AC3 demystified for AppleTV (Fsck You Apple !!)

Anywayz, it just didn't have to be this complicated. "Apple" could easily make this box do a lot more than what it does now without keeping this superb-lame intention of leaving this box half crippled and restricted.

Back to the point ...

[»] AC3 works only through optical output, should also work through hdmi, but I have not tested it myself since I have only 1 hdmi cable at home.

[»] change the following keys in apple.tv by logging in as frontrow :

(1) defaults write com.cod3r.a52codec attemptPassthrough 1

if you have ATV-files installed ::
(2) defaults write net.ericiii.ATVFiles EnableAC3Passthrough 1

if you have nitoTV installed ::
(3) defaults write com.apple.frontrow.appliance.nitoTV passthru 1

[»] nitoTV automatically installs ffmpeg at this location :: /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/nitoTV.frappliance/Contents/Resources/ffmpeg

[»] to check if a video has ac3 :: ffmpeg -i video.avi ... it will print the audio/video informations for the input video.

[»] after changing the keys, restart frontrow or reboot appleTV and play the video with AC3, it should give you 5.1 sound output now.

Fsck you Apple, for making it so complicated, if I knew it before, I would have just bought a cheap media-center pc and would happily run mythTV on it. FSCK you again ... Either make a proper iTunes for linux or leave the damn thing out of the way, so that I can store and play my files on the device without any intervention of the fscking itunes ...

[ sorry guys, just couldn't stop myself. I kind of spent the whole last night digging into this ac3 problem, went to bed at 7am in the morning. now you tell me, who would know those correct key names to change, if you dont digg this much ... sorry once again for not being able to control my rage on Apple for making so unnecessarily complicated ]