Sage running on AppleTV... that would be cool

[Chriscic]

I see that XMBC has been ported to AppleTV (per Engadget). Very cool.

Wouldn't it be awesome if someone would do the same for a Sage client? Not holding my breath, but that would be neat.

Although if Sage could get HD Netflix access that would be more than acceptable as well : )

[stuckless]

You never know. But you should realize that you need a Jailbroken AppleTV to run Xbmc, but I think this will make the Xmbc folks pretty happy. They had it running on the older AppleTVs as well, but a $99 client for Xbmc is pretty attractive.

It would be hard for someone to spend the effort to do the same for sagetv, since it would be very hard to monetize it, as it would require a jailbroken AppleTV to work.

[Chriscic]

Actually I just realized this works on the iPad too. I'd given up on jailbreaking as not worth the effort, but now I'm gonna have to do it just to try it out. Wondering how well it would work compared to AirVideo for watching movies from my server. No transcoding sounds good in theory, even if it likely stumbles on some or all 1080p content.

Anyway, now I'm totally off the Sage topic : )

[PLUCKYHD]

It is very tempting and I am going to try it. Although we will see native extenders soon with the chip deal xmbc did. If XMBC can pull it off on a native extender other platforms like sagetv and wmc are in trouble IMHO. Of course it lacks livetv (for know) but xbmc has some of the most talented UI dev's out there and a very very active community of devs.

[Nelbert]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

It is very tempting and I am going to try it. Although we will see native extenders soon with the chip deal xmbc did. If XMBC can pull it off on a native extender other platforms like sagetv and wmc are in trouble IMHO. Of course it lacks livetv (for know) but xbmc has some of the most talented UI dev's out there and a very very active community of devs.

Depends which version of XBMC is installed, or if you can cross-compile the yaVDR teams version. The pvr-dev version used by the yaVDR team will do livetv playback, but afaik it's not able to schedule recording yet. The yaVDR team have XBMC as an optional frontend for vdr and intend to merge changes back into the XBMC branch as part of unified pvr code for XBMC. ie vdr, myth, <insert another backend tv server>

Something I looked into before getting Sage. Sage's main draw was the extender, yaVDRs was vdr as the recording backend and XBMC as the frontend, but at the moment no ability to schedule recording via XBMC.

Once XBMC gets the ability to schedule recordings and a PC jailbreaker comes out, if a $99 AppleTV can become a zero maintenance XBMC client for VDR it becomes a no brainer for me.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Chriscic

I see that XMBC has been ported to AppleTV (per Engadget). Very cool.

Wouldn't it be awesome if someone would do the same for a Sage client? Not holding my breath, but that would be neat.

Why? What would it do better than an HD300?

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

It is very tempting and I am going to try it. Although we will see native extenders soon with the chip deal xmbc did. If XMBC can pull it off on a native extender other platforms like sagetv and wmc are in trouble IMHO. Of course it lacks livetv (for know) but xbmc has some of the most talented UI dev's out there and a very very active community of devs.

I'm just wondering how much of XBMC they're going to have to strip out for legal/licensing reasons and if you'll be able to customize or put it back yourself. Stuff like metadata scraping I sure will have to be pulled for licensing reason.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Why? What would it do better than an HD300?

To me it for ones does true 3d rendering inside a UI. XBMC skins are better than sagetv's. Those are the plus's to me of course the minus's outweigh the plus hence I am still using sagetv .

Originally Posted by stanger89

I'm just wondering how much of XBMC they're going to have to strip out for legal/licensing reasons and if you'll be able to customize or put it back yourself. Stuff like metadata scraping I sure will have to be pulled for licensing reason.

I don't think they will because the addins that scrape the information are third party and free using imdb,tvdb,and tmdb. I think it will be pretty full fledged but could be wrong.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

To me it for ones does true 3d rendering inside a UI.

Does it do that on the AppleTV though?

XBMC skins are better than sagetv's.

That's not my question though, I was wondering how SageTV on AppleTV would be better than SageTV on HD300.

I don't think they will because the addins that scrape the information are third party and free using imdb,tvdb,and tmdb. I think it will be pretty full fledged but could be wrong.

But aren't they included when you install XBMC? That's really my question, my impression is a lot of what makes XBMC so good is those addins. I'm nearly positive the Sigma version of XBMC will not ship with those, and I question how "open" Sigma XMBC will be, ie if you can install them.

You can get away with a lot of things when you're just "user addins" that you can't when you're a for-profit entity. For example the tvdb/tmdb TOS I think specifically call out different licenses/terms for "business" use than personal use.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by stanger89

You can get away with a lot of things when you're just "user addins" that you can't when you're a for-profit entity. For example the tvdb/tmdb TOS I think specifically call out different licenses/terms for "business" use than personal use.

