+- Kodi Community Forum (https://forum.kodi.tv)
+-- Forum: Discussions (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=222)
+--- Forum: Feature Requests (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=9)
+--- Thread: [AppleTV] Broadcom Crystal HD Hardware Decoder Mini-PCIe Card support for Apple TV? (/showthread.php?tid=55042)
- Britannia - 2010-01-13
djdeejay Wrote:If we could get to the stage where Perian worked with the native menus and its decoders supported the Broadcom card, then 1080p in the native window would be the dream...
My sentiments exactly. We will have to wait and see if FFMpeg implement support for the Broadcom card, then there is a chance that support for it might filter down into Perian.
Native support would then be possible.
- djdeejay - 2010-01-13
Britannia Wrote:My sentiments exactly. We will have to wait and see if FFMpeg implement support for the Broadcom card, then there is a chance that support for it might filter down into Perian.
Native support would then be possible.
How does ATV at the minute filter out content from iTunes it knows it can't play? Just by checking the resolution of the files? If so when native support through Perian does (or hopefully will) happen - how will we get the ATV to show files it "thinks" it cannot play natively?
I haven't tested yet with Perian installed, but does Perian alone mean natively I can play things the ATV otherwise wouldn't be able to - or do I still have to use nito/filebrowser/boxee/xbmc etc?
- Sam.Nazarko - 2010-01-13
iirc it also checks bitrate, profile level as well as resolution. Container has to be mp4/m4v and video has to be h264 or mpeg4pt2. Audio has to be AAC/ac3passthrough I believe is allowed with m4v. I have no idea how iTunes evaluates the if the file is suitable. You might be able to (not sure with mp4/m4v container) put in a false resolution, bitrate, profile in the container so that applications like iTunes, MediaInfo show a 720p file, with a profile of 3.0, and a bitrate of 2500kbps. A lot of TV on the net does this (though not intentionally.) where video and audio does not match the container specification. This would cause problems with Perian though unless it grabs resolution, aspect ratio etc from the video, not container. there has to be a better way to do that, because spoofing the container's media properties is a poor way. While it would be nice for 1080p playback in frontrow, I don't see it as a necessity, not when an application on aTV does it already, XBMC.
- djdeejay - 2010-01-14
Sam.Nazarko Wrote:iirc it also checks bitrate, profile level as well as resolution. Container has to be mp4/m4v and video has to be h264 or mpeg4pt2. Audio has to be AAC/ac3passthrough I believe is allowed with m4v. I have no idea how iTunes evaluates the if the file is suitable. You might be able to (not sure with mp4/m4v container) put in a false resolution, bitrate, profile in the container so that applications like iTunes, MediaInfo show a 720p file, with a profile of 3.0, and a bitrate of 2500kbps. A lot of TV on the net does this (though not intentionally.) where video and audio does not match the container specification. This would cause problems with Perian though unless it grabs resolution, aspect ratio etc from the video, not container. there has to be a better way to do that, because spoofing the container's media properties is a poor way. While it would be nice for 1080p playback in frontrow, I don't see it as a necessity, not when an application on aTV does it already, XBMC.
Just found an application called "VideoDrive" - Not only does it add any video file you want to iTunes but it has a multitude of different ways to do it depending on how you want to use the file.
It uses either shortcuts or containers to not touch the video itself. You can put any video in an AppleTV compatible container and it'll sync from iTunes perfectly - ive just tested it with some DivX and Xvid files which show up with full meta tag data in the ATV interface and can be played perfectly due to Perian being installed.
So basically yes - as soon as some kind of support for the Broadcom HD filters down to Perian, you'll be able to play 1080p MKV files natively in ATV and for me that would be the ultimate result from all this with finally the ATV doing what it should do natively - im not as sold on using XBMC to have all my files in to be honest, various reasons.
- Sam.Nazarko - 2010-01-14
djdeejay Wrote:Just found an application called "VideoDrive" - Not only does it add any video file you want to iTunes but it has a multitude of different ways to do it depending on how you want to use the file.
It uses either shortcuts or containers to not touch the video itself. You can put any video in an AppleTV compatible container and it'll sync from iTunes perfectly - ive just tested it with some DivX and Xvid files which show up with full meta tag data in the ATV interface and can be played perfectly due to Perian being installed.
So basically yes - as soon as some kind of support for the Broadcom HD filters down to Perian, you'll be able to play 1080p MKV files natively in ATV and for me that would be the ultimate result from all this with finally the ATV doing what it should do natively - im not as sold on using XBMC to have all my files in to be honest, various reasons.
