Helmonder Posted October 20, 2012 Author Share Posted October 20, 2012 I thought i used the torx8 to screw out the screw holding the wifi card, I could be wrong. Nice one on the discount ! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD Quote Link to comment
Helmonder Posted October 20, 2012 Author Share Posted October 20, 2012 I also read up on openelec. As far as I could find the performance between cystalbuntu and openelec is the same. Pro fot openelec is that its boot-time is quicker, con is that it is a but harder to setup. What pulled me towards cb is that it is more configurable since it is a "regular" linux distro behind. Developper is very active on the product , although focus at the moment is on getting it running on the rasberry pi. Done by one guy who works his ass of on it for free. Very interested in your experiences with openelec. Quote Link to comment
dikkiedirk Posted October 20, 2012 Share Posted October 20, 2012 Here's the link to the card on Logic Supply's website: http://www.logicsupply.com/products/bcm970015 Use code "XBMC10" to save $10 during checkout. I just ordered one to replace my BCM970012, which will go to a co-worker. You only need a Torx T10 to open the ATV1, a T8 is only necessary if you want to swap the internal hard drive. I loaded OpenELEC 2.0 on mine. I've never seen XBMC run so efficiently on my ATV1. Unfortunately, it still struggles a bit with MKV Blu-ray rips streamed from my unRAID server. I've read that it could be a limitation of the Realtek 10/100 network card. I'm going to try the same file from a USB hard drive to see if it plays any better that way. http://xbmc.org/natethomas/2012/10/18/openelec-2-0-now-available-now-with-pvr-support/ Unfortunately that code doesn't work with LogicSupply Holland. Total cost excl.shipping is 42,95 Euros. But I pulled one of ebay for 29,45 free shipping. Just takes a bit longer. Pity that it struggles with those mkvs. A Dune Base 3.0 plays them just fine and also has a 100mbit NIC. Also plays full bluray rips with HD audio fine. I like to hear if a directly attached solves it. Maybe a gigabit LAN to USB adapter might work? http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php?title=Supported_Hardware#Ethernet_Cards http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php?title=AppleTV_Upgrades_%26_Modifications Did any of you guys try any high bitrate mkvs? A 100 mbit NIC should be able to do 80-90 mbit. Quote Link to comment
Helmonder Posted October 20, 2012 Author Share Posted October 20, 2012 I am not really very up to speed with video formats, sofar it plays everythingI throw at it, if you give an nzb or something to test I would be more then happy to.. Quote Link to comment
dikkiedirk Posted October 20, 2012 Share Posted October 20, 2012 There is a 40gig pata drive installed stock (160gig is also available as another version of the atv1). At the moment though I have crystalbuntu running off an a 16gig usb drive and performance is great really happy with it. 1080p not an issue. Xbmc is running fluently. This is undoubtely a better option then atv flash. I however expect that an internal ssd will be somewhat more quicker, a 32 gig pata (transcend) is 32 euro so I will probably go that route.. Really happy with this box. Xbmc remote app also rox.. I might go with a Crucial M4 32 GB with SATA/PATA converter board. Quote Link to comment
NodNarb012 Posted October 20, 2012 Share Posted October 20, 2012 I thought i used the torx8 to screw out the screw holding the wifi card, I could be wrong. Nice one on the discount ! You're probably right. I didn't need the T8 at all this last time because it turns out that I already had the BCM970012 in it. I've opened mine up so many times over the past few years. I just cut access holes for the screws in the rubber bottom instead of peeling it off all the time. I also read up on openelec. As far as I could find the performance between cystalbuntu and openelec is the same. Pro fot openelec is that its boot-time is quicker, con is that it is a but harder to setup. What pulled me towards cb is that it is more configurable since it is a "regular" linux distro behind. Developper is very active on the product , although focus at the moment is on getting it running on the rasberry pi. Done by one guy who works his ass of on it for free. Very interested in your experiences with openelec. I never got around to trying CB (I have other media players, so it was never a priority to get my ATV running XBMC), so I can't really compare. I just know it runs WAY better than modding the original ATV OS to run XBMC on top. I would think, though, that OpenELEC should run a bit better since it is stripped down and they offer a verison optimized for the ATV1. Pity that it struggles with those mkvs. A Dune Base 3.0 