I had some success today getting the Apple TV to be a digital signage processor. Using Quartz Extreme (which comes free with XCode) I created a few .qtz files that had my images and text included in them.
Then I downloaded qtzplayer from:
http://trac.softwarelivre.sapo.pt/broker/wiki/qtzplayer
I copied the QuartzComposerPlayer and my .qtz files to my ATV using SCP, then I run this from the ssh command line:
Code:
./QuartzComposerPlayer DigitalSignage.qtz
The Quart player app takes over the screen. If you press buttons on the remote the Apple TV menu shows through the .qtz animation. As long as you disable the screensaver you should be able to constantly play your qtz file on the apple tv 24/7.
If you want to run this on startup just put this in your rc.local file:
Code:
/home/frontrow/QuartzComposerPlayer /Users/frontrow/DigitalSignage.qtz &
Next step is to figure out why RSS feeds are not working, or find some other way to pull data from the net. Then with a little webserver the Text can be dynamically generated from a webpage to the TV screen.