[Ncage1974]

I currently have a second generation WD Live Tv Streaming box. Its kind of getting old in the tooth. While the box can stream almost anything on my internal network the UI design sucks. I only stream video through it because the music interface is so bad. Also there is bugs that i'm pretty sure will never be fixed (i can't submit credentials correctly for a domain account). Anyways i have been looking into XMBC as a possible replacement.

A couple years back i replaced my Windows Media Center Machines with these WD Live Tvs. I much prefer not to have a full pc and just a small streaming box. I've been looking into both rasperry Pi & Apple TV. I want to be able to stream any video format i throw at it in 1080P and not have to worry about smooth video performance. Is the apple tv what i should be looking into getting or really do both of them have enough power to do anything you ask of them?

It looks like the jailbreak for APTV3 is only days away. Should i wait for this? Will XMBC most likely be available for it day 1?

Is there any added flexibility that you get from an running xmbc on windows or ubuntu?

Any help or advice would be appreciated....

[Ned Scott]

I'd go with a Pivos XIOS DS over an ATV2/3. XBMC for it is still in development, but I believe you would be happier and end up with a more capable machine for about the same price.

[spjonez]

It looks like the jailbreak for APTV3 is only days away. Should i wait for this?

Don't hold your breath. I was a long time ATVFlash user on the ATV2 but I'm highly skeptical of any supposed ATV3 jailbreak. I'm not going to link the website, I don't believe it's legit and I don't want to give them any extra traffic for purporting a myth, but if it's the "countdown" one they ran out of time and still haven't released anything to the public. No beta, no tethered, no un-tethered, until they show actual proof they've done it I wouldn't buy one unless you are content with the built in functionality.

[Ncage1974]

I'd go with a Pivos XIOS DS over an ATV2/3. XBMC for it is still in development, but I believe you would be happier and end up with a more capable machine for about the same price.

Thanks for the reply. I never heard of pivos before your post. Heard of the g-box but it seems to be quite buggy. Just curious why do you prefer the pivos over the jailbroken aptv? From what i've seem on youtube navigating through the menus seems to be sluggish.

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It looks like the jailbreak for APTV3 is only days away. Should i wait for this?

Don't hold your breath. I was a long time ATVFlash user on the ATV2 but I'm highly skeptical of any supposed ATV3 jailbreak. I'm not going to link the website, I don't believe it's legit and I don't want to give them any extra traffic for purporting a myth, but if it's the "countdown" one they ran out of time and still haven't released anything to the public. No beta, no tethered, no un-tethered, until they show actual proof they've done it I wouldn't buy one unless you are content with the built in functionality.

I was just going by what i read here:
*scam link removed*

Is this website not legit?

[Six_Shooter]

I have a WD TV, one of the earlier ones, that I used for a long time with an external HDD, that I would copy some movies or TV shows over to, from my PC, since I did not have the WD TV network enabled.

Not long ago (about 2 months ago) I finally got a couple network cables in place, so I thought this would be great, I could finally stream from my PC, and the internet.

Well, I could stream from the internet just fine, if you want to watch some non mainstream video, which some of it was interesting, but overall, not worth the effort. The only good thing out of it was that I was introduced to Tune In internet radio, which I use quite a bit now.

The biggest issue was that many of the files I had seemed to come up as "File type not supported", even though many of them were the same file type that were able to be played, of other movies. Now there may have been some audio coding that was different between some files, but even if only 15% of my files came up this way, that would be an issue, since that would be many movies and TV shows.

I started looking for alternatives and XBMC seemed to be the answer.

I installed XBMC on my laptop and played with it for a few days, then decided to install it on an old laptop I have and connect it to my TV, and upon finding the official XBMC iPhone remote app, I was hooked. My only issue was streaming 1080p video, 720p was fine, but 1080p was glitchy and after some minutes the audio would be greatly out of sync with the video. After some network additions (more dedicated network cables between my main PC/server, and the router, there was little improvement. So I did some research, and decided to copy a 1080p video directly to the HDD of the laptop, and still had play back issues. So it turned out to be my hardware.

I'm now watching a 1080p video as I write this post, using some older PC hardware I had kicking around (AMD dual core, 2.8 GHz I think 4 GB DDR2 ram, Nvidia GT220 1GB video card, though testing without the video card still played fine), and loving every minute of it.

I know you said you don't want to use PC hardware, and I didn't either, hence why I wanted to use the WD TV, and resisted for a long time to build an HTPC (I had looked at building an HTPC using other programs a few years ago), but after building a temporary HTPC (actually before that) I was convinced it's the best way to go for me, ability to upgrade, use internal storage if I wish, or just use an SSD or small HDD (Currently using a 80GB HDD, with only Win7 and XBMC installed) as strictly a streaming device.

The PC hardware avenue could be inexpensive as well, the hardware specs that are needed aren't overly powerful, and like I said before they could always be changed or upgraded in the future, if you decide that you ever want to add more or different functionality to the device, such as gaming.

So far, XBMC has played anything and everything I have thrown at it, including disc iso images, H.264, MKV, MP3, MP4, etc. The customizability is great. I will say that I haven't used XBMC on other devices, such as the ATV, or Raspberry Pi, but I am thinking about getting a Raspberry Pi, to play around with, since that idea has intrigued me, and might be good enough for what my Girlfriend needs.

[Ned Scott]

Well, for starters, the guy (Davilla) who ported XBMC to the ATV2 is also one of the guys working directly on the Pivos XIOS DS, and says the Pivos blows the ATV2 away.

The link for the ATV3 jailbreak is from a well known scam site. The actual experts in the jailbreak iOS community have all said that there isn't anything even close for the ATV3.

[nickr]

PC is (IMHO) the only foolproof way to go at present.

There are some promising android set top boxes, but until XBMC officially supports an affordable one with all codecs/addons - is just like a PC, it's a safer bet to buy an ION2 box, or cheap low power HTPC motherboard with nVidia graphics and get all the XBMC goodness without fluffing about.

[davilla]

my ATV1s and ATV2s are retired, replaced by Pivos M1/M3 boxes. I eat my own dog food, woof, woof.

[Ncage1974]

Thanks everyone for the help. I still have my original pc from my win media center build sitting in a closet (with a few parts missing for stuff thats broke on other pcs). Maybe i should just order the few parts its missing and see how it goes. I hate to sit a big honking mid tower by my tv again (and so is my wife) but maybe i'll try it out for a few months and if it goes good buy a proper micro-atx system with a good looking / small case. Its a low powered pc but hopefully it will be good enough to try things out (core duo @ 2.5ghz with motherboard that doesn't support ahci & 2 GB of Memory). I'll throw Win 8 + Media Ctr add on, Plex, & XBMC

[Six_Shooter]

Those specs should be good enough, CPU power anyway, I'm running an AMD dual core that IIRC is 2.8 GHz.

I would think about adding some RAM to that machine though.

I'm planning to buy a couple HTPC cases in the future (hopefully sooner than later), for the media centers in my house, to get a proper appliance look.