Right, you can pretty much kiss-goodbye any metadata/image scrapping for a commercial venture, or they'll sue you socks off... Of course you can get into some licensing agreement, but they tend to be priced out of niche market budgets...

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by stanger89

That's not my question though, I was wondering how SageTV on AppleTV would be better than SageTV on HD300.

He prolly thinks that he'd be able to do HD netflix.

Off topic: does anyone know why playon doesn't have an HD compatible version? Seems like that would be something people have been screaming for.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Off topic: does anyone know why playon doesn't have an HD compatible version? Seems like that would be something people have been screaming for.

That seems overkill for mostly streamed content...

[wayner]

Actually this should make it easy to get Sage video on the iPad and other similar devices:

Scott Davilla, accomplished Apple TV hacker and lead developer of XBMC for Mac OS X, told TUAW that enabling XBMC to run on iOS hinged on the discovery of a hardware decode API called VideoToolBox by GStreamer developer Ole André Vadla Ravnås.

"It's the API Apple 'should' have exposed instead of VDADecoder," Davilla explained. Also known as the Video Decode Acceleration Framework, it has been an official developer API since Mac OS X 10.6.3. However, "VDADecoder is just a thin wrapper around the VideoToolBox API," Davilla said.

"This API is going to blow wide open the video decode and encode ability on ATV2, iOS and OS X apps," Davilla told TUAW. "It is a private framework API and the usual warnings about using private frameworks apply. However, given that the API has been stable back to 10.5, it's not going to be changed very much by Apple."

The discovery of the private API suggests Apple has been using it for some time on both Mac OS X and iOS to power hardware-based decoding. The VDADecoder framework is limited to working with H.264 decode hardware on certain NVIDIA GPUs, while it appears that the underlying VideoToolBox can work with a wider variety of hardware, including Apple's A4 mobile processor.

[Chriscic]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

He prolly thinks that he'd be able to do HD netflix.

Off topic: does anyone know why playon doesn't have an HD compatible version? Seems like that would be something people have been screaming for.

That is what he thinks : ) You can do Netflix through Apple TV; presumably, you'd still have to back out of the XBMC interface to do so.

I don't think other than that there's a heck of lot of advantages to an AppleTV based system. Which is why I said in my original post "Although if Sage could get HD Netflix access that would be more than acceptable as well."

Of course AppleTV is cheaper and less concretely is likely to get lots of neat hacked apps for it as well. It can't do 1080p though would have to wait until the next update with that dual-A4 chip regardless.

[Chriscic]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

That seems overkill for mostly streamed content...

Are you serious? What does the fact that it's streamed have to do which wanting to watch in HD? We're taking movies here not YouTube : )

BTW, I checked out the Playon user forums recently, and the Playon folks have been saying for at least a year that they want to do HD streaming, but since it takes a quad-core for the transcoding they don't feel the market is big enough yet for them to make it a priority.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Does it do that on the AppleTV though?

Yes full 3d rendering capabilities on the appletv/a4 processor.

Originally Posted by stanger89

That's not my question though, I was wondering how SageTV on AppleTV would be better than SageTV on HD300.

By having that 3d rendering capability Abd a but zipper but those are the only advantages.

Originally Posted by stanger89

But aren't they included when you install XBMC? That's really my question, my impression is a lot of what makes XBMC so good is those addins. I'm nearly positive the Sigma version of XBMC will not ship with those, and I question how "open" Sigma XMBC will be, ie if you can install them.

You can get away with a lot of things when you're just "user addins" that you can't when you're a for-profit entity. For example the tvdb/tmdb TOS I think specifically call out different licenses/terms for "business" use than personal use.

Most of the scraping is third part addins and the ones that aren't they easily become that. It is no different than bmt on sagetv why you think it would I am not understanding. Imdb and tmdb both allow free API access if you are not charging and these third party apps wouldn't. I don't see any function being lost

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by Chriscic

Are you serious? What does the fact that it's streamed have to do which wanting to watch in HD? We're taking movies here not YouTube : )

BTW, I checked out the Playon user forums recently, and the Playon folks have been saying for at least a year that they want to do HD streaming, but since it takes a quad-core for the transcoding they don't feel the market is big enough yet for them to make it a priority.

There actually is a hd playon streamer coming out by someone so hopefully that is a start.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

He prolly thinks that he'd be able to do HD netflix.

Off topic: does anyone know why playon doesn't have an HD compatible version? Seems like that would be something people have been screaming for.

Probably so they can hit all of us lifetime suckers up for another large "one time" payment when they add the feature.

Drew