plays them just fine and also has a 100mbit NIC. Also plays full bluray rips with HD audio fine. I like to hear if a directly attached solves it. Maybe a gigabit LAN to USB adapter might work? Did any of you guys try any high bitrate mkvs? A 100 mbit NIC should be able to do 80-90 mbit. I think I may be experiencing issues with a faulty BCM970012. I bought it a few years ago off eBay and I've always been leery about it since I couldn't get my setup to perform as well as others claimed, like this guy for example: http://www.johnlarge.co.uk/2012/10/11/apple-tv-1-crystalbuntu-openelec/ Before I always thought I messed up the install of the driver for the BCM970012 and that was causing my problems, but now with OpenELEC I know the driver is installed. I played an ATSC TV capture (MPEG-2 and AC3 in a MPG container) with hardware acceleration on and off. With it on, I was seeing extremely choppy playback that resembled a network bottleneck, but when it played back perfectly smooth with hardware acceleration off, I knew something was up with my BCM970012. For the record, this was a 720p file, hence the reason the ATV was able to play it smooth with hardware acceleration off. I have a new BCM970015 on its way from Logic Supply. I'll post my updated findings once I have time to play around with the new card installed. I might go with a Crucial M4 32 GB with SATA/PATA converter board. If I were you, I'd wait to see what you think of the performance running from the stock internal hard drive. I can't imagine a SSD being THAT much better to justify the cost, especially considering it's still running through a PATA connection. Quote Link to comment
Helmonder Posted October 20, 2012 Author Share Posted October 20, 2012 I have Crystal|Buntu running off an external usb drive at the moment, and it is still fast :-) Quote Link to comment
dikkiedirk Posted October 20, 2012 Share Posted October 20, 2012 If I were you, I'd wait to see what you think of the performance running from the stock internal hard drive. I can't imagine a SSD being THAT much better to justify the cost, especially considering it's still running through a PATA connection. I will, wont'jump to a SSD that soon. I'm more concerned with the network performance. Can you create a OpenElec patchstick in Windows? Quote Link to comment
dikkiedirk Posted October 20, 2012 Share Posted October 20, 2012 How does XBMC handle Bluray rips? Should it be ISOs or folder structure? Or won't it work at all? Quote Link to comment
Helmonder Posted October 21, 2012 Author Share Posted October 21, 2012 It plays blueray's as far as I can tell, have some very large MKV's that seem to play.. Yesterday my USB drive crashed, totally unresponsive and cannot even see the partitions any more from windows, so I am now reinstalling crystalbuntu to the internal drive :-( Bummer sinds I will have to rescan the entire library.. Will be a nice thing to see how that performs opposite from usb though.. I'll report back. Quote Link to comment
Helmonder Posted October 21, 2012 Author Share Posted October 21, 2012 Reinstall finishes and scraping again. System seems more responsive from hd.. Quote Link to comment
dikkiedirk Posted October 21, 2012 Share Posted October 21, 2012 Reinstall finishes and scraping again. System seems more responsive from hd.. That confirms what I read. XBMC relies on reading from the drive where it is installed on and the internal drive is somewhat quicker than an USB stick. I doubt though that a SSD will be even quicker. It is limited by the PATA interface. Quote Link to comment
batt01 Posted October 21, 2012 Share Posted October 21, 2012 I have wondered fi you set up a MySql database have your clients pull from your server, also your playstates would be uniform on all your clients. Would that speed things up. Thats the way Plex works, but I still perfer XBMC over Plex. Quote Link to comment
Helmonder Posted October 21, 2012 Author Share Posted October 21, 2012 There is really no need to switch to ssd for speed, I would do so for sound and heat. Quote Link to comment
dikkiedirk Posted October 21, 2012 Share Posted October 21, 2012 There is really no need to switch to ssd for speed, I would do so for sound and heat. How warm/hot does the harddisk get? Can the Apple TV be running fanless? Quote Link to comment
Helmonder Posted October 21, 2012 Author Share Posted October 21, 2012 According to what I have read the atv1 can run fanless if you remove the harddisk. I translate this to exchanging the hdu by an ssd. The fan does not actively cool a specific component but only moves air within the housing. Quote Link to comment
