[bretttucker]

Hello,

I have been running a windows media centre since the early days, XP 2005 edition and upgraded along the way , currently W7MC. I have 2 Linksys extenders and all works reasonalby well. ( ia have a script running an a ddrwt router that looks for the extender IP address and if pingable then it sends a wake on lan message to the W7MC box to kick it off). So all in all it works ok but there are a couple of things that annoy me. The extenders lock up occasionally and need power rebooting. I have to convert everything to DVRMS or WTV to be able to view it on the extender.

I have been wanting to change the setup for a while now but have not found a suitable soluton. I am not a linux person so i want to steer clear of myth tv (don;t get me wrong , i think it is really nice but it looks a bit out of my league). Here is what i think my ideal solution would be. Now some of this could still be vapourware are very beta at best but hopefully some of you experts may point me to the right places.

I was wanting to cheange to a media-portal server as the backend with 3 apple tv's running xmbc with the pvr addon as the frontends. Has anybody got anything like this working? I have been trying to find a build of the xmbc-pvr for apple tv, but either I can't find one or the page is so full of techo-babble and am too stupid to understand what i am looking at.


Any help would be appreciated.

Regards
BT

[dgaust]

bretttucker, on 28 November 2011 - 07:42 PM, said:

I have to convert everything to DVRMS or WTV to be able to view it on the extender.

Why? Windows7 transcodes anything the device can't play natively, even MKVs if you install the DivX splitter on your HTPC. I've never had anything that couldn't play on my Xbox through the extender interface since moving to Windows 7.

[logifuse]

I don't know about the XBMC/Apple TV side of things, but MP TV server is a bit too flaky when used by a network client for my liking. ForTheRecord/Argus is much more robust, but it has less flexibility in terms of types of inputs (DVB-T is perfect though). See here for some info on an XBMC client development: http://www.4therecor...php?f=20&t=1600 - I think there's a link to a Youtube demo of it running on an AppleTV on one of the latter pages.

In case you haven't heard of ForTheRecord, it's main client UI is in MediaPortal where you can use it to replace MPs TV server.

Justin

[bretttucker]

Hi,

OK, i have done some testing and given up on the mediaportal idea but have revisited the myth tv. I have the lastest stable mythbuntu release running on an old dunger pc p4 633 meg with 512meg memory and a 40 GB hard drive. It has my spare dvico pci dvb-t receiver installed. This was actually much easier to install than i origonally thought it would be. A credit to the mythbuntu team.

I also installed xbmc on my mac and added the mythbox plugin, it would not play live tv in the version 10.? that i was using. I thn updated to the lated deverlopment release of 11.? and bingo all workign and working well. A little differend to the windows media centre i am used to but i will now go out and get a apple tv 2 and try it to see if it works.

Things are looking promising.

BT

[logifuse]

Sounds promising.

The hardcore Linux types get all snarky about Ubuntu/MythBuntu, but it's a great entry point for a potential convert IMHO.

I'd really like to see more client inter-changeability between TV servers & clients, especially cross-platform. I love Argus/FTR & am very happy with MediaPortal as the front end, but if XBMC could make use of it, that would open up a large range of possibilities. I'd like to rework my bedroom PC as a non-Windows front end, but the rest of my systems need to remain Windows based, so I'm a bit snookered ATM.

Justin

[bretttucker]

I Have been out and picked up a apple tv 2. I had alot of trouble getting it to display a picture on my projector. It turns out, thorugh alot of searching that many otheres have this same problem. I use a hdmi to component converter and the image flashed up for a second and then goes to black screen. Now it turns out that in IOS 5 there is the feature to manually set the resolution which did allow me to get a picture, howvever currently you can only do tethered reimage of the box and i really need an untethered one. So currently I have to stick with the older IOS4. So i did some research and found that it must be my converter and apple tv negotiating the resolution using the DDC pins in the HDMI cable. So in desperation I got an old HDMI cable and, using a really small screwdriver, pushed the DDC pins down in the cable plug. So that they are so flat that they do not make contact when the plug is inserted into the socket. Bingo this has fixed my problem and perfect picture on my projector. (however it seems that smarter things like my computer monitir will not wake from powersave using this lead as they must need the DDC. so I will have to label this cable for projector use only.)

So back to what i was tryng to acheive. I have loaded XBMC nightly build on the apple tv 2 and it is pretty good. But it turns out i cannot fid the mythbox addon for the apple tv 2. It looks like it is not available, maybe i am not looking in the right places? However the nightly XBMC build does allow me to add the mythtv server backend as a shared file using the myth:// prefix, this lets me watch recorded tv and live tv but not schedule recorings.

So I will keep looking and see how I go.

BT

[logifuse]

That DDC pin trick sounds like a good tip. Might be handy for people who have troubles with custom resolutions on their screens.

Justin

[bretttucker]

Hello,

Yet some more rambling from me on the subject..

