Hi,

I'm very happy to see Davilla on the Knoppmyth forum. As the starter of this thread i'm always checking the post of Davilla on the Awkwardtv.com forum. I think the merge of AppleTv and Knoppmyth is a terrific good thing.

For now i just have SD signal so the plugins approach of the Awkwardtv Wiki is good for me (And i can say that the appletv interface is good for youtubing, picture and mp3). But i'm thinking to move to the HD Signal shortly.

I'm not a linux king but with my 3 years of Knoppmyth but my understanding is better npw. With your support the migration to a true Knoppmyth frontend seem affordable. I'm very happy to see competent person like you driving and supporting this project.

By the way what is the status of the ATV wireless networking with MythBuntu or Linux?

For people thinking to buy an AppleTV as mythfrontend, have a look to the refurbish on the apple store. Pretty good deal.

Thanks and keep us informed Davilla
Long life to Knoppmyth
Bob

Thanks for the kind words. Linux on the AppleTV is really starting to rock now that the major issues have been resolved.

From the reports I get back from others, wireless in pretty simple to install and works fine. There's a mention here http://forum.awkwardtv.org/viewtopic.ph ... t=80#p8603 about how to get it working.

I was going to follow it myself and document the process on the atv-bootlaoder wiki but I got side tracked with playing around with KM and an alternate install method that can do a cdrom boot of an installer. Since that's been so successful, I have pressed on with doing the audio and IR patches for KM so you should see an entry about KM soon.

Ok, update time before I crash.

check - Method for updating nvidia to 169.12
check - Apple IR remote working
almost - audio chipset is recognized, digital audio should work, analog audio is faint which means I boff'd the audio patch. faint analog audio is a failure to unmute the second gpio (be there, done that before).

spent most of my time d***'ing with IR. IR worked but myth did not see it. as usual the fix was simple. ownership/permissions on /dev/lircd where wrong. myth could not access /dev/lircd. Duh.

More games tomorrow

Why would a remaster be needed? From what I've read, unless I missed something. The only thing R5.5 RC doesn't have is a bootloader for ATV. If that is all that is needed, then it should be up to the installer to know that is is installing on an ATV and just do the right thing.

A remaster would not be required.

For R5F27, a series of patches could be crafted to enable full device support and stability. It's only three items that need be addressed. Boot and install work fine and once a working install is up and running, the rest is pretty trivial.


For R5.5, it will be even easier. Boot and install is just going to work like with R5F27. The amount of patching to address the three items is going to be reduced depending on what's currently present. I would not worry, it's just going to work :)

I love the words, "just going to work". I'm looking forward to your final results and procedures for KM on the ATV. I'm really blown away by what this little box can do. And as always, it seems Cecil and Dale have done their part in loading KM with just what is needed to make life easier.

That is the idea. In patching the kernel in R5.5, I just founded and followed directions and patches online. We try and make KnoppMyth good. With help from the community (KnoppMyth and the greater Open Source community), we can make it great!

Scott, I have followed your progress in the past. Glad to hear you are still keeping at it and have set your sights on KnoppMyth. Let me know when you have a procedure that a Linux literate monkey could follow (ie-me). I have access to a hacked up AppleTV and would be willing to give it a try and provide feedback.

You have made a lot of progress since I last looked. Can you leave the AppleTV HD intact and boot from USB stick or USB hard drive for the KnoppMyth frontend installation? The perfect setup would be to put the AppleTV back together with the original HD and be able to multiboot. ...and while I'm dreaming... Better would be a bootloader with remote control support to select which to boot.

Once I found the fix for the nvidia hang/corruption, that convinced me to press on and develop atv-bootlaoder.

Couple of days more and a guide for KM5F27 will be up on the atv-bootloader wiki.



There's several ways to have KnoppMyth installed, internal, internal combined (AppleTV OS and Linux), external USB. Lots of options and some you don't even have to open up the AppleTV. The big swing point comes with the Linux side installer and it's assumption during the install. For example, if it wants to automatically partition and relies on fixed partition order, the install has to done that way. But you could move it. The wiki will outline these issues and have solutions.

My mainline AppleTV mythfrontend internal disk is a 100BG combo AppleTV OS and Linux/Mythfrontend. I use a USB pen drive as bootstrap to boot Linux. Pull the pen and boot AppleTV OS.

It would be possible to boot the AppleTV mach_kernel from atv-bootloader I know how to do it but I would have to add that capability. And I've been toying with a gui boot menu but it's not very far advanced.

I'm hooked. Now to get an apple tv (or two with the Student/Teacher Discount or Refurb).

_________________
-Roseville, Michigan USA
LinHES R8: FE/BE, FE (x2)

Sorry, no educational discount available. I checked when I bought mine.

My intentions for buying one was to easily connect a device to my HDTV that only has Component inputs. I've not read up on the support for this. How does this look?

I'm getting excited that I may actually get to watch HD Myth Content on my HDTV though this nice little device.

It's fine, you might have to diddle with xorg.conf to get the resolution you want. But that's easy with the nvidia binary. see http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloader/wiki/atvdisplay for a 480i setup over component.

change


to match what you want as an output format.

That sounds like a good solution. Could you have the same setup on the Apple supplied 40GB HD? Or do you need to put something larger in?


Do the IR codes produce keystrokes in the AppleTV? If I remember correctly, the Apple IR receivers are grafted into the keyboard control. This is bad for lack of additional IR codes, but could be a plus for selecting a kernel in the boot loader.

A couple more questions.

1. Are the overlays still black and white? This is what I saw when running Ubuntu on the ATV a while back.

2. How is the 1080i decode with deinterlacing performance? What settings are you using?

3. Have you tried an OSX build of the latest MythTV recently? In the past, the performance was bad (no HD playback). Just wondering... as this would pretty much solve the dual boot issue.

4. Are there any drawbacks associated with running MythTV on the ATV (like #1 and #2)? Or is everything pretty much solved now?

Thanks!

40GB is plenty, you can reduce the size of the "Media" partition to make room for a Linux 10GB Ext3 and 512KB Swap. Unless you are doing development, a 10GB Linux is plenty for a frontend.




It's standard LIRC, an lircd.conf defines IR inputs to a strings. lircrc maps those strings to an application keydef. see http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloader ... teIRDriver

The only thing is all Apple IR controllers only understands Apple IR remotes. There is a method to get more IR commands using a IR Learning Remote. You can get a max of 256 x 6 functions.