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TvhClient: Roadmap for tvOS-Version?

Added by Magnus Lobenhofer about 9 years ago

According to the latest Apple-Keynote there will be an App Store for the Apple TV. With a tvOS version, Tvheadend would finally get its deserved place in the living rooms.
Is there a roadmap if or when the app TvhClient on the AppleTV will be available?


Replies (4)

RE: TvhClient: Roadmap for tvOS-Version? - Added by Maury Markowitz about 9 years ago

The "big issue" is whether the boxes have enough CPU to decode the MPEG2 in software. Apple won't let you decode anything other than H.264 in hardware, so for straight-up streaming you have to use the VLC codebase (or similar) to decode in software. Sadly the typical receiver boxes like an RPi don't have the horsepower to do H.264 transcode in real-time, even when using the GPU accelerated options.

RE: TvhClient: Roadmap for tvOS-Version? - Added by Magnus Lobenhofer almost 9 years ago

Yes, my RPi 2 has problems, when I use TVH-Accounts with given H264-Codec configured for this Account Profile. (Backend: TVHeadend in Synology DS214play)
But Live-Streams from german HD-TV (DVB-s2) work properly - And they come as H.264?

How does Plex for tvOS work?

And isn't it that Apple doesn't let decode anything as H264 in hardware on iOS, too?
There works the TVHClient fine!

RE: TvhClient: Roadmap for tvOS-Version? - Added by Andreas Smas almost 9 years ago

I've ported Movian (https://movian.tv) to Apple TV (although not released officially yet). It's not really ready for submission to Apple yet so I've not bothered with that just yet.

It's capable of playing h264 (using HW-acceleration) and also MPEG-2 (including GPU assisted de-interlacing) from Tvheadend.

If anyone is interested in testing I can provide ad-hoc builds (this requires that you install via XCode from a Mac to your AppleTV, ie, you need a USB-C cable), contact me at with your AppleTV UUID and be prepared to do some testing (I don't want to waste UUIDs since they are capped)

To get a feel for how Movian works/looks you can install it as a Chrome Web App from this link (Unfortunately there is a bug the version on the Chrome Web App store that causes interlaced video to be incorrectly stretched, but it works OK on Apple TV)

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