atv3 + xbmc imac + surround sound

passey89 · 9 May 2013 at 12:35

I've been looking at an apple tv 3 (currently no jailbreak I know).

I have a 2012 imac with xbmc installed on already.

I know you can do mirroring from the imac to the apple tv but now here are my questions.

1) Will it go to the same resolution as the imac / TV both are 1080p?

2) Will the picture look as good as it does on the imac?

3) I have a surround sound system that only has optical in. Wll the optical out from the apple TV send surround sound audio to the amp whilst mirroring or will that only work when its jailbroken?

Thanks for any replies

Raymond Lin · 9 May 2013 at 13:34

Why don't you just plug the iMac to the TV as second monitor?

Neodite · 9 May 2013 at 14:26

^

Seems like a lot of messing around using an ATV3 as a HDMI cable

passey89 · 9 May 2013 at 15:39

Raymond Lin said:
Why don't you just plug the iMac to the TV as second monitor?

because the imac is in my bedroom and the tv is downstairs.

Also thats only for XBMC for things I already have i only need to convert to .mp4 and put it in itunes and ATV3 can stream that straight away.

I was thinking its a temp measure until ATV3 jailbreak is released

f00b4r · 18 May 2013 at 00:55

You might want to take a look at this which allows you to use Plex on non-jailbroken ATV's (there may never be a tethered jailbreak for the ATV):

http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/57831-plex-atv-think-different/page-1

It is pretty new but media playing is working well already and the latest commit tonGithub tonight allows for the playing of iTunes DRMed files (something I don't think any of the other clients or XBMC even allow).

passey89 · 5 Jun 2013 at 07:19

update it all works brilliantly.

ATV 3 streams from my imac's itunes library upstairs. (did mean I had to convert everything to mp4 and drag it into itunes though)

optical puts out 5.1 properly to all speakers.

Airview (or whatever its called) lets me mirror my macs screen onto atv 3 so I can have XBMC installed on it and surround sound still works from that.

All brilliant and cheaper than the big pb I had by the TV