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MICHAELSD

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jul 13, 2008
5,414
3,407
NJ
I'm considering buying a DVR from Comcast. $.99 TV shows rentals aren't cutting it yet with the exclusion of so many networks, though I'll look back into them when every major network as well as HBO and Showtime are on-board to offer episodes the night they air. Is there a decent possibility that I can connect a DVR to the Apple TV through their USB ports and play videos on the Apple TV, possibly with an automatic commercial skip hack? That would be a really great jailbreak hack, but is this something people are typically interested in?
 

monaarts

macrumors 65816
Jan 16, 2010
1,168
51
Kennesaw, GA
lol Ohhhh geeze Seriously, if Apple had this feature they would have definitely said something about it. Secondly, even if someone tried to create such a feature through jailbreak app, they will fail because there is no hard drive to store the data on. :-S Sorry


- Joe
 

MICHAELSD

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jul 13, 2008
5,414
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I know Apple didn't implement this feature. I'm not talking about storing content from a DVR on the Apple TV. Since both have USB ports, it seems possible that content from the DVR's HDD could be played more elegantly on the Apple TV, possibly with a jailbreak "automatic commercial skipping" hack. This will probably require a hack, but Apple TV may just recognize that there are video files on the DVR's HDD just through a USB connection, and possibly putting a DVR into some sort of sync mode. I'd assume Apple TV could play content from a HDD if one is hooked up through the USB port.
 

PurdueGuy

macrumors regular
Jun 23, 2010
241
2
Well, first you'd have to hack your DVR to give up it's shows to an external device. Then, you'd have to hack the AppleTV to accept those videos, which are probably MPEG2 and encrypted. Then, you'd have to come up with some way to bridge the two devices via USB, since they are both USB hosts, not mass storage devices.

Don't hold your breath on any of this, it won't happen.

You could get a TiVo, offload the items from the TiVo to a PC/Mac using KMTTG, then server them up from iTunes on the PC/Mac to stream back to ATV.

That's a fair amount of steps just to use a nicer interface. If you wanted to archive shows, that's a good way to go, but not for everyday use (IMHO).
 

MICHAELSD

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jul 13, 2008
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One of my main reasons for wanting to do this woukd be to use an inevitable automatic commercial skipping hack when Apple TV is jailbroken.
 

PurdueGuy

macrumors regular
Jun 23, 2010
241
2
One of my main reasons for wanting to do this woukd be to use an inevitable automatic commercial skipping hack when Apple TV is jailbroken.
kmttg already includes support for commercial detection/deletion (via external libraries).

However, most commercial detection I've used lately doesn't work (well). It cuts out during the show, only to be dropped back in half way thru a commercial segment. Not ideal. And if you delete what the software thinks are commercials and create a new file, the real show is gone for good. You'd have to go back to the uncut original file to see what you missed.
 
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