Now forgive me here as I know next to nothing about linux but I have been struggling thorught it best I can. I was trying to get the mythbox add-on working on my aapple tv 2 (running xbmc) but the add-on does not appear in the list of available downloads. so following the limited advice that others have posted around the place I downloaded the mythbox add on as a zip file. Now I used cyberduck on my mac to sftp to the applttv 2 but i beleive in hindsight that I could have logged into the apple tv 2 using ssh and the user account of mobile (from an mac terminal you would type "ssh mobile@192.168.x x" (Replace with your apple tv IP) and then use the "wget http://mythbox.googlecode.com/files/script.mythbox.1.0.4.zip" . After I dowloaded this and installed it using the xbmc menu system / add-ons / install form zip file. look in the home directory and it was there and installed no problems, but when i ran it it threw an error about elementtree so I went looking and found i also needed needed "http://mirror.ufs.ac.za/xbmc/addons/eden-pre/script.module.elementtree/script.module.elementtree-1.2.7.zip" so again you could "wget http://mirror.ufs.ac.za/xbmc/addons/eden-pre/script.module.elementtree/script.module.elementtree-1.2.7.zip" and install it as before.

After all this was done i have a working mythbox add-on running under xbmc on my apple tv 2. (I origonally had some trouble connecitng to the mythdbconv sql database on the mythbuntu server but on the server i had to use the terminal to logon to the sql server then issue a command to allow all users using the name mythtv on the local subnet to access the database.

$ mysql -u root
> create user 'mythtv'@'localhost' identified by 'mythtv';
> grant all privileges on *.* to 'mythtv'@'localhost' with grant option;
> create user 'mythtv'@'%' identified by 'mythtv';
> grant all privileges on *.* to ' mythtv@'192.168.1.%' with grant option; (change this ip to your local subnet)
> flush privileges;
> create database mythconverg;
> exit;


So where is this all at now?
So setup as above i can now run XBMC on my apple tv 2 and inside XBMC i can also run the mythbox add-on and connect to the mythtv ubuntu backend server, i can use the guide, schedule recording etc no problem at all. However if I try and watch a recording or watch live tv all works perfectly for the first 5 or so seconds then the picture and audio start to chop ( freeze and play, freeze and play). I do not thik it is related to my conenction speed as i can play video form my network store without a issue. Also I don;t think it is the backend becuase i can play the live tv using my other computers as fornt ends and no problem there. So all i can think is it is either the apple tv not caching enough video locally before it starts playing or possible caching too much and freaking it out. I don;t know, If i change channel then it alos plays for 5 seconds or so before chopping.

I will keep looking for a fix to this, but i am sure there are bigger brains than mine tackling the same problems so maybe the fix will come in due course.

Honestly I am suprised i have got this far.


BT

[bretttucker]

bretttucker, on 12 December 2011 - 05:09 PM, said:

Hello,

Yet some more rambling from me on the subject..

Now forgive me here as I know next to nothing about linux but I have been struggling thorught it best I can. I was trying to get the mythbox add-on working on my aapple tv 2 (running xbmc) but the add-on does not appear in the list of available downloads. so following the limited advice that others have posted around the place I downloaded the mythbox add on as a zip file. Now I used cyberduck on my mac to sftp to the applttv 2 but i beleive in hindsight that I could have logged into the apple tv 2 using ssh and the user account of mobile (from an mac terminal you would type "ssh mobile@192.168.x x" (Replace with your apple tv IP) and then use the "wget http://mythbox.googlecode.com/files/script.mythbox.1.0.4.zip" . After I dowloaded this and installed it using the xbmc menu system / add-ons / install form zip file. look in the home directory and it was there and installed no problems, but when i ran it it threw an error about elementtree so I went looking and found i also needed needed "http://mirror.ufs.ac.za/xbmc/addons/eden-pre/script.module.elementtree/script.module.elementtree-1.2.7.zip" so again you could "wget http://mirror.ufs.ac.za/xbmc/addons/eden-pre/script.module.elementtree/script.module.elementtree-1.2.7.zip" and install it as before.

After all this was done i have a working mythbox add-on running under xbmc on my apple tv 2. (I origonally had some trouble connecitng to the mythdbconv sql database on the mythbuntu server but on the server i had to use the terminal to logon to the sql server then issue a command to allow all users using the name mythtv on the local subnet to access the database.

$ mysql -u root
> create user 'mythtv'@'localhost' identified by 'mythtv';
> grant all privileges on *.* to 'mythtv'@'localhost' with grant option;
> create user 'mythtv'@'%' identified by 'mythtv';
> grant all privileges on *.* to ' mythtv@'192.168.1.%' with grant option; (change this ip to your local subnet)
> flush privileges;
> create database mythconverg;
> exit;


So where is this all at now?
So setup as above i can now run XBMC on my apple tv 2 and inside XBMC i can also run the mythbox add-on and connect to the mythtv ubuntu backend server, i can use the guide, schedule recording etc no problem at all. However if I try and watch a recording or watch live tv all works perfectly for the first 5 or so seconds then the picture and audio start to chop ( freeze and play, freeze and play). I do not thik it is related to my conenction speed as i can play video form my network store without a issue. Also I don;t think it is the backend becuase i can play the live tv using my other computers as fornt ends and no problem there. So all i can think is it is either the apple tv not caching enough video locally before it starts playing or possible caching too much and freaking it out. I don;t know, If i change channel then it alos plays for 5 seconds or so before chopping.

I will keep looking for a fix to this, but i am sure there are bigger brains than mine tackling the same problems so maybe the fix will come in due course.

Honestly I am suprised i have got this far.


BT

Update... Tried the new JB season pass on the atv2 and the lastest stable release of Xbox Eden. The mythbox addon is now available from the addon download list and using the wired network the picture and audio of quite good on live tv. Not perfect but very watchable.