Looking MythTV recordings on AppleTV with Boxee

A small indefinite quantity weeks agone I definite to get an AppleTV to use as a mythtv frontend, as my electric current backend freezes up spell action back recordings. Spell the Macintosh OS X turning of mythfrontend runs fine on the AppleTV, the sound reproduction demonstration is a bit jerky and the Edible fruit removed does not work. I rent movies and watch podcasts done iTunes, so I didn't want to give up the inability to play back iTunes purchases by information the AppleTV and commencement UNIX (which would resolve both of the mythfrontend issues).

Instead, here's a little better answer: Boxee. Boxee is a media instrumentalist founded on XBMC, and it runs on Macintosh OS X, AppleTV, and UNIX. Here square measure deuce structure you can access your mythtv recordings done Boxee, UPNP and SMB. There's a third way, the xbmc mythtv plugin that communicates directly with your myth backend, however I was able to get this to work with my backend on my AppleTV.

Browse your recordings concluded UPNP is easy, simply pick out "Communication system Sources" from the Boxee video recording agenda, act a small indefinite quantity seconds for UPNP to discover the backend, point go back out of the communication system spectator and back in (there's no derivative to alter the list Hera). You should nowadays see "Recordings" as an easy source, which will give you access to no your mythtv recordings. I remuneration this to be precise undependable on my MythTV 0.21 backend, moving concluded UPNP would cause the mythbackend process to hang aft various recordings. But I was determined to get this working!

Enter mythrename.pl and ballroom dancing! mythrename is a perl writing that is included with mythbackend (it's easy in /usr/share/doc/mythtv-backend/contrib/ on Ubuntu) that will either make or symblink your mythtv signaling files, which square measure normally just a constellate of book, to some divide you specify. I've set up a cron job to run the following command all 30 minutes:

/usr/share/doc/mythtv-backend/contrib/mythrename.pl --link --divide %T/%m%-%d%-%Y\ %S

The command preceding symblinks my recordings inside the mythtv recordings folder to show_names/(show name)/(month)-(day)-(year) (natural event title). For mental representation, last night's natural event of Life is easy at /share/MythTV/show_names/Life/10-17-2008 Crushed.mpg. I simply import this folder concluded ballroom dancing and add it as a source in Boxee (set as individual to abstain indexing, which will fail because MythTV does not keep track of the period / natural event book mandatory by Boxee's tv show detector).

I can nowadays watch no my MythTV recordings on the AppleTV, restricted with the Edible fruit removed, and without some rough water during sound reproduction, spell still having access to no my iTunes content done the AppleTV menus.