Introduction

If you don't have a dedicated MPD Server setup, you can simply install one on your appleTV and control it with the Plugin.

Details

First you need a Mac OSX running Intel Computer with macport installed ( http://www.macports.org/ ).

In your terminal then start:

sudo port install mpd

Now you need the files that were installed. The following list is based on /opt/local/

• ./bin/mpd
• ./lib/libogg ...
• ./lib/libvorbis ...
• ./lib/libaudio ...
• ./lib/libmikmod ...
• ./lib/libfaad ...
• ./lib/libiconv ...
• ./lib/libid3tag ...
• ./lib/libmad ...

tar these files and copy them over to the appletv, again, based in /opt/local

( Or use the following script to do the job for you )

#!/bin/sh

tar -cf mpdpack.tar /opt/local/bin/mpd
tar -rf mpdpack.tar /opt/local/lib/libfaad*
tar -rf mpdpack.tar /opt/local/lib/libiconv*
tar -rf mpdpack.tar /opt/local/lib/libid3tag*
tar -rf mpdpack.tar /opt/local/lib/libmad*
tar -rf mpdpack.tar /opt/local/lib/libmikmod*
tar -rf mpdpack.tar /opt/local/lib/libogg*
tar -rf mpdpack.tar /opt/local/lib/libvorbis*
tar -rf mpdpack.tar /opt/local/lib/libfaad*

Copy the mpdpack.tar to your appletv and untar it using the following: ( If mpdpack.tar lies in your home directory )

cd /
tar -xf /Users/frontrow/mpdpack.tar

This should extract the files into the correct locations

Create a config file in /Users/frontrow/mpd.conf, and a Subdirectory /Users/frontrow/mpd/ You can use the following in your config file:

# required
playlist_directory "/Users/frontrow/mpd/playlists"
music_directory    "/Users/frontrow/Movies/"
port               "6600"
log_file           "/Users/frontrow/mpd/mpd.log"
error_file         "/Users/frontrow/mpd/errors.log"

# optional, but HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
db_file            "/Users/frontrow/mpd/mpddb"
user               "frontrow"
#password test@read,add,control,admin
# optional, but recommended
state_file         "/Users/frontrow/mpd/state"

This way the mpd server indexes all files from ~/Movies. Now you should be able to launch the server via

/opt/local/bin/mpd /Users/frontrow/mpd.conf

Now, if you wan't the server to automatically launch when the atv is booted, create the file /Users/frontrow/Library/LaunchAgents/org.axxr.mpd.plist.xml and fill it with the contents of this file http://atvmpdcontrol.googlecode.com/files/org.axxr.mpd.plist.xml.

Now you can use launchctl start org.axxr.mpd to test the Agent. Though the automatic start of it didn't work for me :) For now I just added an entry into the applauncher that starts the launchctl ...