I recently bought an AppleTV and now I bought the Patchstick. I bought the patchstick mainly for simple DVD playback. I have no fanbcy requirements (yet) :-).
Apple was 2.1 out of the box. Updated it to 2.3. Worked. Connection to TV is 720p.
I installed the patchstick. Succeeded without probelms.
Then I sort of figured out I had to install lots of applications under the DVD menu item (no manual somehwere? The wiki is for a very outdated version of nitoTV). It told me Perian was already installed. All applications install fine but one, which require a MAC which I don’t have.
Then I tried to acces my DVD Video_TS folder. Hurray, it sees the title and I can start playing.
It starts of with a thin white line at the top, immediately followed by a green screen and then the video. Mmm.
Playing works (only first time). However I cannot pause, no fwd or rew, no Dolby Digital audio and no subtitles. Is that supposed to be??? Since I’m not native English, having subtitles is kind of must for the other family members.
Now I quit by pressing menu. If I want to replay the movie I get only audio.
Mmmh, so I go to applications and it turns out I can re-install the mplayer. Okay so let;s try again.
He, I can play my DVD Video_TS file again.
So I can only play a DVD once (no subtitles, DD or play/pause functionality) and then need to reinstall the mplayer codecs. What is going wrong?
Then I tried to install QuickTime from the maintenance menu. Cplete machine froze. Had to unplug to get it to boot again.
My problem was referring to local playback of DVD Video_TS files, but I wll follow your suggestions. Do I also need to install QuickTime from the maintenance menu? Because this wasn’t possible as the AppleTV froze. So to be sure I will do a clean install of the patchstick after factory reset of my AppleTV. Is this the proper order of actions?
upgrade AppleTV to 2.3
install patchstick
go to DVD menu and run the applications (as far as possible)
follow your suggestion of installing nitoTV smart installer
FTP the video-ts file to the apple TV
watch the program
Oke?
Do I No need to run Install Quicktime from maintenance menu as one of the steps?
Will I have subtitles, DD and play/pause/fwd/rew?
You won’t actually need to do a factory restore. The QuickTime installation isn’t actually freezing the Apple TV (even though it may appear that way). It is actually downloading QuickTime from the Internet, and installing it. This process will take a few minutes depending on your Internet connection speed. We’re working to improve the interface here to remove the ‘perceived freeze’. This QuickTime install option only affects the web plugins, so it is not required for normal video or DVD viewing.
So, just run the ‘Smart Installer’ under DVD > Settings > Install Software, and change the Playback Mode to Quicktime and you will be good to go. Once the DVD starts you should see the menu screen where you can adjust the subtitles, audio tracks etc.
(going to factory reset is a habit from windows based devices)
So I now got DVD playback working with both mplayer and Quicktime.
I got pause, play, skip fwd, skip bwd.
However, audio is still not given in Dolby Digital. Is this supposed to be?
Under Files → setting I changed AC3 pass through to yes, but that didn’t make a difference.
I would really like to get 5.1 audio. Anything I need to do, or is this work in progress?
Is there a testfile I can use? (although I’m pretty sure the DVD has 5.1 DD audio)
Best regards
Menno
Ps: please keep up the good work. Tried so many media players and was unhappy with all. At least this gives decent music, photo and DVD playback from a a responsive machine.
it does seem that 5.1 surround sound works when playing dvds through xbmc, but not on nitotv. Not sure why that is, but I’ve also noticed that getting network shares mounted on xbmc is a lot easier than with nitotv – I’ve been able to easily play dvds burned as video_ts files wirelessly from an external HD via my imac on the home network with full 5.1 surround sound, which is pretty nice.
I am also able to get Dolby Digital 5.1 with XBMC however when I play a DVD ISO file using XBMC, lot of times I see black horizontal lines on the screen. I dont know what the problem is but Is there a way to get rid of the lines ? The video, when playing DVD ISO file using nitoTV, does not have these black horizontal lines, but on nitoTV the sound is not dolby digital 5.1.