Plex Arrives to Jailbroken Apple TV

Some hackers could port Plex client successfully on the new iOS based Apple TV. So from now on, after installing Plex on your jailbroken Apple TV, you can technically play any Plex content on your Apple TV (i.e. you can stream media from Plex server to your jailbroken Apple TV 2G.). To be able to do so, you need a jailbroken Apple TV, so you can use our guide posted here to jailbreak Apple TV 2G using PwnageTool then follow the instructions below as written on the forums.

Known Issues
The Software so far is nothing more than a proof of concept, which isn't tested at all. However there are some known issues:
- "Local Servers" screen does only update when you press the up or down button on your remote
- Larger Sections timeout while they are loaded and do never show up
- Only Video playback is working (no music files, no images, no App-Management)
The following explains how you can install (and later on update) the plugin on your (Jailbroken) ATV. Use the software at your own risk and don't blame anyone except yourself if your ATV blows up in the process. Consider this the last warning!!!

Prepare the Media Server
Before you install the actual plugin you need to prepare the Plex Media Server (it needed some tweaks before it would talk to the ATV). Since those changes are considered ‘beta’, you need to tell your PMS to download beta plug-ins, by enetering the following URL in a Safari running on the same machine as the media server: http://localhost:324…s/set?AS_BETA=1
After that start Plex and check for updates in the PlexOnline section.

Enable a higher Quality (optional)
This part is optional, but if you feel like experimenting a lot, you might want to install a testing built of ffmpeg, that enables higher bitrates for the (currently) highest available quality (which is the only quality your ATV will use). This will also increase the image quality on other iOS devices, however you will need a potent Mac for the encoding! So If you still feel like installing use the following two commands in a Terminal on the Mac running your Media Server:

curl http://ambertation.de/downloads/PLEX/ffmpeg > ~/Downloads
/ffmpeg
cp ~/Downloads/ffmpeg ~/Library/Application\ Support/Plex/Plex
\ Media\ Server.app/Contents/Resources/

If you not use this, the plugin will still work, but the image-quality might not be on par with what you expect.

Install the Plugin
First off: you need to Jailbreak your Apple TV. I suggest you use the Pawnage method. For the sake of the following instruction I assume thet the IP-Address of your ATV is 169.10.11.12, and that you can log in using ssh.

- Start your ATV and log in to your ATV using ssh
ssh root@169.10.11.12

It will ask you for your password, which (if you did not change the default) is alpine. (I strongly suggest you change the password using the passwd command!!!)

- In that ssh session, you need to add new cydia sources using

echo "deb http://apt.awkwardtv.org ./" > /etc/apt
/sources.list.d/awkwardtv.list
echo "deb http://www.ambertation.de ./downloads
/PLEX/" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plex.list

- Now update your cydia database using
apt-get update

- Install the plugins (and its dependencies like beigelist by DHowett) with
apt-get install plex-client-plugin

- Restart the GUI and hope that it comes back
killall Lowtide

- If the UI does not come up again, you probably have to restore your ATV!

Here's the video in action:

[via Redmondpie, 9to5mac]

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Categories: Apple , Apple Guides , apple tv , apple tv 2g , apple tv apps , Jailbreak , Plex