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XBMC now installable on jailbroken AppleTV2

VOB files

So I guess reading in the XBMC forum, VOB files are not working on Apple TV. Kind of unfortunate, but I guess for now I will just download the h264 files from newsgroups rather then rip my DVD's (probably easier anyway - since the whole PROCESS takes forever, where it only takes me about 10 mins to download a movie!). ;)
 
first off, wanted to say love it!, for people complaining remember it's a hack, deal with it. I have one question/problem though and have tried searching the xbmc forums.

It's all relatively a fluid interface yet the thumbnails have the slight delay when they are in thumbnail view, that 2/3 seconds where you wait for them to load, even though they have downloaded previously. Is this just a hardware problem, can I increase the cache or ask it to store permanently. I'm using the refocus theme.

thanks
 
finally got it working

first of all this jailbreak is not as easy as the iPhone, took me few attempts. since it require a Mac to make the custom firmware, I have to use my VMware on PC, use Seas0nPass to create the custom firmware, however Seas0nPass will not flash the ATV2, I keep getting error 21 in iTune, so I have to copy the custom firmware out on my external drive and flash it on my PC's iTune, with the help of iReb to get the ATV2 to DFU mode, then I also use the Win32 version of the tetherboot (found here: https://github.com/msftguy/syringe/downloads) and the following syntax:
tetheredboot -i iBSS.k66ap.RELEASE.dfu -k kernelcache.release.k66
this way, there is no need to use the vitual Mac machine each time to tether the ATV2 to boot-up.

simply this why I get ATV2 in the first place been waiting for this day. great work XBMC guys.:) can't wait for the non-tethered version of jailbreak.
 
So do I have to ssh into my AppleTV every time I want to update XBMC or is there an update tool within the GUI?
 
OMG.. talk about the worst stroke of bad luck

My power knocked out... :(

Upon repower, when I tried to do a tethered boot of the AppleTV, I could not get any network connectivity, either on ethernet or Wifi. I rebooted and re-tethered several times to no avail.

The only way I've seen to fix this is to rejailbreak the device. Unfortunately, upon doing so, network connectivity was back, but I then had to reinstall XBMC.

Upon reinstall, I have now lost all my settings and my library and all the work i put into this the past couple days.

I know I can't get it back, but please, for the love of god, someone tell me there is a way to back all this stuff up so I can restore XBMC and all my settings/library/etc when I rejailbreak the device... PLEASE!!!

Thanks!

PS> Why the hell does it loose network connectivity and need to be rejailbroken to get it back sometimes? Is there any trick to getting the network connection to work again once it looses it?
 
djrobsd said:
My power knocked out... :(

Upon repower, when I tried to do a tethered boot of the AppleTV, I could not get any network connectivity, either on ethernet or Wifi. I rebooted and re-tethered several times to no avail.

The only way I've seen to fix this is to rejailbreak the device. Unfortunately, upon doing so, network connectivity was back, but I then had to reinstall XBMC.

Upon reinstall, I have now lost all my settings and my library and all the work i put into this the past couple days.

I know I can't get it back, but please, for the love of god, someone tell me there is a way to back all this stuff up so I can restore XBMC and all my settings/library/etc when I rejailbreak the device... PLEASE!!!

Thanks!

PS> Why the hell does it loose network connectivity and need to be rejailbroken to get it back sometimes? Is there any trick to getting the network connection to work again once it looses it?
Click to expand...

Make sure you are using the latest version of Seas0nPass when jailbreaking and tethered booting. I think lost network connectivity was an issue in an earlier version. Also, when entering into DFU mode, I have my power cord unplugged (otherwise my ATV won't enter into DFU) but once it starts the boot process I plug the power cord back in. Network is always back up and running that way and it even remembers my settings.
 
I figured out what was causing buffering of every file in my case. For some reason SMB shares cause bottleneck. I access folders as follows:

- On mac I shared all the drives with SMB enabled.
- On ATV2 I added a new SMB location with IP address of the mac and username/password of the mac admin account.
- I then added folders from that newly mount SMB location.

