Rheo is an interesting new tvOS app that curates videos from across the web. It is said to be “the fastest way for you to discover and enjoy the videos you want to watch.” Alan Cannistraro, founder of Copper Studios, the company behind the app, spent 12 years at Apple in both design and engineering roles of media products. He worked on the very beginnings of Apple TV, and even brainstormed with Steve Jobs about the future of media technology.

Rheo finds the best short-form content available, and deliver it to you as a single, interactive stream. 

The developers reduced navigation to its simplest form: Watch, Skip, Tune.

Watch

When you launch the app, it starts playing immediately. When a video ends, the next one begins.

You can also scrub content. By moving your finger in a circular motion, you can move slowly to scrub frame-by-frame, or quickly to jump anywhere in the clip.

Skip

Rheo lets you flip through videos as quickly as you’re used to flipping through photos or songs.

We do all the work to make sure the next video is ready to play as soon as you’re ready to watch something new.

Tune

The more you use Rheo, the more it learns what you like and what you don’t.

By pressing the ‘menu’ button on the Siri Remote, you can pick between:

• Laugh — enjoy the hottest new comedy clips
• Inform — catch up with breaking news
• Learn — expand your mind, just a little
• Spark — appreciate festival-quality short films and animation
• Chill — float on a stream of downtempo music that you can play all day long.

Search for “Rheo” on your Apple TV’s App Store to download the app.

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We first heard about AllCast more than a year back when it was shown off in beta on Android. Coming from the Cyanogen Mode developer Koushik Dutt, it promised the ability to mirror your phone to a variety of devices including Apple TV. Last month, it went out of beta on Android and a few days back, popped up on the App Store.

AllCast iOS app lets you stream photos, slideshows, videos and music to your television from your iPhone or iPad. But what makes it unique and different from the native AirPlay feature, is the wide range of devices and services that it supports.

The devices to which AllCast can push your media include Apple TV, Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Roku, WDTV and Chrome. Besides, all DLNA receivers and smart televisions from Samsung, Sony and Panasonic are supported.

On the other end, your media can come from a variety of sources and services like your Camera Roll, Music app, Google Plus library, Instagram account, Dropbox album, Google Drive files and any media servers.

The AllCast app is avaialble for free on the App Store. However, this version is ad supported, has a limit on streamable video length and a splash screen, all of which can be removed with an in-app purchase of $4.99.

So, if you have a wide range of media devices in your living room or have your photos and videos spread across multiple cloud storage services, AllCast is for you.

Get AllCast from the App Store.

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Amazon has been battling the Apple TV to find market for its own set top box, the Fire TV. However, that hasn’t kept Amazon from bringing its services to Apple TV users, as they just updated their Cloud Drive Photos app for iOS with AirPlay support.

Cloud Drive is pretty much what it sounds like – a cloud storage service by Amazon. The app lets you enjoy the stored pics and videos on your iPhone and iPad.

Cloud Drive Photos  features a great interface with a timeline view and provision for albums. It also has an auto-save option for iOS which automatically backs up your camera roll to the cloud.

Today’s update brings AirPlay mirroring to the app. And that means you’ll now be able to directly broadcast the pictures, videos or movies stored on Amazon Cloud Drive, to your television via Apple TV.

The update also brings a bunch of other features:

– Photo and video metadata: View date taken, resolution, image type, and file name
– Album rename: Change an album name by long pressing the album you want to change (iPhone only)
– Album cover swipe: Change your album cover photo by swiping left or right on the album (iPhone only)
– Manage cache: Customize your application cache settings

If you don’t have it already, you can get the Amazon Cloud Drive Photos app on the App Store for free and it comes with a complementary 5GB storage!

Be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for all the latest Apple TV-related news.

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Torrents are a huge industry by itself, dealing with contents ranging through movies, songs, videos, ebooks and softwares. Leaving aside the fact that they occupy the legal grey zone, torrents are still one of the most loved ways to find media for millions. And now, a new app called TorrenTV aims to make things easier by streaming torrent videos directly to your Apple TV.

