But why? Handbrake can convert most video formats to something Apple TV-compatible and play them on the Apple TV through iTunes.
XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone
#12This 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 app…
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.
Re: XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone
#13But 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.
Re: XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone
#14I 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?
Re: XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone
#15But 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.
Re: XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone
#17Since it's XBMC based, does this mean we'll see Boxxee soon?
Re: XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Re: XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone
#19But why? Handbrake can convert most video formats to something Apple TV-compatible and play them on the Apple TV through iTunes.
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.
Re: XBMC now works on Apple TV, iPad and iPhone
#20But why? Handbrake can convert most video formats to something Apple TV-compatible and play them on the Apple TV through iTunes.
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!