[tdansmith]

Hi all,

I've been running xbmc on my apple tv (using atvflash) for about a year. I've been using the Crystal HD card, and am really impressed with the dharma 10.0 release - 720p mkvs finally seem to run smoothly. So first of all, a big 'thank you' for all the great work; I'm definitely hooked on xbmc!

I could quit while I'm ahead - my friends are uber jealous of my (very cheap) set-up - but I just want to enquire as to whether there are any improvements when running xbmc from a USB stick. I definitely want to keep the atv OS on the internal HDD as I prefer this for music (sorry!).

1) Is it possible to run xbmc on USB w/o affecting the atv OS on the internal HDD?
2)Would this set-up simply boot from the USB when it's plugged in, and boot to atv OS when it's not plugged in?
3) Would running xbmc from a USB stick be any faster than xbmc on atvOS? IIRC xbmc on linux will run at 1080p rather than the 720p limit under the atvOS.

Thanks!

[garyi]

In my experience there is a massive improvement running crystalbuntu from a stick, but its a bit fiddly not like mac at all.

[defiler]

1) Yep - they don't have to interfere with each other at all. You might have a little stress if all your movies are on the internal drive because Linux doesn't like HFS journalling. You'd need to turn that off on the internal drive. If you're hauling all your videos from a server, though, it's easy.

2) Yep. The only issue is with the changeover. Since there's no way of switching off the ATV "nicely", some people have reported occasional drive errors. Doesn't seem to be anything to get too concerned about, but it's worth being aware of. From the Linux side you can shut down the OS, and when it says "System Halted" on the screen you can cut the power safely. Also, it's substantially more responsive if it's installed on the internal drive than on a USB drive, but if you can get a fast USB drive it'll help. Not that it's bad on USB.

3) Yep - it has a stack more memory to play with, so it's not swapping anywhere near as much. 1080p? Works for me. I get the odd frame drop, but generally it's excellent. As soon as I got the Linux image running I gave up on the atvOS. A few weeks later I scrubbed the internal drive and put the linux image on there. Unless you have a compelling reason to keep it running as a "real" AppleTV (like you're shackled to iTunes <spit>), I suggest you do the same. It just works.

[Starstream]

1) Is it possible to run xbmc on USB w/o affecting the atv OS on the internal HDD?

Yes.

2)Would this set-up simply boot from the USB when it's plugged in, and boot to atv OS when it's not plugged in?

Yes.

3) Would running xbmc from a USB stick be any faster than xbmc on atvOS? IIRC xbmc on linux will run at 1080p rather than the 720p limit under the atvOS.

Yes, XBMC runs faster and CrystalHD playback seems to work better.

[tdansmith]

Wow, thanks for the swift responses!!

So it looks like it's definitely worth investigating. I like the fact that you can try it out w/o touching the internal HDD.

4) Are there any walk-throughs for this? Everything seems to move so fast I'm not sure which, if any, of the guides I've seen are still relevant. I have access to windows and OSX if that's relevant.

BTW, all my media is on a (wired) NAS, so shouldn't have any issues with linux using the mac formatted HDD.

5) What are the benefits of running the xbmc on the HDD rather than USB, other than neatness?

[garyi]

You need to download some stuff and appear to need windows.

Lots of threads here abouts.

[tdansmith]

You need to download some stuff and appear to need windows.

Lots of threads here abouts.

I'm looking through the 'Sam's Image' thread at the moment. Am I on the right track?!

[garyi]

Yup. You'll pick it up. if I did anyone can!

[tdansmith]

The image is available, but I am too busy for the next month to provide any support whatsoever. http://twitter.com/SamNazarko/status/22615803283111936. Please refer to http://code.google.com/p/crystalhd-for-atv for support

Am I right to say that the link above is the latest USB image?

[garyi]

Yup.

You need USB restore tool thingy for windows. Make sure you open it as administrator or it won work.

Select that image to restore to your patch stick.

Word of warning I have two 4 gig patch sticks and neither was big enough so I had to plumb for an 8 gig.

[Starstream]

You can get the USB image tool for Windows from here.

[defiler]

4) Are there any walk-throughs for this? Everything seems to move so fast I'm not sure which, if any, of the guides I've seen are still relevant. I have access to windows and OSX if that's relevant.

BTW, all my media is on a (wired) NAS, so shouldn't have any issues with linux using the mac formatted HDD.

5) What are the benefits of running the xbmc on the HDD rather than USB, other than neatness?

4) There are walkthroughs in the original Linux image thread here (aka "The Beast"). Just use the thread search tool, or look through the first few pages. That'll get you the image onto a USB drive so you can have a play. I wrote a quick guide that you can find here. The first post in that thread (by Sam) has links to the original USB images. Sam's working on one that includes an auto-update and release version of Dharma, but it's not finished yet.

5) It's more responsive on the HDD, and it's happier on 1080p content because it swaps memory out to the drive a lot faster.

Oh, and you don't need Windows to do this. In my guide I included a link to a Windows tool to load the image file to a USB drive, but if you're using OSX or Linux you can just use dd to copy the image out to the flash drive. You just have to make sure that you're overwriting the *device* rather than copying the image into a file.

And make damn sure you're writing it to the correct device because it'll erase *everything* on the drive you point it at, and it won't ask you to confirm.

[zerostar]

Sam's working on one that includes an auto-update and release version of Dharma, but it's not finished yet.

Cool thanks! I think I will wait for his update, But...

Those of you booting from the USB stick on a 4GB or 8GB stick where is your library stored? It's all on the stick right?

Do you have enough room for DVD covers, Fanart, banners, etc? The 4GB may be tight but the 8GB should have 7GB+ room so that should be plenty for a normal library (100-1,000 movies) I would think.

If I did install this onto a 8GB or even 16GB flash how do I "extend" the image to take advantage of the extra space so XBMC library can use it?

Thanks and hope I didn't thread-jack

[interceptor121]

I have pin87a image on a 4GB stick, a powered USB hub connected to a 2TB hard disk
Performance is excellent, I see no reason to upgrade from the old 28256 SVN