We are pleased to announce the release aTV Flash (black) Release Candidate 1 (RC1) for the 2nd generation AppleTV. RC1 is a major update for aTV Flash (black) and adds a number of exciting new features include a brand new 'grid view' browsing mode, huge subtitle related improvements, and countless other performance and playback related improvements.

Keep reading to learn more about what's new.

All-New Browsing Options

We've added an all-new grid view which allows you to browse through media by simply viewing a grid of posters, instead of a list.

From the grid view you can press the center (select) button to get more details about the movie through the 'Pre-Playack Screen' or if you're in a hurry just press play/pause to start the movie right away.

The list view has also gotten a healthy overhaul as well. Movies and TV Shows are now listed using the prettier 'fetched' name instead of the actual filename. Additionally metadata is fetched and cached in bulk, so there's no more waiting for cover art and metadata to load.

Note: You can switch between the Grid and List views through the Media --> Settings menu.

Full Changelog

  • Added grid view and pre-playback view options
  • Added bulk metadata fetching with growl-like status
  • Added fetched names in list view
  • Added hardware decoding for .m2ts files
  • Added support for embedded subtitles (MKV, M4V, etc...)
  • Added support for ISO (DVD) files
  • Added TV Show metadata fetching
  • Added metadata correction for Movies and TV Shows
  • Added movie title in Top Shelf (instead of filename)
  • Added DSI ping for better operation with AFP shares
  • Added folder tagging
  • Added metadata view indicator
  • Added support for metadata overriding using xml files
  • Added DVD menu buffering
  • Added support for subtitles with invalid timestamps
  • Added support for AppleTV 4.4 (iOS 5)
  • Added subtitle 'Weight' setting
  • Added option to show/hide local files
  • Improved data buffering and playback performance
  • Improved XSUB subtitle support
  • Improved network error handling
  • Improved filename parsing for metadata fetching
  • Improved NAS drives support and increased connection timeout
  • Improved video loading process
  • Improved DVD menu handling
  • Improved playback position detection
  • Improved memory footprint
  • Improved SMB share handling
  • Resolved DVD subtitle issues
  • Resolved Voiceover related issues
  • Resolved audio synchronization issues
  • Resolved problems when streaming from an AirPort Extreme
  • Resolved AFP related issue when resuming after a long pause
  • Resolved issues that caused the first subtitle section to be skipped
  • Resolved performance and crash related issues for certain DVD files
  • Resolved audio playback issues when the connection to Last.fm fails
  • Resolved potential issues in shares handling and filename processing
  • Resolved AFP related crashes
  • Resolved .dvdmedia extensions and folder images not hiding
  • Resolved floating crash during metadata fetching
  • Resolved various cloud backup issues
  • Many other miscellaneous fixes

Splendid! Where can I get it?

If you're already running a version of aTV Flash (black) the new RC1 version can be installed through the Maintenance --> Manage Extras menu. If you need to re-install aTV Flash (black) links for the new version can be found in your account under the Downloads tab.

New users can pre-order aTV Flash (black) here.

Note: Installing RC1 requires AppleTV 4.2 or later.

Enjoy! :-) 

Comments

Submitted by ambience on October 27, 2011 - 7:23pm

I had to unplug the power cable and after that atv only flickers and dont starts up again?? Any ideas?

Submitted by Anon on October 27, 2011 - 7:33pm

Great update, what you need to do now is port this to the iPad

Submitted by superdifficult on October 27, 2011 - 7:45pm

Love it! Great work!

2 quick things:

1. The movie 'W.' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1175491/) doesn't match any of the Metadata options.

2. When pressing and holding the left or right arrows while in grid view, the cursor doesn't just scroll left and right rapidly, but also goes up and down (left and up, right and down). When using the up and down arrows, things behave as expected.

Thanks,

Patrick

 

P.S. Any estimate on the untethered Seas0nPass update? Pretty please? We won't hold you to it (yes we will, we are frothing at the mouth).

 

Submitted by ANtrah on October 27, 2011 - 8:16pm

Great work

Submitted by Anon on October 27, 2011 - 8:29pm

Keep it up guys! You are almost making me buy one Apple TV just to use with aTV Flash!! :D

Submitted by DOOManiac on October 27, 2011 - 9:03pm

Tonight I decided to bite the bullet and buy ATVFlash.

