XBMC on Apple TV 2: The Good and Bad So Far

I decided to kick my Popcorn Hour to the curb for the sake of a fancy gui that might be easier for the family to operate.  With oogling eyes I picked up a new Apple TV and brought it home.  It took me about 4 times before I was able  to Jailbreak it with Green Poison.  I installed the anti Apple Update Nag program first and then tried to install XBMC, which failed twice.  With more internet searching I found out how to go in and install via ssh, which I did with one I covered in fear.  Presto, it worked.  XBMC was on the list of things I could choose from the main menu.  But I couldn't stream or find anything from my network because of  a bug in it causes you to restart first. 

Then I got the black screen.  Arghh!  I have this committed to memory:  login as root, password alpine, killall AppleTV.  And everything goes hunky dory again, remember that kids, you'll need it.  All my dvd backups as MKV or xvid or avi's all played great.  Yes, yes, yes.  But high def, hahaha that's another story.

Oh, you've read about how it will play 1080p content, etc, but that, in my experience, was a little short on substance.  It won't play my hd caps from HD PVR that I did buy at least without reencoding them.  Nightmare, let me tell you.  I finally had to hook up the Popcorn Hour that I luckily hadn't ebayed yet to see if I was going nuts.  I tried streaming from my NAS and two other computers until I reencoded for Apple TV 2 on Handbrake and on the Arcsoft software that comes with the HD PVR.  Now it works, 6 to 13 hours later on my 5 year old computer after reencoding. 

Is it cool, XBMC on the Apple TV 2?  Yes, very.  Is it underpowered?  Yes, very.

My Sometimes Video Snobbery

I still remember when I decided to no longer to use SLP mode to record with on the VCR and only use SP.  I also remember when I picked up my first DVD recorder.  It was not the vaporware model from Philips that I wanted that was supposed to have a digital audio input to recored Dolby Digital with.  So I recorded piles of discs to replace those VCR tapes that I become too "big" to watch.  Now, with HD programming my DVD recorder is looking long in the tooth.  I've begun to be too "big" again to watch those down rezzed recordings.  It has now been sold to be replaced with a Hauppauge HD-PVR, tenatively.  I'm a collector, or packrat depending on your point of view, and I don't want to let those movies go that are currently on my Dish DVR.  But if I record them, even in HD, will they be one day passed over for something better?

3D Again

Went to Best Buy again with the kids and checked out the 3D HDTV's.  Only one of the active shutter glasses for the Samsung was working so we had to take turns.  My initial impressions still hold true; it looks awesome when the depth goes "into" the television, but when the image comes forward into the room it falls apart.  We were watching an IMax film.

We also got to check out a passive glasses LG model, brand new.  The salesman, very helpful, said he thought it was better than he expected and that he liked the glasses if only for the fact they were lighter.  It was showing Monsters vs Aliens, and the disc kept skipping.  I did not notice the resolution being halved as a major flaw from where I stood.  However, I did not think the 3D effect was as good as the active glasses.  Looking foward to checking out a Vizio version of passive glasses 3D in the future to see how it compares.