All files stutter for me no matter what settings I use. Once I installed unofficial xbmc2pms plugin from here and access files via this plugin, there is no more stuttering. Files play smooth because they are served via http by plex media server so SMB is not used anymore.

If anyone knows how to access my folders on mac without using SMB or how to resolve my slow SMB issue, I would greatly appreciate it.
 
Evgenyy said:
I figured out what was causing buffering of every file in my case. For some reason SMB shares cause bottleneck. I access folders as follows:

- On mac I shared all the drives with SMB enabled.
- On ATV2 I added a new SMB location with IP address of the mac and username/password of the mac admin account.
- I then added folders from that newly mount SMB location.

.
Click to expand...

I set up my SMB this way (I enabled the sharing for a specific user instead of specific drives) and it worked fine for me.
 
djrobsd said:
So do I have to ssh into my AppleTV every time I want to update XBMC or is there an update tool within the GUI?
Click to expand...

I was curious about this too. if you do have to SSH into the ATV what command will grab and install the update? is it just "apt-get update"?
 
i accidentally added a menu and unfortunately do not have a working iphone right now. I pressed menu for 2/3 of a second and I see "Settings, Set timer, Favourites, etc" along the bottom in a horizontal rwo. How do I go about deleting this share?

NVM: figured it out
 
Last edited:
2 questions

I cannot find the answers anywhere.

1) how do I exit the xmbc and get back to atv2 menus? When I click on the small power button on the xbmc the whole unit crashes and needs a tethered reboot.

2). How do I disable subtitles in mkv files with apple remote or any iPhone app?
 
XBMC issue. . .

Boot problem. I've tried searching for my problem rather throughly here and on XBMC website. If it's out there and someone can point me in the right direction please help... ANY assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I have jailbroken my :apple:TV 2nd gen and have been able to load XBMC successfully, but then after an hour or so of using the it, it crashed (I'm assuming) and restarted the :apple:TV. Now all it shows is the :apple: logo with the front light flashing. I know I have to preform a tethered boot to restart the iOS, but does anyone know if an untethered boot is out there?

I'm currently using Seas0nPass and having to lug my 24" iMac into the living room every time . . . Needless to say. IT's A PAIN!
 
no untethered boot currently. sounds like you may need to rejailbreak.

one handy thing I've found is that once you have it up and running and it freezes or crashes and refuses to start again..just ssh to the apple tv ip and do a killall AppleTV command. this will essentially do a soft reset by killing the processes and let you get started again without having to reboot in tethered mode.
 
Evgenyy said:
I figured out what was causing buffering of every file in my case. For some reason SMB shares cause bottleneck. I access folders as follows:

- On mac I shared all the drives with SMB enabled.
- On ATV2 I added a new SMB location with IP address of the mac and username/password of the mac admin account.
- I then added folders from that newly mount SMB location.

All files stutter for me no matter what settings I use. Once I installed unofficial xbmc2pms plugin from here and access files via this plugin, there is no more stuttering. Files play smooth because they are served via http by plex media server so SMB is not used anymore.

If anyone knows how to access my folders on mac without using SMB or how to resolve my slow SMB issue, I would greatly appreciate it.
Click to expand...

hmm, I will have to give that a try. I'm using smb from my imac and running into a lot of buffering. No real rhyme or reason to it either. some files ok, others would literally buffer every few seconds. This was happening on <2gig avi's, so network bandwidth certainly shouldn't have been an issue.
 
spencers said:
Yes, and after that "apt-get upgrade"
Click to expand...

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

will update/upgrade all my programs on the ATV, correct? is there a way to make it only update/upgrade XMBC? I dont know if the Plex update works on my OS and i dont want to screw it up


i finally had a problem playing a file through XMBC on the ATV2. I could play other 720p files (~2gig for a movie size) without any problems but this only Elvis 1972 tour film in 720p was skipping seconds on audio like crazy. My ATV2 is wired into my network. It was just weird it was happening for one file but i couldnt find other ones that it would happen to and the file plays fine on the computer
 
just to follow up on the issues with smb shares. I've switched to upnp via ps3mediaserver running on my imac. I have used it for years with my ps3 and it's pretty straightforward. As long as it's running on the network it should show up under the upnp option of adding sources in xbmc. Fingers crossed, but i'm not seeing the buffering issues that I saw via smb. The only downside I've seen so far is that it doesn't allow resuming if you have to stop a video. Annoying, but something I'll have to live with until smb or something else is working reliably.

