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Apple TV running Quartz Composer Hi I was wondering if anyone had run quartz composer files on an Apple TV. Whenever I such for info on google I simply get results for Apple TVs running screensavers which are Quartz Composer files. If people have had them running what is the performance like? Any help is greatly appreciated. Steve
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The following was recently posted on the quartzcomposer-dev@lists.apple.com email list. Instructions on joining list at apple.com:
We did mod the existing system on the ATV's to have features they didn't have by default. Like printing (wirelessly for SMS system), some modern components were also harvested from Tiger. Apple refuses to treat them like an appliance - dorks. They do know about what I've been doing as the business department is very interested (probably just mild curiosity). We added the ability for them to analyze a new network when they came up to get around and call home. We added the ability to receive SMS and collect SMS and send back to the server. We modded some off the shelf tools for tv-in. We used almost all the output options on various clients. None ever died, some have been running since 6 months into initial release from Apple to the market.
Key things are to make use of the extra processor (graphics) it is very powerful. We had a pretty powerful QC composition, BASH scripts, RSS, SMS, and tv, video, images and text on screen at the same time. Everything changed, seasonally, special events, etc., with clients uploading whatever they wanted and scheduling it at will. Systems were remotely deployed (bought at Apple Store), USB stick was downloaded to client, stick built base system, system called home server built the rest and took it online. We had several AppleTVs hooked to the main server to allow us to see what was on any box globally at any time (except that tv feed - but we could have stills sent back). We developed an advanced torrent system to handle sharing all files - it is very fast.
All in all it was far easier than expected. Are they as powerful as Mini? No. But then again they don't need to be, if you don't ask anyone machine to do everything under the sun. The wonderful thing about them that got us hooked, was the fact they were the first truly minimalist OS out of Apple and it opened up a lot of ideas. We didn't store everything on each box either (little drives), data was sent and deleted as needed hourly, daily, weekly all depending on the specific schedules of one or a group.
TV screens below shows what that little video card could do at 720p (worked on higher resolutions as well, but we set that as our standard). They pretty much run 24/7. We could overload the graphics, who couldn't QC can be a real pain, however being clever allowed us to do everything and then some.
Hope that helps some.
Jason Belec