TorrenTV is a small, free and open source app, which will download videos to your computer, while simultaneously streaming it to your Apple TV. Mac, PC and Linux versions are currently available.

The app is extremely simple: once installed, you only get a blank window and nothing else to play with. Just drag and drop a torrent file and it buffers for sometime before AirPlaying to the Apple TV.

Even local movies can be drag-and-dropped similarly to play on your HDTV. However, keep in mind that TorrenTV can’t play MKV files yet.

You can download TorrenTV here for free.

Note: Some of the contents available via Torrent sites may be illegal. Apple TV Hacks is against piracy and the contents of this post are intended to be used for educational purposes only. 

Just like other Torrent clients, downloading a torrent file means you’re also sharing (seeding) it which may be deemed as illegal in some regions. Please act wisely.

Be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for all the latest Apple TV-related news.

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Despite recording a considerable loss in revenue last year and announcing a price hike for new US customers, Netflix still seems to be exited about invading new territories. Though hinted earlier about the expansion to more European countries, it was yesterday that the video streaming giant revealed the specifics. Well, most of the specifics.

By the end of this year, Netflix will be available to be streamed by movie and TV show buffs in Germany, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland. The exact dates, pricing info and content availability are still under the curtain but Netflix original TV series are speculated to be included in the menu.

For Apple TV fans that means the guys in these six European nations would no longer be slapped with a “Netflix is currently not supported in your location” banner and you can finally cancel that VPN subscription.

• Win a free copy of Motion Tennis for Apple TV!

However, users on popular forums seem to fear a high price tag and a sub par catalog to plague Netflix, at least in the initial months and we can’t help but agree with them thanks to the strict content laws, foreign taxes and the initial low adoption rates. However the scenario will hopefully improve in the future as the subscriptions increase and more online services force a relaxation of rules.

In case your region is not in the list or you can’t wait anymore or you would like access to the complete US catalog, you might find this guide useful: How to watch Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO Go and other US-only services on Apple TV outside the US.

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Infuse never fails to amaze us. If you’ve gone through my first review of this awesome video player, you might remember that we concluded it as one of the finest in its class. Supporting almost all known formats on Earth, smooth streaming from network devices, a plain flat iOS 7 based design and an elegant solution to the subtitle problem, we thought Infuse had reached as far as a media player could. But with the latest update Infuse 2.2.2, FireCore raises that bar still higher.

Here are some of the major highlights:

• New gestures for easy control of videoplay: similar to Android phones, you can now scroll vertically on left side to change the brightness and on right side to control the volume. Two finger tap to play/pause and swipe horizontally for fast forward / rewind 30 seconds.
• Orientation lock for those movie-on-the-bed times.
• Import subtitles from other apps. I generally use Subtitles.org to search them directly within the app. But importing them from Skydrive or other apps will be useful if you’re a cloud person or are using other srt sources. Infuse 2.2.2 also lets you choose from a list of subtitles, instead of automatically pulling the one with the same name. Now THAT, I like!

In addition, they’re bringing a handful of other improvements and bug fixes too.

• Added retina artwork for browser upload screen
• Improved handling of Metadata Fetching setting for remote TV Shows
• Improved performance for Dolby Audio (AC3) when passthrough is disabled
• Improved AirPlay stability
• Resolved issues with lock screen images for videos with embedded thumbnails
• Resolved issues with resume position after connecting or disconnecting HDMI adapter
• Resolved issue where device wouldn’t enter sleep mode while a movie was opening
• Resolved floating crash when disconnecting HDMI cable
• Added option to clear all metadata
• AirPlay in background now works correctly for local files after pausing or resuming playback
• Higher resolution for posters on iPad in landscape
• Numerous localization improvements
• Other performance and stability improvements

Infuse 2.2.2 is available as a free download from the App Store, but the premium pack needs a worthy $4.99 in-app purchase. As usual, for previous owners, this will of course be a free update.

Read our review of  Infuse 2.

