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.

Converting DVD's With Handbrake

I decided to compress all my dvd files for my Popcorn Hour to a smaller form factor to save space on my hard drive.  When I loaded up Handbrake it alerted me to a new version I could download.  I did, and began converting with the new program.  After doing several at the default settings, I tried playing them back on the Popcorn Hour and could not get any Dolby Digital sound!  Even if I selected it with or without a downmixed AAC stereo version, I would only get the AAC version.  So, I tested and restested, and was about to give up.  Then I googled MP4 and Dolby Digital and found out that MP4 does not natively support it.  I switched to the mkv container, like I used to use, and what do you know, it worked!  I could also include the director's commentary soundtrack and select it on the fly while playing.  Awesome!

Now, my computer is still going to be tied up for a few more days while converting....

Popbox, Google TV, or Boxee Box?

I really wanted to upgrade my Popcorn Hour A-100.  It works great, I've set up a nice movie server via yamj.  It does not output audio over hdmi, so there is no hd-audio with this unit.  I had set my hopes on either the Boxee Box or Popbox earlier this year.  Both were postponed and then the Popbox came with more of a fizzle than pop.  My Popcorn Hour is a little buggy, not a lot of polish and it looked like the Popbox, with all the cool features, would be more of the same. So, my Christmas home theater plans started to include the Boxee Box.  Then the Google TV started making waves.  What's a guy to do?  I like the fact that the Google TV integrates well with Dish Network, but that does come with a monthly fee.  While even the name of Google sounds cool, I have not really scene anything yet about it that is cool as far as a media streamer goes.  I'm really hoping that the app store will have something when it opens next year. And what about the Boxee Box?  They finally got their act together and implemented a better chip from Intel so that it can really play HD video and HD audio files.  It came out this week, and immediately had the firmware updated.  I've read that internet content works great, but local content won't all play well.  More updating and more updating.  Until they get it working as it should I'll keep on updating my movie server on my Popcorn Hour and watch and wait.