Sounds good. I remember in 2007 when people used to get DivX and Xvid working through iTunes in a plethora of ways. One widely used method was to create a a reference file in Quicktime and play it with Perian (installed through SSH).
While this could work, there are a few things to consider:
- While Apple does not care about the patchstick scene with aTV, they would probably fix this trick in iTunes. This is because they could see it as a loss to the mighty empire. After all, one DivX video is one h264 one your not getting of iTunes store.
- Unless people stayed behind on iTunes versions they could see there library messed up by future versions of iTunes. It might work now but it might not in the future (for whatever reasons, perhaps Apple's intent), and that would upset quite a few people who would have to worry about whether iTunes releasea are safe.
- Say Apple fix it, someone fixes it back. You could end up with a game of cat 'n' mouse.
- XBMC has an Apple TV 1.0 (frontrow style) skin, and I believe there's also a 3.0 version on it's way -- search if you must.
I personally don't care if I can run my videos in aTV's interface or not. Running it in the interface is good for devs because it's all low level and it opens up doors for other plugins potentially, however it offers little benefit when you can just use XBMC.
Not to say I don't wish anyone who works with Perian and CrystalHD in any future projects some good luck.
SVN releases are very stable now -- getting great results from 720p and 1080p content is starting to improve. It's my HD-DVDs and BDs that struggle to play -- even when transcoded to a lower bitrate and profile. But it's good to know that there's constant work underway
- djdeejay - 2010-01-14
Sam.Nazarko Wrote:Sounds good. I remember in 2007 when people used to get DivX and Xvid working through iTunes in a plethora of ways. One widely used method was to create a a reference file in Quicktime and play it with Perian (installed through SSH).
While this could work, there are a few things to consider:
- While Apple does not care about the patchstick scene with aTV, they would probably fix this trick in iTunes. This is because they could see it as a loss to the mighty empire. After all, one DivX video is one h264 one your not getting of iTunes store.
- Unless people stayed behind on iTunes versions they could see there library messed up by future versions of iTunes. It might work now but it might not in the future (for whatever reasons, perhaps Apple's intent), and that would upset quite a few people who would have to worry about whether iTunes releasea are safe.
- Say Apple fix it, someone fixes it back. You could end up with a game of cat 'n' mouse.
- XBMC has an Apple TV 1.0 (frontrow style) skin, and I believe there's also a 3.0 version on it's way -- search if you must.
I personally don't care if I can run my videos in aTV's interface or not. Running it in the interface is good for devs because it's all low level and it opens up doors for other plugins potentially, however it offers little benefit when you can just use XBMC.
Not to say I don't wish anyone who works with Perian and CrystalHD in any future projects some good luck.
SVN releases are very stable now -- getting great results from 720p and 1080p content is starting to improve. It's my HD-DVDs and BDs that struggle to play -- even when transcoded to a lower bitrate and profile. But it's good to know that there's constant work underway
I dont thinks something they would fix because its not really a hack. The program uses Quicktime to put the feed into a .mov container (if you want it seen by ATV) or just creates a .mov link - its all Apple designed stuff so...
I think i just like the idea of having the ATV working the way its supposed to, designed by Apples design geniuses, but doing that little bit more than its supposed to. In the same way ive Jailbroke my iPhone but not changed the way it looks at all, just added the excellent software tweaks people have made.
I will try the 3.0 skin when it comes out and see how i feel about it, right now im not into the default skin it looks a little bit amateur especially the stock picture of the Philips 56PFL9954H and the text menus feel a bit like im navigating an old PC game. Of course other skins might change all this and strip a lot of the junk out - but i dont like the idea of booting ATV and then loading up another application really - If I were to do that I might as well buy one of those cheapy media players off ebay for £80 that already play every 1080p MKV you throw at them and have a tacky windows based interface trying to look stylish but failing on them.
- Sam.Nazarko - 2010-01-15
djdeejay Wrote:I dont thinks something they would fix because its not really a hack. The program uses Quicktime to put the feed into a .mov container (if you want it seen by ATV) or just creates a .mov link - its all Apple designed stuff so...
I think i just like the idea of having the ATV working the way its supposed to, designed by Apples design geniuses, but doing that little bit more than its supposed to. In the same way ive Jailbroke my iPhone but not changed the way it looks at all, just added the excellent software tweaks people have made.
I will try the 3.0 skin when it comes out and see how i feel about it, right now im not into the default skin it looks a little bit amateur especially the stock picture of the Philips 56PFL9954H and the text menus feel a bit like im navigating an old PC game. Of course other skins might change all this and strip a lot of the junk out - but i dont like the idea of booting ATV and then loading up another application really - If I were to do that I might as well buy one of those cheapy media players off ebay for £80 that already play every 1080p MKV you throw at them and have a tacky windows based interface trying to look stylish but failing on them.
