[nickr]

I'm trying to use the FTV with XBMC as a headless music streamer. I want to use the optical audio output into an older (non-HDMI) receiver. Only I've hit a snag...

To set it up I first hooked it up to my TV/new receiver via HDMI so I could see what I'm doing.
I was able to side-load XBMC 13.1 along with AutoPilot. I used AutoPilot to automatically start XBMC on boot. I configured XBMC so that it could find my music files on the network, and enabled the ability to control XBMC remotely via smartphone.
All this is working fine.

The problem comes when I boot the FTV with nothing connected to the HDMI port. I can tell that XBMC is starting up on the FTV because the XBMC Remote app on my phone starts working and I'm able to browse my music library and queue up tracks. However it doesn't actually play them--it stalls at the beginning of the first track.
Also I discovered that when it is stalled like this, if I connect the HDMI cable to it, the queued up tracks begin playing immediately. I can then disconnect the HDMI and the playing continues fine (listening on the optical output).

So it seems that XBMC will not play audio on the SPDIF (optical) output until the HDMI output is connected to something at least once after bootup. That makes it pretty much useless as a headless music streamer unless you've got some HDMI device you can hook it up to.
I suspect that this is caused by something in the FTV's OS rather than XBMC.

Anyone know of a way around this? I can't think of anything else to try.

IMHO this is a very strange setup. XBMC is not designed to be a headless music player. Why not use logitechmediaserver and install squeeze player (android software) on the FTV?

Or buy a squeezebox, which is actually designed to do what you want :-)