[Muskyinoz]

Hi all,

Well after many months of testing, tweaking on my Macbook (and lurking here in the forums to find the answers to my noobish questions) I've taken the plunge. Yesterday I bought an Apple TV, ordered a Broadcom Crystal HD card (thanks davilla!) and loaded my modded version of Alaska (thanks to Hitcher, Amra and everyone else who have made it so easy for a complete novice to tweak things to his liking).

There have been a few dramas, but nothing major so far, however there are some things I'm hoping I might be able to get advice on.

The menu has a tendency to run a bit slow when browsing through my TV and Movies (I use poster view for both with Amra's mod) and I'm looking for any tips on optimising it for the Apple TV. One of my first thoughts was to reduce the size of the movie and TV posters to the exact size Alaska is using them on my 720p TV and this is where I need help.

Is anyone able to give me a pixel width and height for the enlarged view of the posters and what their res is (I'm presuming 72dpi but I could be wrong). Also is there a particular format XBMC prefers or is jpg the best?

Any other hits or tips to get the menu performing as smoothly as possible would be appreciated.

Again, thanks to everyone who has worked on and contributed to XBMC and Alaska, you guys rock!

Cheers
Paul

[mcborzu]

I personally don't have a ATV but when I notice alot of people recommend using that .DDS fanart conversion...Main Thread. And this thread is same type of discussion but more Alaska centric...

[Muskyinoz]

Thanks, I can see I've got a bit of work to do this weekend

[meathane]

in my opinion the appleTV is underpowered (256MB RAM, 1.0GHz, IDE hdd, major ballache to upgrade hdd) and for this reason and 3 years of pissing about hacking it, im getting rid of it and getting an acer. i fear you will be needing little scripts like the jpeg one for the next few years before you've had enough follow my route and buying something thats not an apple product (i know its hard to do, im a bit of an apple geek too, but ive had enough).

apple have a complete no quibble 14 day return policy, i hate to piss on your bonfire but i would seriously consider returning it and buying an acer, and this is coming from an apple technician and loooong time (since day 1) appletv user. dont put yourself through the pain

[reaven]

in my opinion the appleTV is underpowered (256MB RAM, 1.0GHz, IDE hdd, major ballache to upgrade hdd) and for this reason and 3 years of pissing about hacking it, im getting rid of it and getting an acer. i fear you will be needing little scripts like the jpeg one for the next few years before you've had enough follow my route and buying something thats not an apple product (i know its hard to do, im a bit of an apple geek too, but ive had enough).

apple have a complete no quibble 14 day return policy, i hate to piss on your bonfire but i would seriously consider returning it and buying an acer, and this is coming from an apple technician and loooong time (since day 1) appletv user. dont put yourself through the pain

mine is working great 720p/1080p, HDD just to run OS and XBMC all media in a network share via WHS anyone trying to use dds need an script/batch to convert tbn to dds no matter if is aTV or not until dds is committed in the next version of XBMC and the only "hacking" if you can called that, needed is attaching the Crystal HD decoder; would love a mac mini but in time... are you going to sell the aTV?

if you want something more powerful, of course you will need something better and expensive than the aTV but the aTV works great for that matter.

[meathane]

[Muskyinoz]

Thanks for the feedback but to be honest I'm pretty happy with it so far, the apple tv cost me $330 + $80 for the broadcom, here in Sydney the Acer will cost me about $590, and I don't think that includes a remote.

I've got an 8TB NAS for storage, have no need for the ATV Wi-Fi and all my content is 720p so once the broadcom is installed it'll be all good.

As for the slow menus, if I can't figure out how to speed them up I can live with it

[reaven]

WOW my aTV cost me $150 + Crystal HD $20

[Muskyinoz]

one of the great things about living in Australia, we pay an Apple tax (exchange rate plus 24%) and no one sells the broadcom cards so we have to import from ebay, cheapest I've seen the ATV is about $250 second hand

[sircube]

Muskyinoz, I strongly recommend to move to Linux if ATV is dedicated for XBMC only. There is a nice wiki page about it. Then no need for tweaking as Linux version is pretty fast, while menus are all suggish with ATV OSX. Also you get better Crystalhd experience on HD content., more free memory, etc. Check ATV forum Linux vs OSX here on the site. Good luck,this I would call a weekend project :o)

[Muskyinoz]

thanks sircube, I'll have a look at it although I've never experienced Linux at all before so I don't know if I'm brave enough to try it!

[thnmnt]

I gotta say that I'm loving my ATV - I downloaded and tested out Alaska and could see myself using it - problem is, I already 'trained' my wife and kids on confluence.

Anyway, I've had zero problems with the ATV, and using the broadcom card it hardly seems underpowered. The only concession I make to speed things up is regarding fanart - I just don't use it. It works -it's just a bit sluggish. So basically just find whatever list view works for you and disable fanart if you have to.

I would have gone with the Acer route but I'm using an older Panny plasma that doesn't have HDMI inputs - so using ATV I get great quality component video out. That was the deal-sealer. When I eventually upgrade my TV (doesn't look so urgent now) I'll go the HTPC/ION , or whatever is the new flavor, route.

[tuckbodi]

Have you tried the DDS route yet? The latest SVN's now have the capability of automatically generating DDS images for not only fanart but your other images now as well (i.e. thumbnails). Development of this is ongoing but I feel the UI is very snappy with fanart in Alaska.

[zenox]

Muskyinoz, I strongly recommend to move to Linux if ATV is dedicated for XBMC only.

Just confirming here.. are you saying to install linux on the Apple TV and to run XBMC from here? I have been searching the Wiki, but I don't see any information about this... could you point me in the correct location?

[sircube]

Just confirming here.. are you saying to install linux on the Apple TV and to run XBMC from here? I have been searching the Wiki, but I don't see any information about this... could you point me in the correct location?

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

It is really a good step-by-step guide. Will be hard to make mistake and there is a way to roll back. Also you can choose to keep ATV Os there for dualboot. For myself it was not an option. I'm not using ATV for anything "APPLE".

Linux Advantages:
- Slightly faster interface (still probably too slow for enabling fanart,sorry)
- Full 1080p output
- Seems to be utilizing network card (wired) better (faster ftp, nfs)
- Using less ram than OSX with xbmc running (to run apps/daemons)
- CrystalHD branch was always ahead in quality compared to OSX.

Good luck.