[iphotostuff]

Greetings,

the second I got my ATV I installed boxee and XBMC via the patchstick. One day after being absolutely appalled by Apple's UI and user flow I discovered XBMC which I love.

Only problem is, I can't get any content with it. I can view Apple trailers, but that is it. I have gone to music > iTunes > import my itunes library ten times now and nothing has happened. I assume that it will look at ATV and import a reference to the library that is sitting on the ATV box --- but nothing is happening.

Am I supposed to be setting up some share permissions and SSHing etc (which seems to be all these forums are discussing), or is there a way for a very slow minded person like myself to use the fantastic XBMC interface with his content that is already synced on ATV.

Please, I would love to stop using front row and am having a horrible time figuring how to view ANY of my content from the FAQs and manuals here.

-i

[SecretSquirrel]

Greetings..

Am I supposed to be setting up some share permissions and SSHing etc

-i

I use SMB shares which are enabled on the Mac (or PC).

If you have a Mac see this current thread:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=43951

It's just the way I do it, and not necessarily the right or best way but it works.

If your iTunes is not on an external drive teh Symlink will not be needed as you could share the 'iTunes Music' folder direct, but this assumes all your media is organised in this folder and not some there, some references on other drives or locations.

Note - XBMC will not play back any iTunes Store DRM material only non-DRM stuff.

[SecretSquirrel]

Greetings,

...........absolutely appalled by Apple's UI
-i

I actually loved the simplicity of the GUI for software 1.0/1.1 but 'Take 2'+ software is 90% store front for iTunes Store - it would be miles better if there was simply a store top level category with all th emedia categories just showing things in your library. Just my opinion.

Also you don't really need to do anything with SSH unless you want to enable booting to XBMC on startup or tweak certain things. All the basic configuration is done in XBMC itself for connections etc.

[iphotostuff]

Hey, thanks for the link to the SMB info, that's really helpful.

It does seem that the SMB info is a bit outdated. So I do store my entire iTunes library on a drive that isn't my home drive. I have enabled that folder for SMB sharing (using the "options" button) but it doesn't give me a URL to that folder. How do I find that URL?

Also, (and I am really sorry for being so ignorant) but WHERE in XBMC do I go to make the connection?

I guess what I am not getting, is that I have synced my ATV with itunes meaning that there are hard copies of music and video data on my ATV. is the only way to use XBMC to stream? Can't I just point to the hard copies of the files on the ATV? It would seem there would be a simple logical way to do that since there are local copies? Am I just way off?

-i

[iphotostuff]

p.s.

you are exactly right. There should be an "Apple Store" menu, or a "Music Store" and "Video Store" menu item at the bottom of the main menu and then they should get their dirty clutter paws away from the rest of my content. Plus, there aren't even sorting options. So if I do go to Apple trailers it's all alphabetical. But I watch trailers as they are released - so I have to use XBMC to do that. Lamo.

[iphotostuff]

OKay - see now. I did the following:

1) Set up my iTunes Music folder to share via SMB in "sharing" as described in the link
2) in XBMC - went to settings and turned on SMB, and added user name and password
3) in XBMC -> Music -> add source, I browsed to find my iTunes Music folder and mounted

BUT, all I get is a list of folders and songs. no playlists, not smart playlists, no genres, no nothing, just one very large file structure.

I tried several times again to "import itunes library" and still, nothing. So, while I have access to streaming those files, they are in a pretty unusable state organizationally. How did you resolve this?

Also, it still begs the question, can't I just add a source, and that source in the ATV folder where the files are stored. Anyone know where that is?

Sorry for such basic questions

[marcc78735]

I've got the same question regarding accessing the ATV music files directly from XBMC. Did you figure this out?

[SecretSquirrel]

OKay - see now. I did the following:

.....................

BUT, all I get is a list of folders and songs. no playlists, not smart playlists, no genres, no nothing, just one very large file structure.

I tried several times again to "import itunes library" and still, nothing. So, while I have access to streaming those files, they are in a pretty unusable state organizationally. How did you resolve this?

I think what you're seeing is what I'd expect if you were just accessing the iTunes music folder - tou're just seeing the files. Not treally tried adding my music to the library.

I don't think the import itunes music library bit is functional (may be wrong), but I've not really dabbled with music on XBMC as i'm fairly happy with AppleTV itself for that.

[marcc78735]

Thanks SecretSquirrel, I love ATV but am I'm looking at consolidating on a home automation system and XBMC offers a more open control interface for that purpose. The itunes/ATV integration works well for my family so the ideal setup for family harmony would be itunes -> XBMC. I'm open to any suggestions on making this happen. Thanks in advance.

[EvilTed]

I'm using Samba shares on GigE network.
These are from an OpenSolaris server.
The shares have been tested from Mac, Vista and XP clients and give a good solid 50MB/s average.

The ATV is wired using the 100 base T network or n network, it doesn't matter which I try.

All movies I serve from the Server have interlacing artifacts all over the place.
It's such low quality I cannot watch it.

By contrast, if I put a Mac in the mix, mount the shares on it and set iTunes movie folder to the server, the ATV will stream these movies beautifully.

I've tried setting everything I can see to get the XBMC software to play correctly, but I cannot do it.

What's the secret?

ET