[Nasa]

Hello,

For those of you using the ATV2:
How has your experience been?
Do you use it as your main htpc?
Does XBMC play nice?
Can you use a RF remote to replace the apple remote? (Harmony One)
How does the 1080p play? (I know ATV2 is limited to display 720p output)

Do you think it will ever be possible to play 1080p on it or is the hardware not powerful enough.

Thanks for your thoughts.

[ernie]

I have been wondering about the same.
ATV1 is more expensive plus you need a crystal HD module to play HD content with XBMC which makes it even more expensive. Power consumption is higher, too. But it actually can output 1080 material and has more power in general, making the GUI more responsive generally.
I have been looking for lightweight ATV2 themes but nothing has come up so far.

[wicky]

I h ave an ATV2 that I have been using with XBMC, and while I can't say that it's a full replacement for my needs, I can assure you that for most people ATV2+XBMC is an ideal pairing.

The experience has been good, only a few crashes which is surprising for such a fresh port. A lot of skins dont work right now, or at least didn't when I last checked. The stock UI is pretty responsive, but scraping hundreds of movies is tedious at best, and skipping through your library to find a file to watch is a bit chopper.

I don't use it as my main HTPC, but for a guest room box there is nothing better. My main gripe is that most of my 1080p content doesn't play very well. It is a bit choppy, you drop frames, and it's hard to say if this is something that will improve or if it is just a hardware limitation. 720p content is great, particularly the TV rips but high bitrate BR sources can be choppy, but most are smooth as can be.

Though I have not tried it yet, it seems the harmony remotes can be made to work, but pairing and mapping your keys can be a bit annoying, there is some info on it in the IOS specific section of the forums.

So it's not perfect, but if what you want is a small, low power, easy to use box that does 720p and SD content as a primary, then yea it can be a main box. If you want 1080p and demand the smoothest thumbnail caching, content scraping, and full featured skins...then you are still better off with an x86 box.