enen92/screensaver.atv4

Apple aerial screensavers (apple tv 4) for Kodi

screensaver.atv4

Apple Aerial screensavers for Kodi 19 (Matrix)

This addon adds the Apple Aerial screensavers to Kodi Entertainment Center. It can be installed via the Kodi official repository.

Plugin Features

• JSON-based video playlist fetching and playback
  • Custom JSON by default to include all scenes Apple ever published
  • Configurable to download the latest Apple JSON on each run
• Display Power Management Signaling (DPMS) configurable
  • When the display is supposed to go to sleep, pause/stop the Aerials video and turn the display off or put it into standby via HDMI CEC
• Choose from playback of:
  • HEVC H.265 or AVC H.264 codec (H.264 default)
  • 4K or 1080p resolution (1080p default)
  • High Dynamic Range (HDR) Dolby Vision or Standard Dynamic Range (SDR default)
• Filtering of videos by location/scene
• Offline caching of selected video quality
  • Download location by location or all at once
  • Full offline mode to prevent all network calls, using only local videos and JSON
  • Checksum validation to prevent unnecessary re-downloading of cached videos
• Custom JSON file count and gigabytes per quality level:
  • H.264 1080P SDR: 122 files, 39.4GB
  • H.265 1080P SDR: 116 files, 24.5GB
  • H.265 1080P HDR: 116 files, 37.8GB
  • H.265 4K SDR: 116 files, 48.9GB
  • H.265 4K HDR: 116 files, 75.3GB

Aerials History

• When the Apple TV first came out with Aerials screensavers, Apple published a V1 JSON manifest with all the different videos. Locations featured San Francisco, New York, China, Hong Kong, Greenland, Dubai, Los Angeles, and others. They were published in 1080p H.264 format
  • This JSON also included a timeOfDay key indicating if the video was shot during the day or night
  • Later on, Apple changed the URL to a V2 JSON manifest. As of March 2021, V1 and V2 contents are identical
• Later on in October 2018, Apple published a large refresh of Aerials in 4K resolution with HDR color space and in a more modern H.265 "HEVC" codec.
  • While this included re-colored, extended versions of some of the original set of videos, it also retired others.
• Through the rest of 2018 and up until the beginning of 2020, Apple continued to release new 4K HDR Aerials scenes. 20+ underwater vistas, new scenes from existing locations, and globe-spanning shots from the International Space Station are all now included.
• At some point, Apple started vending the JSON manifest at a new URL and bundled into a tarball resources.tar. (Thanks to the other big Aerials project for this)
  • As part of this update, Apple removed the timeOfDay key so this plugin's filtering based on time of day is no longer possible without manually adding JSON keys for each scene
  • The new JSON contained new URLs for the original videos, possibly behind a Content Delivery Network (CDN). For example, a Greenland video's URL changed from http://a1.phobos.apple.com/us/r1000/000/Features/atv/AutumnResources/videos/comp_GL_G004_C010_v03_6Mbps.mov to http://a1.v2.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/us/r1000/000/Features/atv/AutumnResources/videos/comp_GL_G004_C010_v03_6Mbps.mov (adding .v2 and .edgesuite.net)
• Benjamin Mayo published a Google Doc with a historical record of all the Aerials videos and links to all their different variants (H264, HDR, 4K, etc.) and also hosts a website for streaming all the different options
  • Videos added to Apple's catalog after January 2020 don't seem to be reflected here, as of January 2022
• Apple started appending the tvOS version number to the URL of the tarball, so as of 2022-01-01 and tvOS 15 this URL is the link to get the latest entries.json

Screenshots