Yep. Creating a reference file is the way it's done, I'm surprised there still doing it now without a better method. The thing I don't like about the reference method where you create a file that links the movie is that they are quite large. Sometimes there 1.5MB -- which might seem nothing, until you've got a few thousands episodes of TV, films etc. You've also got to remember that you've got to do this iTunes trick to every single file you want to add. I don't know if the program your using has batch processing, but it still seems like a burden. Whereas XBMC is happy go lucky, unfortunately not quite so happy go lucky with scraping TV shows.
aTV 3.0 looks awful. Sure it does the job and it's simple but it just looks terrible. If Apple were such geniuses, they would have added features like 1080p decode into the Apple TV, or background processes into the iPhone without modification. But then again, Apple are geniuses, which is why they restrict a stock aTV to play mp4, at 720p, in other words, any video that will accumulate revenue (from iTunes).
The media streamer's you buy don't have the greatest interfaces. The popcorn hour has clunky menus, as does the Western Digital TV (and the new TvLive) -- although WDTV does have custom Linux firmware. What's good about aTV though is the support it has and the community it has. Me, I like the Aeon skin. Yeah I know what you're all thinking
- djdeejay - 2010-01-15
Sam.Nazarko Wrote:aTV 3.0 looks awful. Sure it does the job and it's simple but it just looks terrible. If Apple were such geniuses, they would have added features like 1080p decode into the Apple TV, or background processes into the iPhone without modification. But then again, Apple are geniuses, which is why they restrict a stock aTV to play mp4, at 720p, in other words, any video that will accumulate revenue (from iTunes).
I think 3.0 looks beautiful, but thats opinions eh, like arseholes everyones got one!
While ive got the background process hack on the iPhone i rarely use it, I can see why Apple stopped it happening, most of the time i check processes to close all I can, but with a few 3rd party apps it is handy to leave it running while you shut it and do something else.
Apple are not perfect, but they somehow design products that make me want to buy everyone of them - and I cant say that for any other manufacturing company. After using Macbooks for the last 5 years I cant believe the horrendous looking plasticy junk some of the PC manufactures are putting out - they look worse than mid 90's 16bit gaming consoles, and whilst made of plastic are built no where near as well! - I dont see why someone out side of Apples offices isn't able to make a Laptop with a nice design - not only just nice, but not horrendous like someones caughed up a chav's car with all his mods on it...
- Aleksandr - 2010-01-15
djdeejay Wrote:I dont thinks something they would fix because its not really a hack. The program uses Quicktime to put the feed into a .mov container (if you want it seen by ATV) or just creates a .mov link - its all Apple designed stuff so...
I think i just like the idea of having the ATV working the way its supposed to, designed by Apples design geniuses, but doing that little bit more than its supposed to. In the same way ive Jailbroke my iPhone but not changed the way it looks at all, just added the excellent software tweaks people have made.
I will try the 3.0 skin when it comes out and see how i feel about it, right now im not into the default skin it looks a little bit amateur especially the stock picture of the Philips 56PFL9954H and the text menus feel a bit like im navigating an old PC game. Of course other skins might change all this and strip a lot of the junk out - but i dont like the idea of booting ATV and then loading up another application really - If I were to do that I might as well buy one of those cheapy media players off ebay for £80 that already play every 1080p MKV you throw at them and have a tacky windows based interface trying to look stylish but failing on them.
Try the Alaska skin for XBMC. It's reasonably snappy on the Apple TV and, for me, looks and functions better than Apple's stock ATV interface. Personally I'd rather put up with launching another app than having to deal with iTunes hacks and the limitations of the stock software.
How do I know it's working ? - The doctor - 2010-01-15
Guy's
Just registered today, but, have been following this development since mid last year.
From the information you guy's have posted I have been able to install the Broadcom card that arrived today.
I have checked the common things you guy's suggest when having issues, the problem is, that I don't know if I have an issue at all, but, maybe just need a little clarification.
Running dmesg, the card is started and software driver loaded.
Even have the card in XBMC on my Apple TV appear as a render source and is selected.
The thing is, that I can't see any difference, I have 4 Apple TV's running 1G ethernet to Apple Extreme and NAS storage for content.
The test movie is 720p I, Robot and testing on two Apple TV on the network.
I have r26715 installed and get the following debug results
Freemem at around 35Mg, CPU 0 at 0% and CPU XBMC at between 30 to 70% dependant on the scene.
The thing is that running both the Apples the same movie at either the same time or on their own, I get the same debug results and only one of them has the card in, both Apples have r26715.
