AppleTV 2 + XBMC as alternative?

[jdc]

I need to get an extender for one more room in my house. I've looked at a few options and am leaning towards XBMC on Apple TV 2 (jailbroken). I just need to be able to watch recorded shows on this TV. Anyone have thoughts on this setup or alternatives?

Thanks.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jdc

I need to get an extender for one more room in my house. I've looked at a few options and am leaning towards XBMC on Apple TV 2 (jailbroken). I just need to be able to watch recorded shows on this TV. Anyone have thoughts on this setup or alternatives?

Thanks.

I'm currently working on a side project (because I don't have enough stuff to do) that might enable this.

The general gist of the project is to expose SageTV media files (ie, music, recorded tv, rigpped videos) over UPnP. This would enable most any UPnP client renderer (ie, PS3, XMBC, etc) to access the sagetv library. In my current testing, I'm using XMBC, since I have a jailbroken ATV2 unit running XMBC. My other motivator for this is to allow my phone/tablet to get access to the library over UPnP as well.

As a side project (and lots of other stuff on my plate as well) then I have no timeline on this. Also the dependencies for this would be bmt or phoenix-ui (although you don't need to run the ui), since I'm using the views that you create in Phoenix as the exposed folder structure over UPnP.

There are some downsides to the upnp approach. I can't really expose metadata... so, all you get is the Title and possible the poster (in some cases, on some upnp clients)

The UPnP approach is a good way to simply expose the media, but it's no replacement for the HD300.

Originally, I considered writing a plugin script for XBMC, but in the end I chose the UPnP method since it enables more clients.

[darcilicious]

I just need to be able to watch recorded shows on this TV. Anyone have thoughts on this setup or alternatives?

Well if you use NFO files for all your recorded items (I do this for movies on Boxee for example), then those items will show up natively in XBMC just fine.

Not sure what the requirements are for recorded TV shows to show up correctly in XBMC (e.g. if it assumes a folder organization for NFO or a proper filename for auto-identification) but it might be worth asking around over in the XBMC forums or just installing it and seeing what you can make happen easily.

[dgeezer]

What format are your recordings?

The Apple tv only has hardware decoding for H. 264 not mpeg2. If you record digital hdtv from cable or over the air then it won't play back your recordings. I have an Atv2 running XBMC but it is probably going on ebay soon....

[jdc]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I'm currently working on a side project (because I don't have enough stuff to do) that might enable this.

The general gist of the project is to expose SageTV media files (ie, music, recorded tv, rigpped videos) over UPnP.

I'll keep an eye out for it down the road. I'm impressed by the sage community and the number of really useful plugins available. So thanks for all you guys do.

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Well if you use NFO files for all your recorded items (I do this for movies on Boxee for example), then those items will show up natively in XBMC just fine.

Not sure what the requirements are for recorded TV shows to show up correctly in XBMC (e.g. if it assumes a folder organization for NFO or a proper filename for auto-identification) but it might be worth asking around over in the XBMC forums or just installing it and seeing what you can make happen easily.

Thanks for the info. May go another direction based on dgeezer's post.

Originally Posted by dgeezer

What format are your recordings?

The Apple tv only has hardware decoding for H. 264 not mpeg2. If you record digital hdtv from cable or over the air then it won't play back your recordings. I have an Atv2 running XBMC but it is probably going on ebay soon....

I didn't know that. I incorrectly thought that the limitation was in iOS and xbmc would overcome that. Well, appletv is off the table now.

Any thoughts on the WD TV Live Plus, with or without a firmware enhancement? I'm looking to be able to connect to a windows share with my OTA recordings and maybe as a bonus have support for hulu plus and Netflix. I don't have hulu or Netflix but I'll most likely go the playon route with my sage/extenders setup eventually as I'm cutting the cable cord soon. I'm trying to do this inexpensively as it will probably become a paperweight once we get a googified sage release.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by jdc

I need to get an extender for one more room in my house. I've looked at a few options and am leaning towards XBMC on Apple TV 2 (jailbroken). I just need to be able to watch recorded shows on this TV. Anyone have thoughts on this setup or alternatives?

Thanks.

A group of us are working on writing a SageTV app for Boxee. Progress is good and it's perfectly capable of playing recordings made by Sage.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ighlight=boxee

You can try it on a PC (Boxee is a free download) to see if you like it or not. If you want to try it out I'd suggest running in "test app" mode since the version in the repository is quite old. Let me know if you want more details on setting it up.

Tom

[jdc]

Yes, please send me the details on setting it up. I'm hoping to find a deal on a Boxee box this weekend but will get one either way.