Hi guys.
I made a build of Kodi Jarvis 16.1 with Crystal HD support for the Apple TV. If there are any ATV users left, then this is for you. I’ve called this “Kinos”, it’s the word for cinema in some countries. I’m putting this on the OSX part of the forum because of the almost set-top box nature of this build, but if any moderators disagree then feel free to move it to the Linux subforum.
The base for this little experiment was CB, since this was easiest way of getting Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installed. But I removed everything except the settings app. What was left was the Ubuntu core itself. There is no trace of CB left, so do *not* bother asking for support from the people behind CB. Why 12.04 you might ask? I guess I wondered if 12.04 would run Kodi a little better than 14.04 (which I have installed on another ATV). The answer to that is that it doesn’t.. but still I ended up polishing it up quite a bit since the two other alternatives for ATV users have some slight performance issues, and figured someone else might have use for it. If I find some time, and if there is any interest, I might even repackage a Kodi standalone build based on Ubuntu 14.04 with a newer kernel. It runs a little bit better.
INSTALLATION:
Note: This only supports installing to the internal hard drive. No, I won’t add support for installing to an USB stick.
Note 2: You do this on your own responsibility
Download this zip file and unzip it:
https://mega.nz/#!c2ISyIgY!AzIIEf0ZWqmoQ…ONmCI7qUkE
Clone the image file to a USB stick using of the following tools (or your own method):
DD (Linux/Mac), Win32DiskImager (Windows), applepi-baker (Mac)
Insert the stick into the USB port at the back of the Apple TV, and connect the Apple TV to power. Within 5 Minutes you’ll be running Kodi Jarvis.
Have fun, and if you really like it and want to paypal me a beer or two, you can do so at [email protected]
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Notes
1)
SSH User:Password is atv:atv.
2)
Quartz is the default skin and runs the best (but Confluence is included of course). Aeon Nox Redux from the Kodi repo also works great. And even Lucid works pretty OK: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=256302
All these skins also work great when using a library, so you don’t have to limit yourself to browse/file mode. I haven’t tried all skins, but for the most part Confluence, Aeon Nox Redux and Quartz are those I would recommend. You should also be careful and not install a lot of addons that run in the background as services, although a couple these will be fine.
The Quartz skin is a little buggy, so the shelf won’t auto populate when you add a new library. You have to reload the skin, which is easily accomplished by simply quitting Kodi. Kodi will automatically respawn in a few seconds.
Skip step notifications/popups/overlays are nowhere to be seen so you have to use skip steps “blind”. Thanks to TPX01 for keeping the Quartz skin alive for Jarvis. (and of course Pecinko who is the original author) Also thanks to dynaflash for thoroughly testing this build and verifying that everything works as intended.
I hope the few bugs in the skin will eventually be resolved. If you need to update the skin in the future, you need to ssh in, then:
# cd /usr/share/kodi/addons/skin.quartz.jarvis
# sudo git pull
3)
Some addons are preinstalled:
Quartz skin (obviously)
Bestofyoutube
Subscene subtitles
Opensubtitles
Opensubtitles by opensubtiles.org
Universal Scraper (and requisites)
Settings addon where you can turn off/on Samba/SSH/etc.
Plus all the normal screensavers, pvr addons, and visualizers are included. It is more or less 100% feature complete in this regard. It should also work with the Pulse8 CEC adapter, but I haven’t tried that. (is anyone at all using that adapter with the ATV?)
4)
It has been optimized for modern HDTVs that are at least 1080p and can handle 23.976/24/50/50.94/60hz. EDID detection has been disabled and modelines hardcoded instead. This gives us a very accurate 23.976hz modeline. Also, the GUI defaults to 60hz and sound output defaults to HDMI. If you happen to have a a 720p display or want to use EDID detection you need to ssh in and rename /etc/X11/xorg.conf to “xorg.conf.1080p”, and then rename “xorg.conf.720p” to “xorg.conf”. If your HDTV supports 1080p but does not support 23.976/24hz, then you can also just edit the original xorg.conf and comment out the offending modelines.
If you happen to use the component outputs then you are on your own, but all the component options are already in the xorg.conf file (but commented out) so you should be able to get up and running in no time.
5)
It has been set up to auto refreshrate with a 2 second pause. This works fine, even with non-recompressed BD rips, and with the custom 23.976hz rate, it’s also buttery smooth. (it will probably throw up a little hiccup for a split second when the subtitles kick in for the first time)
6)
A couple of patches were taken from OE or OSMC: Most notably is that changing hostname in Kodi will also change the hostname of the OS (you need to reboot for Samba to pick up the changes, unless you ssh in and restart samba manually), and likewise with regional settings.
7)
Possible tweaks: Only 1 that I can think of, installing a small SSD through an IDE/MSATA adapter from Ebay. That will make the ATV much faster when it needs to do some disk trashing.
CHD’15 vs CHD’12: The 15 is recommended, but the ’12 should work pretty ok too. It gets a little more jerky when starting playback. And you might have to hit pause and then play to for the picture to sync with the sound. YMMV.
A note on the ’12: I have 2 different ’12 cards, one working fine and the other working less good (everything over 720p is jerky). The back side of the one working fine is “clean”, whereas the one working less good has a chip on it like this https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/…L1000_.jpg . That might just be a coincidence and one of my cards might be defective, so make of it what you will.
The ATVs running with 160GB are a little faster since the bigger HD drive is faster, but the the ATVs with 40GB drive should still be fine.
8)
This comes with NO guaranteed support whatsoever for any reason. I may or may not answer any questions. That said, it should be very stable and I honestly can’t imagine anyone having any trouble with it. It is what it is: a last ditch effort of getting Kodi Jarvis onto the ATV, so do not expect any updates to either Krypton or anything else.