Just thought I'd pass it on to anyone else that might be having an issue.
 
Evgenyy said:
I figured out what was causing buffering of every file in my case. For some reason SMB shares cause bottleneck. I access folders as follows:

- On mac I shared all the drives with SMB enabled.
- On ATV2 I added a new SMB location with IP address of the mac and username/password of the mac admin account.
- I then added folders from that newly mount SMB location.

All files stutter for me no matter what settings I use. Once I installed unofficial xbmc2pms plugin from here and access files via this plugin, there is no more stuttering. Files play smooth because they are served via http by plex media server so SMB is not used anymore.

If anyone knows how to access my folders on mac without using SMB or how to resolve my slow SMB issue, I would greatly appreciate it.
Click to expand...

want to give this a try, but it's not clear where the zip should be transferred to on the appletv for it to be visible to xmbc. can you post the path it needs to be placed in? Thanks.
 
DaveNinja said:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
will update/upgrade all my programs on the ATV, correct? is there a way to make it only update/upgrade XMBC? I dont know if the Plex update works on my OS and i dont want to screw it up.
i finally had a problem playing a file through XMBC on the ATV2. I could play other 720p files (~2gig for a movie size) without any problems but this only Elvis 1972 tour film in 720p was skipping seconds on audio like crazy. My ATV2 is wired into my network. It was just weird it was happening for one file but i couldnt find other ones that it would happen to and the file plays fine on the computer
Click to expand...
I'm not sure whether that command does xbmc only or not. My addons are set to update automatically anyway. I only run update/upgrade whenever I feel like it. I don't want to fix what's not broken. ;)

As for the file, what audio stream does it have? AC3? DTS? With the latter, [I think] you need a beefy machine to decode the audio. Even my HTPC has trouble with DTS-ES audio.

JeffLebowski41 said:
want to give this a try, but it's not clear where the zip should be transferred to on the appletv for it to be visible to xmbc. can you post the path it needs to be placed in? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Grab Cyberduck and SFTP into the ATV.
Place the zip in /var/mobile -- which is the "Home Folder" XBMC maps to.
 
Last edited:
andrew0122 said:
Boot problem. I've tried searching for my problem rather throughly here and on XBMC website. If it's out there and someone can point me in the right direction please help... ANY assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I have jailbroken my :apple:TV 2nd gen and have been able to load XBMC successfully, but then after an hour or so of using the it, it crashed (I'm assuming) and restarted the :apple:TV. Now all it shows is the :apple: logo with the front light flashing. I know I have to preform a tethered boot to restart the iOS, but does anyone know if an untethered boot is out there?

I'm currently using Seas0nPass and having to lug my 24" iMac into the living room every time . . . Needless to say. IT's A PAIN!
Click to expand...

Don't take this the wrong way but if you don't have a laptop or easy access to a computer near your TV setup, this probably isn't going to be the solution for you for now until they come up with an untethered boot option. :(
 
Just used seasonpass successfully on my ATV2. was going to install xbmc but i wanted to hook it up to make sure it's working first. did the tethered boot, disconnected usb and hooked up to tv and i am getting no picture, on 2 tv's with different HDMI cables.

Any ideas??
 
JeffLebowski41 said:
That's a good tip but I was still having buffering problems with them off
Click to expand...

Somehow XBMC now sees SMB Windows network differently and I can browse it without the need to add SMB share manually i.e. when I add source, I go to SMB Windows Network, then Workgroup and then my Mac which has all the shares.

I now have no issues with buffering. For those with buffering problems can also try UPNP server on Mac as suggested before and that should fix buffering issues.
 
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