Archive:HOW-TO:Install XBMC on Apple TV 1

Thanks to lots of hard work by Team-XBMC's very own Scott Davilla it is now possible to install and run XBMC on you Apple TV.

In short it is XBMC for Mac on Apple TV made easy for everyone to enjoy!

How does it work?

ATV USB Creator let you make a so called "patchstick", a bootable USB flash drive which you boot your Apple TV with to install XBMC for Mac to run nativly on Apple TV OS (which by the way is "Tiger based).

Really Frequently Asked Questions and Answers

• Question: Will the Apple TV playback 1080p videos encoded with the H.264 codec (like Blu-ray rips)
  • Answer: No, the Apple TV hardware is only powerful enough to decode 720p videos encoded with the H.264 codec.

• Question: Does XBMC on the Apple TV upscale standard-definition and 720p videos to 1080p output.
  • Answer: Yes, XBMC on the Apple TV will upscale all videos to 1080p is that is your output resolution.

XBMC Live minimum requirements

• Intel-based Mac computer (Windows and Linux ATV USB Creator is coming soon).
• 512MB (or larger) USB flash memory drive.
  • Note that it can not still have U3 software on it (so uninstall that first if you have U3 USB flash memory drive).

HOW-TO install XBMC on your Apple TV

ATV USB Creator is currently available for Mac OS X (Windows and Linux ATV USB Creator is coming soon).

NOTE! Just to be safe, unplug any other Mac formatted USB drives just in case, (as you do not want to risk the chance the patchstick utility to overwrite the data on any other USB drive you might have connected).

1. Download the ATV USB Creator from http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/
2. Insert a 'bootable' USB flash memory drive into your Mac.
3. Run the ATV USB Creator.
4. Follow the GUI to select "ATV Patchstick"" and which plugins you would like to install.
5. Make sure to select the correct disk and hit the circling arrows to the left of the drive menu if you insert the USB flash drive after launching atvusb-creator.
6. Remove the USB flash memory drive and plug it into your Apple TV.
7. Power on your Apple TV and the USB flash memory drive (now also called "patchstick") will automatically boot and run ATV bootloader.
8. After the ATV bootloader finishes, remove it and restart your Apple TV.
9. You Apple TV GUI will now have an option for XBMC on the main menu.
10. Click on XBMC, then select "Update", (this will download and install XBMC from the Internet)
11. Once XBMC is done installing, restart your Apple TV (again).
12. Click "XBMC", then select "XBMC" in the sub-menu to start XBMC.

Known Issues

Due to the way that Apple TV handles its 'wakeup' from screensaver mode different from an infrared remote event from the Mac computer platform, we will need to make a source code change to the XBMC software change, but until then you can use this workaround to disable the screen saver in XBMC.

HOW-TO disable the Screen Saver within XBMC on Apple TV

1. Launch XBMC on your Apple TV.
2. Remote "-" down the left side of the screen to the Settings.
3. Choose Appearance on the Settings menu
4. Remote "-" down to Screensaver
5. Remote ">>" right to Screensaver mode
6. Press ">" Play to change it to Off
7. Hit the Menu or "<<" button to exit back

You can then hit Menu button (we auto-save all settings) a couple times to go back to the home screen and your media.

Development for XBMC on Apple TV

To help out with the development of XBMC for Mac (which runs on Apple TV) see here. To help out with the development of ATV USB Creator or ATV bootloader see their respective project sites on Google Code:

• ATV USB Creator
• ATV bootloader
• XBMC for Mac development