Apple TV as Backend?

I have a first gen apple tv lying around going to waste, so i thought i might turn it into a small backend for tv recording.
i tried to install mythbuntu on it but to no avail. sadly my linux expertise is not very high so if someone knows how to get the atv setup as a backend for pvr it would be really great!

Does this help: http://www.stmlabs.com/projects/crystalhd-for-appletv/

yeah tried it already. as far as i can tell its only a frontend. ie no recording just watching from a server.

You're going to have a real hard time CPU processing power wise running anything beyond the XBMC front end with the 1st Gen Apple TV. I'm speaking from experience trying to run TVheadend with a HDHomerun Dual tuner. In the end it would just crash continuously and the channel tuning was just too slow to be acceptable by my standards. I wound up switching to a AMD E-350 Foxconn NT-A3500 system and haven't had an issue since. My recommendation would be to try the STMLabs Crystalbuntu forums to read what I proclaimed in more detail or openelec.tv to see if they have had better progress.

(2012-04-16 17:35)smtelegadis Wrote:  You're going to have a real hard time CPU processing power wise running anything beyond the XBMC front end with the 1st Gen Apple TV. I'm speaking from experience trying to run TVheadend with a HDHomerun Dual tuner. In the end it would just crash continuously and the channel tuning was just too slow to be acceptable by my standards. I wound up switching to a AMD E-350 Foxconn NT-A3500 system and haven't had an issue since. My recommendation would be to try the STMLabs Crystalbuntu forums to read what I proclaimed in more detail or openelec.tv to see if they have had better progress.

Well, that depends if he wants to use it as a frontend as well? If he just wants a low-powered backend, he could disable launching into xbmc, apt-get install mythtv and use it as a backend for other machines. There's not really enough info about what the OP wants to do.... he'll sure learn some linux bodging things onto an ATV1 anyway! Especially if he just has it laying around gathering dust..... might as well experiment

as jimmer said. backend only! no need to watch on it.
i was gonna hook it up to the network and just let it record shows and ocasionaly watch stuff on another frontend...
i'm slightly familiar with linux so apt-get etc is not too strange to me. just not sure how i would go about disabling launching into xbmc. the crystalbuntu distro just boots directly into xbmc and i couldn't find a way to access the terminal.

(2012-04-16 22:15)pseudoheld Wrote:  as jimmer said. backend only! no need to watch on it.
i was gonna hook it up to the network and just let it record shows and ocasionaly watch stuff on another frontend...
i'm slightly familiar with linux so apt-get etc is not too strange to me. just not sure how i would go about disabling launching into xbmc. the crystalbuntu distro just boots directly into xbmc and i couldn't find a way to access the terminal.

You'll need to ssh in and edit the whatever file the distro uses to launch xbmc. I launch xbmc using the .xinitrc file, but I'm pretty sure that crystalbuntu uses /etc/rc.local. Whatever, you'll find the right place with a bit of digging (or ask on the stmlabs forum). If you want to be really hardcore (and learn some mojo on the way) follow the guide on setting up a minimal linux on the atv and then install mythbackend via apt instead of xbmc:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW...stallation

although if sound over hdmi isn't an issue (if you're just using it as a backend, why would it be?) then you may want to use a more modern distro than Hardy (detailed in the guide) that comes with newer libraries - or you'll find yourself bumping up against hand-compiling things when you need to hand-compile other things in the future.....

You can set this bad-boy up as a headless sabnzbd+/transmission box as well - pretty low energy way to organize downloaded/broadcast media.

yeah making it into a transmission box would then be my second goal. first thing first though. guess i will have to brush up on my ssh knowledge then...
wouldn't it be simpler to install a vnc service (via ssh) and some lightweight gui (xfce or whatnot) and then just use that to do the rest of the editing.

(2012-04-17 15:47)pseudoheld Wrote:  yeah making it into a transmission box would then be my second goal. first thing first though. guess i will have to brush up on my ssh knowledge then...
wouldn't it be simpler to install a vnc service (via ssh) and some lightweight gui (xfce or whatnot) and then just use that to do the rest of the editing.

If you want to make the ATV into some kind of headless mediaserver (PVR/torrent/sabnzbd), then you're going to have to roll your sleeves up and do some commandline at some point. Might as well get comfortable with ssh now!

don't worry i'm already brushing up on my linux knowledge. right now im going another route where im trying to install openelec which comes with a tvheadend addon
will see how that goes!