[LINUX] Apple TV Crystalbuntu (Ubuntu Linux and Crystal HD) Disk Image for Apple TV

There needs to be a ATV Linux Live Image

This is a Linux ATV image. It's not minimalised - but you can do that yourself if you wish.

As for skins, plugins, etc, you can SSH in and install these into the .xbmc folder under your home folder.

Remember, this image was created with a focus on CrystalHD, not to provide an uber lite image or a comprehensive set of skins and plugins. Customise it to your liking, this image is just to put the difficult stuff (setting up XBMC, HDMI sound etc) behind you so you can tweak your XBMC experience to your liking.

I would appreciate some feedback on CrystalHD's performance (and I'm sure Davilla would too), rather than the content of the image itself. Please report your fortune, good and bad here.

Really nice thanks for this Sam.Nazarko works great on my ATV.

Most stuff plays fine tried out DivX/WMV/MPEG-2/X264 only encountered two issues.

While trying to fast forward on an x264 video (my own encode done with Handbrake) I messed it up with pause/skip or something whet wrong anyway XBMC crashed and brought me to the Ubuntu login screen.

Out of curiosity, [I didn't expect it to play] I tried playing the original H.264 Blu-ray of Avatar (ripped via MakeMKV) and it caused the audio to go nuts, lot's of screeching garbled audio - had to mute sound system.

Played another video and it corrected itself.

One last thing the video is quite dark is there anyway to adjust it & get the 16-235 colour space you used to be able to do this manually by setting brightness at 56 and contrast at 43 but in this version of XBMC there is only a contrast setting in the video settings menu. There is the VDPAU studio color correction but I assume that does not work the Crystal HD.

Sorry for the basic questions here but although I have XBMC running on the ATV OS I have no Linux knowledge (which is why this is so great!). Basically to get this to work I just download the file, extract the image, use the listed USB Tool program to put the image onto a USB drive, and then plug in the drive to my ATV and reboot?

@Starstream. Thanks for some feedback. I'm glad you've had some success. Unfortunately, yes there are issues with ff/rw and that can cause Ubuntu to lock up. I'm guessing Avatar had garbled audio because you don't have a DTS receiver? Go to System under Settings and uncheck DTS receiver. That'll fix your issue. As I said before, you should configure your supported audio codecs in the settings menu.

About the colours - ask the devs, they will be able to advise on this. If it's dark you can toggle between RGB settings in frontrow - Linux reads the vesa frame buffer info from the video bios settings. VDPAU studio colour conversion is for GPU acceleration under Linux, so no CrystalHD is not affected by it (it's mainly for the ION platform).

@akg4y: yep that's what you do. Just follow the instructions and you can't go wrong, plug it in and enjoy.

Thanks for the info, I do actually have a DTS capable receiver and the same Avatar video plays okay (some judder) on my Asrock Ion 330 running XBMC Live.

I'm actually re-ripping it right now with the AC3 track instead of the DTS one and I'll see how it fairs.

Hmm I'd like to see how that squares up.

I've got content with DTS but I only have an AC3 capable receiver which is actually my TV. I'm not an audiophile so I can't justify DTS SRS at the moment.

Have you tried using the SPDIF with pass through and see if that lets the DTS track work OK?

You don't necessarily have to re-rip to use it without DTS, just uncheck DTS and select the downmux option and it should be fine. You have to downmux because sometimes I can only hear some channels not all from the DTS track. This way it'll still passthrough any AC3.

How is the video play back of the film though on the aTV? I understand you made the MKV with MakeMKV, is this a simple remux of an h264 stream or has it been transcoded?

Thanks for all the work nazarko!!!
I tried some files who where hard to play in macos and they are playing superb on ubuntu!

I had only 1 crash with opensubtitles but with a restart it was gone again (only restarting takes some time)

I tried DTS and it worked great aswell.

I was wonderig about where the application folder is from xbmc. i know the userfolder is .xbmc, but i couldnt find the install folder.

Many thanks for the image, it made my world easier


Oh yes, some side-question. In the AtvOS its possible to learn any remote thinkable, so i had my sony remote for the tv to work. Would this also be possible with ubuntu?

Riderzzz.

Good to hear you've got improved playback.

Regards applications, no idea. I haven't installed plugins on the Linux yet and I can't check for a day or two because I'm getting a new tv in so I'm moving some stuff around at the moment.

I don't really use plugins but I think it's just a plugins folder underneath .xbmc?

~/.xbmc/plugins/music/
~/.xbmc/plugins/pictures/
~/.xbmc/plugins/programs/
~/.xbmc/plugins/video/

I think by "applications" you mean programs which would be under "programs" folder.

As for getting other remotes to work. Yes it can be done, but not as easily as in frontrow. Have a look at LIRC which will let you use any IR remote, provided you keymap it with XBMC.

Oh almost forgot to mention, if your XBMC crashed, Ubuntu may have done a core-dump which dumps the session to file. This can take up a good 100mb. You should SSH in and look for a core file. If it's there and your not debugging or persuing the crash you can delete it. Reboots are a bit slow, so I recommend either migrating to the internal HDD once the image is how you like it, or investing in a high speed flash drive

How long does the restore process takes usually(i am on Mac)? The process via terminal is started but is taking more than expected (1 hour),led in the usb key is still flashing but no advice from the Terminal.
Is it freezed?