I get very good playback of 720p with no stutter on any of the Apples anyway, but, installed the Broacom to allow 1080p as we all have I guess.
The issue is, that If I change the native resolution to 1080p it stutters, it always has done, all 4 of them do, but, it makes no difference if the card is in or not. I get the same results. Is their any way of knowing 100% that it is making a difference?
One point of note, since moving to nightly SVN updates, it takes a movie some 30 seconds to start, when on 9.11 it was around 10 seconds dependant on if the NAS HDD needed to wake up.
Any help would be much welcome.
Thank you
- The doctor - 2010-01-15
Forgot to mention the FPS is 25 and on fast forward x8 drops to some 7FPS and is identical on Apple TV's with or without the Broadcom card in.
Regards and thanks.
Tony
- davilla - 2010-01-15
The doctor Wrote:Guy's
Just registered today, but, have been following this development since mid last year.
From the information you guy's have posted I have been able to install the Broadcom card that arrived today.
I have checked the common things you guy's suggest when having issues, the problem is, that I don't know if I have an issue at all, but, maybe just need a little clarification.
Running dmesg, the card is started and software driver loaded.
Even have the card in XBMC on my Apple TV appear as a render source and is selected.
The thing is, that I can't see any difference, I have 4 Apple TV's running 1G ethernet to Apple Extreme and NAS storage for content.
The test movie is 720p I, Robot and testing on two Apple TV on the network.
I have r26715 installed and get the following debug results
Freemem at around 35Mg, CPU 0 at 0% and CPU XBMC at between 30 to 70% dependant on the scene.
The thing is that running both the Apples the same movie at either the same time or on their own, I get the same debug results and only one of them has the card in, both Apples have r26715.
I get very good playback of 720p with no stutter on any of the Apples anyway, but, installed the Broacom to allow 1080p as we all have I guess.
The issue is, that If I change the native resolution to 1080p it stutters, it always has done, all 4 of them do, but, it makes no difference if the card is in or not. I get the same results. Is their any way of knowing 100% that it is making a difference?
One point of note, since moving to nightly SVN updates, it takes a movie some 30 seconds to start, when on 9.11 it was around 10 seconds dependant on if the NAS HDD needed to wake up.
Any help would be much welcome.
Thank you
xbmc.log will show if crystalhd is being used. You should see the device open and crystalhd used as the codec.
- The doctor - 2010-01-15
Thank you for a quick assist, this is what I see:
02:51:25 T:2684407808 M: 3088384 DEBUG: Loading: libcrystalhd.dylib
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 12029952 INFO: CrystalHD: device opened
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11894784 NOTICE: initialize done
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11812864 NOTICE: Running the application...
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11812864 DEBUG: ExecuteXBMCAction : Translating SetFocus(10)
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11812864 DEBUG: ExecuteXBMCAction : To SetFocus(10)
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11665408 DEBUG: Process - no user autoexec.py (/Users/frontrow/Library/Application Support/XBMC/scripts/autoexec.py) found, skipping
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11558912 DEBUG: Process - no system autoexec.py (/mnt/Scratch/Users/frontrow/Applications/XBMC.app/Contents/Resources/XBMC/scripts/autoexec.py) found, skipping
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11558912 DEBUG: NetworkMessage - Starting network services
The device Opens, shall I post the complete log file ?
Thank you again.
- davilla - 2010-01-15
The doctor Wrote:Thank you for a quick assist, this is what I see:
02:51:25 T:2684407808 M: 3088384 DEBUG: Loading: libcrystalhd.dylib
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 12029952 INFO: CrystalHD: device opened
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11894784 NOTICE: initialize done
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11812864 NOTICE: Running the application...
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11812864 DEBUG: ExecuteXBMCAction : Translating SetFocus(10)
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11812864 DEBUG: ExecuteXBMCAction : To SetFocus(10)
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11665408 DEBUG: Process - no user autoexec.py (/Users/frontrow/Library/Application Support/XBMC/scripts/autoexec.py) found, skipping
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11558912 DEBUG: Process - no system autoexec.py (/mnt/Scratch/Users/frontrow/Applications/XBMC.app/Contents/Resources/XBMC/scripts/autoexec.py) found, skipping
02:51:30 T:2684407808 M: 11558912 DEBUG: NetworkMessage - Starting network services
The device Opens, shall I post the complete log file ?
Thank you again.
yes, use http://www.pastebin.com and post the url here.
- The doctor - 2010-01-15
Davilla, Before I waste any of your time, I'm going to compleatly restore the apple TV to factory settings and start all over again, to make sure I'm not getting something wrong.
I will paste the log if I get the same results.
Thank you.