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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