dikkiedirk Posted October 22, 2012 Share Posted October 22, 2012 Turns out that the ATV1 that I'll be getting has a 160 GB harddisk and XBMC and Boxee installed alongside the Apple software. Will the crystalHD be supported when I drop it in? Or do drivers need to be added? Might experiment with it a bit and then install OpenElec. I also read that the HDMI interface needs to be reset to RGBHigh? before installing OpenElec? Will an AppleTV allways boot from an USB stick when it is attached? Quote Link to comment
Helmonder Posted October 22, 2012 Author Share Posted October 22, 2012 I think you are getting an atv jailbreaked with Apple TV Flash, I started out with that, it basically installs XBMC into the Apple system (called FrontRow). XBMC will make use of the Crystal HD if it is inside, its an option that appears in XBMC when the card is in. I also started with Apple TV Flash (and there are similar products out there), they work but the setup thru OpenELEC or CrystalBuntu is quicker because the linux distributions used are basically better then the underlying Apple FrontRow system (which is also unix based by the way). What I also found is that I basically want to use XBMC, I have not much use for an option that allows me to watch videos that are in iTunes (because that is what a plain vanilla AppleTV can do). I can confirm that XBMC runs a lot smoother now then it did in FrontRow (not saying that it was not smooth before, its just even better). I can also confirm that running of the internal HD is a lot quicker then the external USB drive, so its very much worth installing it on that. Starting out on the USB version is nice for finding out how its like, all data is fully on the USB stick only and if you remove the stick its like it has never been there. As long as the stick is in the stick version will run, you need to remove it if you do not want to use it. Making the RGB high setting is to avoid a pink screen I have read, not using HDMI myself so I would not know. You also need to make sure to update the apple tv frontrow system to the latest version before you perform the install, that will make sure the internals are flashed to the latest release. Quote Link to comment
NodNarb012 Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 dikkiedirk, Have a look at the XBMC ATV1 FAQ; I think it'll answer some of your questions. http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Apple_TV_1_FAQ Check out the OS comparison. Switching to Linux (CrystalBuntu or OpenELEC) will enable 1080p output via HDMI. Keeping the Apple OS on it will limit you to 720p output, which can only get to 1080p thru up-scaling. The way I understand it, this would occur even with the CrystalHD card. Yes, you should set the HDMI setting to RGB High before installing OpenELEC. If you don't do it, you'll just notice that the screen will have a pink tint to it during boot up, but it goes away once the ATV is booted into XBMC. Quote Link to comment
dikkiedirk Posted October 26, 2012 Share Posted October 26, 2012 On the Openelec forum I read there is an issue with Openelec running on the ATV1 with thr crystalhd chip. I couldn't find what the exact issue is and whether it has been solved yet. Does any of you know? Quote Link to comment
Helmonder Posted October 26, 2012 Author Share Posted October 26, 2012 The crystalbuntu forum has a thread describing serious hickups in playing on the ATV since several versions before, cannot remember the exact thread but it is in here: http://forum.stmlabs.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=4 Crystalbuntu does not hickup for me at all.. And its free (as is openelec), so I guess you can try both to see what you like best... The CB usb stick is created in 15 minutes by a GUI, after that you only need to put in the atv and reboot, first boot takes two hours with al the installation going on. after that 30 seconds. Quote Link to comment
anonimo200 Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 Good morning from Spain. I've openelec installed in my Apple Tv and it starts slower than when I tried it from a usb... Any idea why this can be happening? I've read it should be faster (a couple of post before) and that's what I expected but the fact is it's significantly slower... Thanks in advance for your help Quote Link to comment
damoo Posted January 27, 2013 Share Posted January 27, 2013 Can anyone tell me a good place to by a Broadcom bcm970015. The above seller has discontinued. The only ones I can find are on ebay and im a lil sceptical about the ones from China. Can anyone confirm if these are the real deal? Thanks in advance Quote Link to comment
S80_UK Posted January 27, 2013 Share Posted January 27, 2013 Maybe from this Amazon seller... http://www.amazon.co.uk/Broadcom970015-Crystal-Enhanced-Hardware-Accelerator/dp/B008D96Z8Q I have not tried personally, so cannot vouch for authenticity. Quote Link to comment
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