So glad I did! Amazingly awesome!

In particular I love the media player. I used to use XBMC, but it was always a bit sluggish. I love how media player will use the top row to show 'recently watched', and I love how the whole thing matches the rest of Apple TV style. My wife will be happy too, as this one is much easier to navigate.

I love the MP3 player as well! XBMC never was able to play MP3 files from our NAS, so I was pleasantly surprised when the media player just did it with no trouble. Love the last.fm slideshows too!

My only complaint, and this is a small one, is that I wish TV show seasons could be intelligently broken up by season. I know I can do this on the filesystem myself, but I'm lazy! Another small feature request, I wish I could mark an entire folder as 'watched' at once.

Thanks again for a great product!

Submitted by Anon on October 27, 2011 - 9:19pm

Hi I update my atv flash (black) then i update my apple tv software, but when the appletv finish installing the update, doesn't turn un, just Apple Logo on my Screen and white Led flashing

any suggestions ?

Submitted by Anon on October 27, 2011 - 9:42pm

Great work guys! But is it planned to support meta data fetching for real world file names for tv shows?

Ex. The.Walking.Dead.S02E01.HDTV.XviD-ASAP.avi

It doesn't ever get meta data for files like the one above?

Cheers,

Submitted by Anon on October 27, 2011 - 9:46pm

Right so, great update.

Love grid view (my two year old needs to point things), but it mostly just shows folder icons with a few covers showing in the grid. My setup was to play nice with xbmc... If I go into the folder cover art is there...So meta data is right. What am I doing wrong for the whole grid to be cover art?

Needs sorting options, most recent add first ect.

If I hold menu on folder short cut at top level atv goes to sleep. I would expect to set options per folder that way.

Some movies like BR Mateix rip seem to crash a few seconds in no error no ressume. Plays fine vnc etc on comp. plays xbmc. Some time throws out no connection to network error (red hearing, wired network other stuff plays fine)

Submitted by jonunez@gmail.com on October 27, 2011 - 9:52pm

so rmvb support? I don't want to use xbmc for it

another question, is it possible to connect a usb hdd to the micro-usb port? 

awesome job guys

 

Submitted by Anon on October 27, 2011 - 10:01pm

Hi I update my atv flash (black) then i update my apple tv software, but when the appletv finish installing the update, doesn't turn un, just Apple Logo on my Screen and white Led flashing slowly like loading

any suggestions ?

Submitted by Anon on October 27, 2011 - 10:09pm

I don't get cover art for folders, despite placing my own art either in the folder or alongside the folder (with the same name). This is only the case with movies, works fine with tv shows though. Can you get cover art for each episode? Also would be handy to set grid mode for movies and list mode for tv as its difficult to follow which episode have been watched now. I also never get an option to choose my own metadata when selecting reload metadata. Otherwise I love the product, would just like to get some answers for above. Cheers.

Submitted by shastaron on October 27, 2011 - 11:01pm

No you can't use the micro-usb port for Hard Drive.  Have to go wireless.

Submitted by Anon on October 27, 2011 - 11:44pm

In grid view i dom't get a cover on my tv show folders.

Submitted by michaelpanayi on October 27, 2011 - 11:52pm

Hi guys just wanted to commend you on the best release yet... This is so close to the Plex/XBMC offering I can see there will be no need for them soon... well done!

Below is some feedback... constructive hopefully:

  • It would be nice have all the meta data for TV Shows get updated as an option rather than having to manual go to each one... this would be a huge time saver especially if you have folders for each season which I would assume a lot of people have
  • The TV Shows name resolution algorithm needs to be smart enough to accommodate the various ways in which raw names are matched to the TV DB  e.g. S01E01 or 101 or whether the season/episode number is before or after the TV show name
  • The folder name that contains the episode files should be picked as the TV Show name as part of the logic and the ability to cascade through sub folders that are labelled Season 1 Season 2 etc as non-one wants to have to go cleaning up hundreds of  file names
  • Most of the TV Show file names on my NAS were not found even though the details were all there and successfully matched via XBMC & Plex  e.g. "The Big Bang Theory - s01e01 - Pilot" or  "Burn Notice - s1 - 01"  or "101 - Entourage"
  • It would be nice to separate the seasons like Apple TV does on their purchased content
  • Another nice feature would be to be able to tap on to an Actor or Director and view all other Movie/TV content you have for them in the library like XBMC offers
  • Are you looking at offering a Genres category view down the track?