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The power of XBMC is its ability to manage content weather on your Apple TV, N.A.S. device, or network connected computer. It does not matter if you have movies, television shows, music, or pictures XBMC is designed with the unique ability to incorporate this content into the software itself. This is an extremely attractive feature for those of us utilizing XBMC on our Apple TV, especially the Apple TV 2. With its limited storage and lack of USB drives, the Apple TV 2 is primed for taking advantage of XBMC’s custom Library features. Let’s start by looking at the primary libraries and what each offers.

VIDEO LIBRARY

The Video Library, one of the XBMC databases, allows the organization of your video content by information associated with the video files themselves. This information can be obtained in various different ways, like through Scrapers (ie. Movies, TV shows and Music Videos) and nfo files. Library view allows you to browse your video content by things such as; Genre, Title, Year, Actors and Directors.

MUSIC LIBRARY

The Music Library, one of the XBMC databases, is a key feature of XBMC. It allows the organization of your music collections using the information stored in your music file ID tags, like title, artist, album, genre and popularity. It also allows users to add network sources, such as Last.FM, to their library. Making this a much needed, and must have, feature.
Luckily, each library functions the same when it comes to Adding and Removing Content. So let’s take a quick look at the ins and outs of adding files to our libraries. If you are simply looking to remove items from your library you can skip to the bottom of this article.

ADD FILES

1) From within the correct category you will want to select “Files.” This will open a new window displaying any content that is already added. This will assuredly be blank.
2) Select the option that reads Add (content). Meaning, if you are in the Video section, you will choose Add Videos.

3) Here you will see a pop up window asking you to enter the path of your content. This best way to select this location is by clicking on the Browse.

4) You  see a long list of options on the right. From here you can navigate to any folder located on your Apple TV as well as any number of network locations. This is how you will add a folder to XBMC. If you are adding Network Storage then you want to know what protocol the source is using. Typically SMB (Windows) or UPnP. By selecting these options, XBMC will scan your network for devices. For example, I will scan my network for UPnP sources. The results are below.

5) Now it is a simple matter of navigating to the folder that contains to content you want to add. It is important to note that you must be viewing the content WITHIN the folder when you select OK. You don’t want to select OK while merely highlighting the folder itself. Once you select the correct folder you will need to name it again within XBMC. For this example I am naming the source Network Movies Folder.

6) We will need to tell XBMC what type of content is in the folder we are adding to our XBMC Library. This is of the utmost importance for you to get the full benefit of Fanart, backgrounds, posters, and thumbnails. For the sake our my example we are telling XBMC that I am scanning a folder of (Movies). The last thing:

7) Lastly, we will want to select the option RUN AUTOMATED SCAN. This will let XBMC know that you want it to scan the content into your library and then update your Library at the same time. When you click OK you will be met by a POP UP Windows – fear not and select YES!

REMOVING FILES

1) To remove items from your XBMC Library, you must first tell XBMC to allow this functionality. By default, it is disabled to prevent accidental content removal. So, how do we do this? From your home scree go to the System menu option.
2) You will want to select the top option titled Appearance.

3) Now you will have access to the settings options for the Files controls. Here you can adjust multiple options, but we are interested, specifically, in “Allow file renaming and deletion.” Select this option and make sure the circle on the right becomes illuminated.

4) Now that the hard part is done, we will simply navigate to any Library within XBMC. To keep with our theme of movie content I will navigate to my Movies Folder. once there, navigate to the file you wish to remove and while the video selected hold down your MENU button until the context menu pops up.

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Though many of you may think that there isn’t much to say here, we think it’s an interesting move from Apple, because this is the first time Apple adds region-specific, non-US video service on Apple TV. It could mean there is more to come soon: more services and more countries. It’s also interesting from the point of view of Apple’s strategy for the next Apple TV (set-top box or standalone TV set).

We are all still waiting on Apple to make its big announcement regarding television. The fact is, Apple is being down-right HUSH-HUSH about it all. One could argue, and it might as well be me, that Apple is sitting back placing content deals all over the world so that when there offering launches it is not a US-only-device. Everything Apple does is global. They do not sell a product unless they can get in every market possible. Well, a television service that is only based on content out of the United States would be lacking on the international stage. On the other hand, a television service with international content deals – that would be interesting.

Image: Christian Krämer

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