[mythtv-users] Apple TV info

Scott D. Davilla davilla at 4pi.com
Tue Sep 9 13:52:29 UTC 2008


>Hi,
>
>Im thinking of buying an apple tv mainly because its cheap and has HDMI.
>
>I know there are two ways of working with myth - either using the
>crippled OSX or a full linux install. Here are a few questions.
>
>Can you run lirc with a usb remote control on osx / native?
>
>How fast is boot time using linux? Is menu navigation sluggish at all?
>
>Most important - Does audio (basic stereo , no special 5.1) work over
>the hdmi in linux?
>

Hi Adam,

While a version of LIRC does exist for OSX, the issue is the actual 
USB driver for your targeted IR remote will not exist. So short 
answer no on a USB remote control other than the Apple IR remote 
under the native AppleTV OS (OSX).

Boot time depends on the how you installed Linux, fastest is on the 
internal hard disk totally replacing the AppleTV OS. For dual boot, a 
USB flash is used to bootstrap Linux installed to two addition 
partitions on the internal disk. For USB flash boot, that's the 
longest boot time. Someone said they had a 3 minute boot to into 
mythtv. That's sounds like dual boot or USB flash. You could also do 
a USB hard drive boot. That would be faster than USB flash.

Audio over HDMI is still under development regarding Linux on any 
hardware platform, It works for some, does not work for others. The 
main issue is the video driver needs to support it as the audio in 
interleaved with the video data over HDMI. The issue with the AppleTV 
is a working nvidia driver that does the audio interleaving. It was 
promised for their 177 series but I have not tested it. Needed to 
items to test are the latest nvidia driver installed and a set of 
patches that enabled the HDMI audio device that is present on the 
AppleTV. The audio patches might already be included with a recent 
version of ALSA.

Scott





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