Apple TV for Torrent Streaming in JS | Hacker News Reader

Apple TV for Torrent Streaming in JS

github.com

89 pointsshacharz31 comments

I also thought this was for Apple TV. Even though it isn't, it's theoretically possible to write apps that you control through your Apple TV by taking over one of the existing apps that you don't use. MLB is one of a few good candidates. Many of Apple TV's "apps" are actually javascript apps, though unfortunately they aren't just running a WebView.

When you load the MLB app, it requests javascript and assets from mlb.com and operates on some sort of XML document rather than an HTML DOM. At my office we use 3rd-gen Apple TVs for AirPlay presentations, and I did some experiments with making a custom app that showed a rotating list of clients. We used a Raspberry Pi that functioned as both webserver and DNS, then pointed the Apple TVs' DNS at the Pi to reroute all requests going to mlb.com.

I'm curious as to how this works - did you happen to write anything up about that endeavor? There are endless applications to writing web apps for an Apple TV.

(In addition, the second generation Apple TV can be jailbroken and the relevant software reverse engineered if there is anything unclear in what you discovered thus far)

I don't know if he had written anything up, but PlexConnect (https://github.com/iBaa/PlexConnect) uses a similar process to serve Plex up to the AppleTV via the Trailers app.

Sweet, thanks! I used Apple Configurator to configure a proxy on my Apple TV, and am taking apart the apps that are grabbed over HTTP. Cool stuff!

Hi there, I'm one of the two creators of TV.js

It's nice to see it get some love on HN, given that we just hacked it together from "scratch" yesterday.

I just wanted to clarify a few things briefly, this application is not intended to run on an Apple TV, it's meant to run on Desktops, Laptops and Raspberry PIs.

There's obviously a lot of room for improvement but as of now it works well, but the install process is relatively tedious (ok for developers, not so for others).

The application uses node-webkit to run as an App, we will possibly distribute bundled versions of this in the future.

And for those who may be asking, this is not our Startup, it's just a nice hack, we put together during our own personal Hackathon :)

If you have any control over that web page you need to get those over-sized PNGs resized and re-encoded to jpgs. They are 2MB each, they could be about 100KB and do just as good a job at being scaled-down thumbnails. You are burning bandwidth - 8MB just to load the page.

I just resized them there now.

Is it possible to use it with other TVs? How platform dependent is it? Although this is not related to my area, I am working as a software developer for a different smart tv company. This would be fun to try

It runs on a raspberry pi and just hooks up to a TV through HDMI I think. So it doesn't matter what TV.

Very cool project. Congrats on the great work!

So, why is Apple TV on the github page? Left over from an earlier version?

The title appears to be a bit misleading. This isn't a mod for Apple TV, unfortunately, and requires other hardware.

Yea, although you can install it on other smart TV's

I think it is wise to clarify that by smart tv you mean an HTPC or media center, not the actual Smart TV system as used by the likes of Samsung and LG as this is not a Smart TV app.

Does it support seeking? That was one of the more painful parts to implement when I wrote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6006334

Downloading from a cloud service provider is more consistent and will probably provide a better experience for most people. But the use case is a bit different: The site linked above is not designed to search or widely share files but only to play them from cloud storage.

What does this have to do with Apple TV?

Its a similar use case. Could of been titled "Roku for Torrent Streaming in JS". As an unhappy apple TV owner, I was disappointed.

Unhappy Apple TV owner? That's not possib...oh wait. Count me in.

Do you notice that streaming anything over in-home sharing is just plain broken? I've got everything in the house talking on 802.11n but trying to play a movie off the Mac just...takes....forever...to buffer?

I switched from an Apple TV gen 2 and even the hackability with firecore didn't make up for all the issues I had. I knew within 5 minutes of using my Roku 3 that I had made the right decision (plus I sold the atv on ebay for a hefty markup so it actually paid to make the mistake).

Which JS Torrent library did you have used to download torrent?

Looks like peerflix: https://github.com/AaronO/peerflix

Now if only it could download subtitles from subscene...

Is there a way to download a torrent and stream it a video instantanely in Javascript?

Torrent streaming is nothing new, but this is a great implementation.

Is it possible to configure this to stream through my proxy server?

I wonder if sharefest.me can play in this game :)

amazing work! it would be even better if we could stream tv shows :)

great project & good implementation. very nice!

"Disclaimer

There are obvious legal issues, with downloading copyrighted material you do not have a license for. We do not endorse such use cases and bare no responsability for the use people make of it."

ah ah ah ... well you are not doing anythin illegal i guess but :

- studios could take down your repo since you used copyrighted material ( movie posters ).You should change them ( us CC movies like blender short movies ).

- you are using Apple brand and associating it with an illegal activity ,they could sue you for that.

I love the idea of using the phone as a remote control , that's really smart ! i'm going to steal that idea for sure !

But could it work online ? i mean if the website is not on a localhost ?

I believe this is as legal as being able to play video files on your TV. Just using a different media

Phone as remote control is great - OP might want to think about QR-code as a quick method of inputting the URL. I believe this is how YouTube remote control works.

A further improvement might be to use OPs internet-connected server to proxy the commands so the phone doesn't have to be connected to the same WiFi network, though I accept this is a very limited use-case and incurs some cost.

EDIT: Also - good work, OP!

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