XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone | Hacker News Reader

XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone

geek.com

60 pointsthomas45 comments

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)

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

How well does it handle TS_Video folders over the network?

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.

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?

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).

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.

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

Please let us know.

Seeking is slightly painful with some mkv files for me (at least over Samba - Which was expected given it's 10/100 ethernet), but in generally all the files I've tried (mostly 720p) have played back perfectly.

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/

I just wish the tetherless JB would be released already.

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?

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.

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

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.

> 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.

Bought content is usually an even bigger pain in the arse to transcode. I am currently trying to rip some DVDs of mine and it is an incredibly frustrating experience.e

Here's a solution:

http://lifehacker.com/355281/dvd-rip-automates-one+click-dvd...

Aside: although Lifehacker's day to day quality seems to have declined, I've found searching their archives for common tech problems like this to be extremely good at returning results. How To Geek (frequently linked from LH) also has a lot of similar solutions. Any other recommendations?

Here's one possible solution (appropriately enough from LH itself):

http://lifehacker.com/344188/get-only-the-posts-you-want-fro...

I would suggest subscribing to the type of posts you like the most by tag.

My recommendations for tags would be:

#hivefive/ #hivefivefollowup

#feature

#downloads (you can specify which OS, see link above)

#featuredworkspace (I like them, you may not)

#featureddesktop (again, I like them)

#howto

#diy

There are more I can't think of right now. I definitely agree that the overall quality of LH has declined, however HN and LH are still my number one and number two sources of tech information on the web and I typically check both multiple times a day. Some of the best tips and software I use comes from LH - Dropbox tweaks, XBMC, CCleaner, BitTorrent tips, Launchy and many, many more. Check out their recommended bundles of apps also available for Windows, Mac and Linux, e.g:

http://lifehacker.com/5562864/lifehacker-pack-for-mac-our-es...

http://lifehacker.com/5713510/most-popular-free-mac-download...

Thanks but I am actually on Linux and I don't believe an automated tool could prepare the result as I like it.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

Does the AppleTV do full 1080p?

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

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.

Ungh, didn't know about that caveat. I guess I'm back to my initial idea of getting a WD TV Live. Any better option?

In my opinion, some ION2 nettop with minimal Ubuntu and XBMC would be better option than WDTV. More expensive, yes, but not that much[1] and definitely provides better experience.

[1] Note that I'm in EU-land, where AppleTV is 120 EUR, which is 160 USD. Acer/Asus/Zotac/other nettop vendors do not have the same problem with currency conversion that Apple does.

I've got XBMC on an Acer Revo nettop, and having a little always-on Ubuntu server has various other uses for me.

Apt-getting installs/updates to XBMC rather than jumping through whatever hoops you need to for this is a blessing too.

One downside, you'd need to buy a 3rd party remote and USB-IR receiver and get it working with Ubuntu/XBMC. (At least I did, I think the newer version has one built in).

I'd like to get rid of IR remote with non-standard receiver and replace it with Bluetooth one (Sony PS3 Blu-Ray remote). Anyone has experience, how long the batteries last in this thing?

See XBMC Live, which is just as you describe (Ubuntu/XBMC) http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=XBMC_Live without installing yourself. Apology if that's exactly what you meant.

I use boxee on a HTPC and love it. Boxee is heavily based on the XBMC code base but adds hulu, netflix and other VOD streaming and a nicer (IMHO) interface. There is also a standalone boxee player, I don't have it, and there have been some problems with getting all the supported content on it, but I believe that is getting worked out.

I used XBMC for years, but boxee is just a nicer experience for an Internet connected HTPC imo.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com