Thanks for your hard work... keep it up.

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 12:02am

The A/V-sync is still not 100% so I guess I'm staying with XBMC

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 12:19am

to have the correct meta data fetching work you need to edit the name of you file
from: The.Walking.Dead.S02E01.HDTV.XviD-ASAP.avi
to
The.Walking.Dead.S02E01.avi

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 12:28am

So after a while the grid partially fills in with cover art. However only about 50%. If I go into the folder the correct cover is there. Reloading the meta data dose not fix. Also no list is presenting on reload even for shows I know imb returns a list for.

The grid also is painting oddly, it dose not pain the images until the row has scrolled up and is partly off the screen.

Might be a imdb issue but file names with periods for breaks seems to fail intermittently.

Submitted by Phixtit on October 28, 2011 - 12:38am

Great to see the new features! Love the Grid View!!! :D

I have a few requests, Please let me know if any of these 5 features are planned for the next release candidate, or down the road...;)

1). In grid View it would be awesome if when all the way at bottom, a click down would take you instantly to the top again like it does in list view.

2). Any chance you could add a toggle in settings to: Add Recently Added, and/or Recently Watched feature to the top of the Main View?

3). What about a sort by: Release Date, Genre, Date Added, Alphabetical, Rated, Popularity, etc. feature?

4). A search feature would be fantastic if it could be added?

5). Television Folder Art and/or Logo Art; Season Art being automatically downloaded like Movies are already would be the icing on the cake, if possible?

We're getting there slowly but surely...B-)

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 12:58am

Hi Great Player :) But i can't play pictures, when there are a lot in a folder.
I first testet my general "Pictures" folder with ca. 20 subfolders integrated. When opening the main folder: loading and then: freezign and reboot. I also tested single folders. When there are only 10-20 pcis in, no prob. But with hundreds it always crashes.

But this is my only wish. All other features run great !

Submitted by stefank.1757 on October 28, 2011 - 1:30am

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme PLSSSSS ;)

 

Seriously, awsome. Without dots its useless at least for me watching 3-4 TV Shows at a time. So pls consider bringing it in it looks nice!

Submitted by tenzion on October 28, 2011 - 1:43am

Ah, great release! Quite close to drop XBMC on my ATV2!

What about EyeTV? In XBMC there's a plugin that can parse my EyeTV recordings and make them "readable" in XBMC. Works great.

Is it possible to incorporate a similar feature in Firecore?

Thanks! Keep up the good work!!

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 1:59am

Are you sure your using the current seasonpass?

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 2:07am

Great news! I too am close to dropping XBMC in favour of this being more convenient. Still some issues with photo directories with a large number, or large size pictures in there :(

But keep up the good work!!

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 2:11am

Why don't you just call this pack Firecoers MediaPlayer. Is this only thing you plan to be updateing ??? PLEASE get some serious work done. WHERE IS Boxee for example ???? I am very disappointed with my purchase, and I will not buy full version!! I bought this pack becouse of the "Many more exciting features still to come!" promise on your site!

Very few exciting features came since i bought my beta. THIS SUCKS!

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 2:31am

... and I might add that streaming from NAS is now improved with this new update. Previously I'd quite often get an error when first looking at the NAS, if it had dozed off. Trying again immediately would work fine, but now aTV Flash waits those extra couple of milliseconds before reporting a problem, and the result is no more error messages.

One of my reasons for wanting aTV flash is to provide my non-technical wife with an easy way to watch our stored media, and (quite nasty-looking) errors like that could be a problem.

So for that alone - thanks! (And the rest of the update looks pretty useful too!)

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 3:16am

Im also very close to dropping XBMC in favour to aTVs media player.

But there is so many addons for the XBMC that I need. For example, integrated subtitle download, icefilms, play addons for tv channels, different ways to browse your library etc.

Keep up the good work, Im very excited about the future of this media player.

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 3:18am

you twat, boxee need to port it themselves. firecore have done amazing things! no more drm, just stream music and videos straight to your atv.

