[Spyderturbo007]

I have a couple questions regarding the XBMC that I was hoping someone could help me out with so I could decide if XBMC is right for me.

My Setup:

I currently have all my media stored on a Synology DS209 NAS that I stream to my ATV2. All of my movies and TV shows are in the .m4v container that I ran though Subler to add the metadata.

Does XBMC work correctly with .m4v? Will it correctly read the metadata written by Subler? I see that it's recommended to keep each movie in it's own folder because of the additional files added during the Scraper process, so I'm assuming that it won't. Everything is currently lumped into one "Movies" folder, but I don't mind moving it around and rebuilding my iTunes library.

I was looking into purchasing Popcorn Hour and wanted to see how XBMC compared. I looked at the compatibility guide and didn't see DTS-HD mentioned as a bitstream output option, however I did see TrueHD. Will XBMC bitstream DTS-HD via the ATV2?

Right now I have to keep my computer and iTunes running when streaming media. Would my computer have to be on to stream to the ATV2 if I was using XBMC, or would it stream directly from the NAS? My NAS supports uPnP and NFS, but not SMB (as far as I can tell), so I don't know if that would be a problem. I know with the Popcorn hour, some formats have to be streamed via SMB and won't work via NFS.

Also, will XBMC handle a Bluray .iso? I couldn't seem to find anything on that either, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. I was considering upgraded my NAS to 3TB and ripping all my HD-DVD's and BDD's. I guess I'm just looking for something that will allow me to maintain resolution and HD audio from all my media.

Thanks and sorry for the length of the thread.

[eTip]

Humble suggestion: post a numbered or bulleted list of your most important questions ( the fewer the better).

I clicked on this thread with the intention of trying to help.....but got frustrated with trying to find the questions amongst the other info. Like I say.....just a suggestion.....

[Spyderturbo007]

I guess I do get a little long winded sometimes. Sorry.


With everything now installed, trying to play a video file crashes XBMC back to the main ATV2 screen. All files are .m4v created by Handbrake and then run though Subler.

• AppleTV2
  
• XBMC Pre-10.0 GiT 4b032be (Feb 19, 2011)
  
• Installed using apt-get instructions found here
  
• Pastebin says my crash report exceeds the 500kb size limit
  

[nmat]

What is your iOS version? If you have any version above 4.2.1 (4.1.1 on ATV) and you need hardware decoding, you must use the nightlies (also make sure that you have your updates turned off). They are also working on .iso support in the nightlies, but I have no idea if it is working or not (or if it even supports a Bluray iso).

[Spyderturbo007]

Mine shows 4.2.2 (2203) under General -> About. I'll try installing that build and see what happens.

Are you referring to the "updatebegone" thing I read about?

[Spyderturbo007]

I got the nightly installed and it seems to be working, but I'm having issues getting any 5.1 sent to the receiver, DD or DTS. I saw in this thread that I guess I have to start all over again if I want 5.1 audio.

Does anyone know how to switch audio streams using the ATV2 remote? I'm stumped.

[hyerstay]

Also check your sound channel choice in XMBC, and pick 5.1 or above.

[activate]

I got the nightly installed and it seems to be working, but I'm having issues getting any 5.1 sent to the receiver, DD or DTS. I saw in this thread that I guess I have to start all over again if I want 5.1 audio.

Does anyone know how to switch audio streams using the ATV2 remote? I'm stumped.

You shouldn't have to update to latest atv2 version just to enable 5.1, unless you wish to do so anyway.

Long press on atv2 center button will give you the osd menu. From there navigate to the speaker icon and you can select audio streams. I think it is the joystick.remote.xml or something similar if want to create a shortcut for it.

Edit: Looks you you already maybe on the latest in which case, you may want to try to set the audio to 16 bit on the main apple tv2 menu under settings -> audio & video.

[Spyderturbo007]

Ah, ha. With everyone's help, I got it working with one small hitch. Thank you!

I changed it to 16-bit as you suggested and it works great. The only problem is that I guess the 5.1 track is the 2nd track and not the 1st, so I manually have to choose the 5.1 track with each movie.

But when I encoded them, I set the AC3 Passthrough as track #1 and the downmix as track #2. I wonder why it's not picking them up that way? I do see that it has the right icon (5.1) when looking at the information screen.