bcse / plexconnect

Plex @ aTV - think different...

PlexConnect

or: "Plex @ aTV - think different..."

We all want the pleasure of Plex on the big screen - in this case driven by an AppleTV. Unfortunately there are officially no Apps allowed on AppleTV, most of the time a jailbreak is late (iOS 5.2?) or not available at all (aTV3).

This is a collection of files developed for the little project described in this Plex Forum thread. See also the discontinued ATVBrowser for a project with similar purpose, all javascript.

For more information, like detailed Installation Guides, FAQs and similar, visit the Wiki.

How does it work?

The basic idea is, to...

• re-use an already available app (like YouTube, Vimeo, ... in this case: Apple Trailers)
• re-route the request to your local Plex Media Server
• re-work the reply to fit into AppleTV's XML communication scheme
• let iOS do the rest

Requirements

• Python 2.6.x with minor issues: ElementTree doesn't support tag indices.
• Python 2.7.x recommended.

Installation

# Installation
git clone https://github.com/iBaa/PlexConnect.git
# Updating
cd PlexConnect
git pull

If you don't have Git, you can download ZIP file and extract files to a local directory.

• create HTTPS/SSL certificate
• install certificate to assets/certificate/
• install certificate on aTV

See the Wiki - Install Guide for additional documentation.

Usage

# Run with root privileges
sudo ./PlexConnect.py

Depending on your OS, you might only need PlexConnect.py. Or python PlexConnect.py or ...

• set your AppleTV's DNS address to the computer running PlexConnect
• run the Trailer App

See the Wiki - Advanced Settings for more details on configuration and advanced settings.

More detailed Information about the files

• PlexConnect.py - Main script file, invoking the DNSServer and WebServer into seperate processes.
• PlexAPI.py - Collection of Plex Media Server/MyPlex "connector functions": Auto discovery of running PMSs: Good Day Mate! // XML interface to local PMSs // MyPlex integration
• DNSServer.py - This is a small DNS server (hence the name) that is now called whenever aTV needs to resolve an internet address. To hijack the trailer App, we will intercept and re-route all queries to trailers.apple.com. Every other query will be forwarded to the next, your original DNS.
• WebServer.py - This script provides the directory content of "assets" to aTV. Additionally it will forward aTV's directory requests to PMS and provide a aTV compatible XML back. Every media (video, thumbnails...) is URL-wise connected to PMS, so aTV directly accesses the Plex database.
• XMLConverter.py - This script contains the XML adaption from Plex Media Server's response to valid aTV XML files.
• Settings.py - Basic settings collection. Creates Settings.cfg at first run - which may be modified externally.
• ATVSettings.py - Handles the aTV settings like ViewModes or Transcoder options. Stores aTV settings in ATVSettings.cfg.
• Localize.py - Holds a couple of utility functions for text translation purposes. Uses dictionaries from assets/locales/.
• Subtitle.py - Subtitle parser functions for PlexConnect's own renderer, converts subs to JSON for easy transfer to aTV.
• PILBackgrounds.py - Modify and cache fanart images for use by aTV.

License and Disclaimer

This software is open-sourced under the MIT Licence (see license.txt for the full license). So within some limits, you can do with the code whatever you want. However, if you like and/or want to re-use it, we really appreciate a Donation.

The software is provided as is. It might work as expected - or not. Just don't blame us.