so I don't know what the quality is like.

ZenzerNet3• 16 years ago

Ditto, only on a HTPC I built myself. I tried Windows Media Center, for about a day, but couldn't stand it and went for the good old XBMC. And the remote control? A small, cheap, wireless mouse. Works wonders! A magnificient piece of software, XBMC.

jroes2• 16 years ago

But why? Handbrake can convert most video formats to something Apple TV-compatible and play them on the Apple TV through iTunes.

vetinari3• 16 years ago

The XBMC library mode is much better than iTunes. XBMC is living-room ready, wife-approved media player (one of the best on the market, in fact).

As a bonus, you don't have to convert anything.

rb2k_• 16 years ago

> As a bonus, you don't have to convert anything.

And that's the biggest bonus imho. Most people will watch pirated content on XBMC (torrented TV shows etc) and transcoding everything is pretty annoying.

patrickk3• 16 years ago

Not to mention it's 100% free, highly customisable and it looks damn fine.

randall• 16 years ago

Converting: BLECH.

Converting a two hour HD movie sucks for both time and storage. XBMC can play back pretty much any format natively.

Huge time savings for people with a large video library.

jroes2• 16 years ago

Ok, I read elsewhere in this thread that apparently you can stream directly from a NAS, which is definitely an awesome use case. XBMC wins!

barranger• 16 years ago

Since it's XBMC based, does this mean we'll see Boxxee soon?

res0nat0r• 16 years ago

I've been using an ASRock Ion with XBMC as my media center for over a year now and I love it. Plays anything I throw at it without any jitter. 1080p content? No problem thanks to the onboard NVidia chip.

http://www.asrock.com/nettop/spec/ion%20330.asp

Combined with the Aeon skin it is a beautiful thing.

http://xbmc.org/skins/aeon/

hop• 16 years ago

Can this play from a NAS or folders outside iTunes? And I'm pretty sure it will, but does it play a range of other filetypes - mkv, etc?

ZenzerNet3• 16 years ago

XBMC plays anything you throw at it. From anywhere :)

Sutto3• 16 years ago

Except (unless I've completely missed it) stuff over AFP.

sudonim• 16 years ago

Plex http://plexapp.com is based on an earlier version of XBMC. They have it running on iPhone, iPad and someone hacked it onto the Apple TV and did a similar video a few months ago: http://www.vimeo.com/16479085

I'd put my money on plex as an easier way to manage content and stream it from a box elsewhere in the house.

(I have plex running on a 2009 Mac Mini and it works really well)

dusing• 16 years ago

Plex is incredibly awesome. My whole house runs on it. Unfortunately it transcodes all video on ATV2 from another computer running the server. This XMBC app decodes the videos on the ATV2 itself - which is awesome, and I hope the Plex crew gets that up and running as well.

jbeluch• 16 years ago

One of my favorite things about XBMC is the plugins. The plugins are basically web scrapers that present content within the interface. If there isn't one you want for a particular website, build your own! They're written in python and could make a fun weekend project. Once your done, commit it to the official repository.

chedigitz• 16 years ago

If xbmc can run on appleTV 2, then a boxee port should be around the corner. Let's hope, as I love boxe's simplicity, in its ability to auto organize the entire library.

Sutto3• 16 years ago

All in all, I've found the Apple TV port to be pretty awesome - If you're willing to live with 720p output (It can decode 1080p, but it downscales to 720p - and it supposedly has minor lag at some points) and minor issues with seeking (which are bearable) and the current tethered jailbreak, it's a fantastic $130 XBMC device.

One thing to note is the default skin for XBMC felt laggy, but once I set it all up and switched to something else (in my case, Rapier tweaked to work on XBMC 10), it felt a lot faster and worked pretty well.

Better yet, using seas0npass and nitoTV (It's my own blog post, but http://blog.ninjahideout.com/posts/apple-tv-2g-and-xbmc-setu... details the process) it's relatively simple to set up - the caveat being it's tethered still on Firmware v4.1.1. Here's hoping the new release of GreenPois0n which will supposedly be untethered comes soon.

XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone

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