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 3:28am

How did you get ESPN 3 to work I still have nothing. At least not the live feed.

Submitted by michaelmaack on October 28, 2011 - 3:38am

How can I update my version?

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 4:25am

Good work chaps, loving the update!

Does anyone know if you can get BBC iPlayer on the ATV2?

Cheers,

Submitted by alecko.7501 on October 28, 2011 - 5:36am

there is a iplayer, 4od and itv player plugins for xbmc, http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?f=27 here is forum for xbmc plugins. if you havnt installed xbmc yet , just use mainenance

Submitted by jk8 on October 28, 2011 - 5:41am

I have paid for atv flash black, but I don't use this update available on my account downloads tab.  I do not have atv flash currently installed on my atv because I updated to 4.4 when it originally came out.  How do I get the download so I can install atv flash?

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 6:14am

you go here and follow the instruction to do a tether jailbreak..http://support.firecore.com/entries/387605-jailbreaking-101-seas0npass..

Submitted by oliverb.9299 on October 28, 2011 - 7:21am

In GRID VIEW, my cover art JPGs are not showing - it's just giving me still frames from the movie. It works fine in list view, so I know all my JPGs are labeled correctly. Also, does it "cache" each JPG or does it just look for the JPG before searching for metadata? Because I noticed that even with the JPGs being there, it still shows the loading circle spinning and says "fetching" with a progress bar.

Also, it would be nice if GRID VIEW showed ALL the movie titles, not just the one currently highlighted. this is a ridiculous feature of AppleTV and it makes no sense - as if everybody in the world has every movie cover art memorized so we don't need titles below them. Please fix this and make all the titles visible for easier browsing.

Submitted by jk8 on October 28, 2011 - 7:36am

oops typo:  I don't *see* the update available for download on my downloads tab for my account.

Submitted by andrewg.5279 on October 28, 2011 - 8:41am

The new feature list is impressive. However, the memory problem of a number of versions back still remains for HD (1080P) movies. The same movies play in XBMC (mp4). Please get this resolved.

Submitted by bnick3 on October 28, 2011 - 8:52am

So after playing with the RC1 version some more last night I would love to have the ability to have movies in grid view and music in list view.  Any possibility of that happening?

Submitted by jk8 on October 28, 2011 - 8:58am

I have already did seasonpass and have a tethered jailbreak.  I just can't get atvflash black file.  It is not listed as one of my downloadable options under my account.  I don't understand why.  I have an account.

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 9:09am

With all of the updates and added features that have been added to the 2nd generation version of this program, was enabling the USB port to provide for local storage via an external hard drive ever added? This was one of the core features of the first generation model and the key reason I originally purchased it. It is nice to be able to have your content with you regardless of your network capabilities of that particular area.

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 9:10am

ETA on Plex??

Submitted by james on October 28, 2011 - 9:11am

We'd love to add this, but unfortunately it looks like the micro-USB port of the AppleTV is physically unable to support devices like USB drives. Sorry.

Submitted by james on October 28, 2011 - 9:12am

We're looking into the possibility of adding this in a future version.

Submitted by james on October 28, 2011 - 9:13am

Would you mind sending in a bug report so we can get some more information?

http://forum.firecore.com/topic/4291

Submitted by james on October 28, 2011 - 9:14am

Please send in an email - there may have been a typo used when submitting the order.

http://firecore.com/contact

Submitted by james on October 28, 2011 - 9:15am

Yep - still looking into why that's happening. Will be fixed soon.

Submitted by james on October 28, 2011 - 9:16am

Hmm - can you tell us more?

http://forum.firecore.com/topic/4291

Submitted by james on October 28, 2011 - 9:17am

If you update the AppleTV software with aTV Flash (black) installed you will lose the jailbreak and aTV Flash (black) software.

Your best option will be to re-jailbreak with the latest version of Seas0nPass.

http://support.firecore.com/entries/387605

Submitted by bossjunk@mac.com on October 28, 2011 - 9:54am

Can't update through maintenance nor mac - Sorry, the installer could not install Maintenance (Error 3.2). Any idea?

Submitted by Anon on October 28, 2011 - 10:15am

Yes, please let us know whats up with Plex.