2012-03-18, 18:16
Thanks for the teardown! My ATV3 won't arrive until tomorrow; this almost makes up for it! More RAM is going to be fantastic for XBMC
(2012-03-18, 20:05)aicjofs Wrote: Wow this was a bit more popular then I realized. Thanks for the compliments. I still would like to see what the wifi/bluetooth is. I hope the iFixit crew is going to do it soon, those guys do far better work then I! I love that site!I think your work is iFixit level .
(2012-03-18, 19:43).:B:. Wrote: Would love to see someone hack Linux on it. With 512 MB RAM it's definitely worth it, would be a perfect Xbmc box. Way better than the previous AppleTVs. The GPU will probably be a problem though...What's wrong with iOS/Darwin? As iOS runs one app at a time, there wouldn't be much of a difference. As soon as you jailbreak the Apple TV, you have a neat little device running a POSIX compatible and UNIX certified OS, which is for the most part open-source.
(2012-03-18, 23:40).:B:. Wrote: I don't think so, unless Apple pulls an iPhone 4s and issues a new firmware that makes the AppleTV 2 run like crap .1080p should be the kicker here. Although people may say that, given a far enough distance from the TV, you wouldn't notice a difference between 720p and 1080p, I personally beg to differ.
(2012-03-18, 23:56)HansMayer Wrote:(2012-03-18, 19:43).:B:. Wrote: Would love to see someone hack Linux on it. With 512 MB RAM it's definitely worth it, would be a perfect Xbmc box. Way better than the previous AppleTVs. The GPU will probably be a problem though...What's wrong with iOS/Darwin? As iOS runs one app at a time, there wouldn't be much of a difference. As soon as you jailbreak the Apple TV, you have a neat little device running a POSIX compatible and UNIX certified OS, which is for the most part open-source.
(2012-03-18, 23:40)Ned Scott Wrote:(2012-03-18, 23:30)Basje Wrote: What I am wondering is if it is worth the money if you already own an ATV 2.
Are there more benefits besides the extra RAM and 1080p? I hoped for Gb/s LAN, but that is not in it.
Not even a bluray raw will max out 10/100 ethernet.
(2012-03-19, 00:06)Ned Scott Wrote:Well, Mac OS X is POSIX certified, and iOS is the ARM branch of it, which should make it POSIX certified, too. However Darwin itself is conforming to the SUSv3 and POSIX 1003.1 specifications for the C API, Shell Utilities, and Threads. OS X and iOS are really what in the GNU/Linux you'd call 'distributions of Darwin'(2012-03-18, 23:56)HansMayer Wrote:(2012-03-18, 19:43).:B:. Wrote: Would love to see someone hack Linux on it. With 512 MB RAM it's definitely worth it, would be a perfect Xbmc box. Way better than the previous AppleTVs. The GPU will probably be a problem though...What's wrong with iOS/Darwin? As iOS runs one app at a time, there wouldn't be much of a difference. As soon as you jailbreak the Apple TV, you have a neat little device running a POSIX compatible and UNIX certified OS, which is for the most part open-source.
I don't think just Darwin by itself is POSIX certified. That being said, iOS/Darwin is pretty powerful and easy to port things to. The main reason I can think of to run a replacement OS on an Apple TV would be to remove overhead. On the ATV2, XBMC runs as a "plug-in" to the native Apple TV interface, so there's overhead there that we can't get rid of. The ATV 4.4.4 update did something funky and took a little more overhead, too (some won't notice, but if you watch stylized soft subs, you'll see stuttering). With a replacement OS we could theoretically have more room to play with, and maybe (a big maybe) even have better access to that hardware decoder (which should be able to handle more codecs than Apple uses).
You can actually install Ubuntu on some iOS devices already thanks to the iDroid project, which aims to port both Android and other linux OSes to iOS hardware. http://www.idroidproject.org
(2012-03-19, 00:06)Ned Scott Wrote: You can actually install Ubuntu on some iOS devices already thanks to the iDroid project, which aims to port both Android and other linux OSes to iOS hardware. http://www.idroidproject.org
(2012-03-19, 08:53)HansMayer Wrote: I really wouldn't want to reboot my ATV constantly to change from the Apple UI to XBMC either.The way Xbmc works on the AppleTV it does not need any reboots; it just plugs in to the main menu. So that's a non-argument.
(2012-03-19, 01:09)thescragster Wrote: My thoughts, of course, where that when XBMC was installed, if we were streaming large high res media files from a NAS the 10/100 might not handle the file size appropriately. Good to hear thought, thanks Ned!