Nothing plays on TV app (blank but with control overlays showing)

scottkendall said:

Looks like it works for me on my Vega system but I run iMac Pro SM without Igpu that's really the best for DRM content. I would advise you all to chance your SM to iMac Pro 1,1 and disable your Igpu. I am lazy otherwise I would go check and see if it works fine on the other hack.

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Kinda strange that for some the only way to get Apple TV to work is to change to a Mac Pro specs. I say strange because mine works perfectly well which is 'iMac 27inch (late 2015)' one that I've been using since Sierra. The only logical conclusion I can come to and I maybe wrong is my cheapo i.5 cpu does not have integrated graphics so the system is running a RX580 card. So changing specs may not be necessary at all, just disabling integrated graphics may do the trick.

esafeddie said:

Kinda strange that for some the only way to get Apple TV to work is to change to a Mac Pro specs. I say strange because mine works perfectly well which is 'iMac 27inch (late 2015)' one that I've been using since Sierra. The only logical conclusion I can come to and I maybe wrong is my cheapo i.5 cpu does not have integrated graphics so the system is running a RX580 card. So changing specs may not be necessary at all, just disabling integrated graphics may do the trick.

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Disabling the iGPU isn't the answer since many other iMacs and MacBookPros with different system definitions have iGPU enabled and TV app works. I wouldn't want to change my system definition to something that's not identical to my system.

BTW, I already tried TV app with iGPU disabled. It doesn't work either so it's something else. I think driver or kext needs to be patched for it to work.

I've been reading on the internet and it seems that Apple TV Plus app is very buggy since it was introducted in Catalina. It's best to wait for Apple to fix it. I'm not going to change my system definition just for that app since I have my MacBook Pro for that.

esafeddie said:

Ok - when you first open the Apple TV app it offers you the choice to try it free for a year and then I think it's £4.99 a month here in the UK but you must remember to cancel a month before the year ends if you don't want to keep it. I think it's a very clever move by Apple to make this offer and quite a good one at that. just think of the millions of potential customers because it's not just on Macs but across all their devices!!!!

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In my case it only offers me 7 days:



I have iMac 17,1 with platform ID: 19120001 (headless mode)

tecnicasopr said:

In my case it only offers me 7 days:

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That's very strange since it is a new service and the offer I think is free subscription for a year. You should query that as to why only 7 days, there's even a video on Youtube about how great the free year subscription is.

esafeddie said:

Kinda strange that for some the only way to get Apple TV to work is to change to a Mac Pro specs. I say strange because mine works perfectly well which is 'iMac 27inch (late 2015)' one that I've been using since Sierra. The only logical conclusion I can come to and I maybe wrong is my cheapo i.5 cpu does not have integrated graphics so the system is running a RX580 card. So changing specs may not be necessary at all, just disabling integrated graphics may do the trick.

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I would agree with your conclusion however, it seems to work better with the iMac Pro definition.

remington said:

Disabling the iGPU isn't the answer since many other iMacs and MacBookPros with different system definitions have iGPU enabled and TV app works. I wouldn't want to change my system definition to something that's not identical to my system.

BTW, I already tried TV app with iGPU disabled. It doesn't work either so it's something else. I think driver or kext needs to be patched for it to work.

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Actually it is a pretty sound answer for getting DRM content to work on a Hack. Black screen from DRM content is not a bug for Catalina it is a Hackintosh issue. There are a few ways to get full acceleration and DRM content one is to use the iMac Pro 1,1 and shut off IGPU. All three systems listed in my signature are running this way with no problems. Please do not justify your answer with real apple products use IGPU. Fact is in Hackintosh DRM content is messed up and not perfect disabling IGPU makes it work always and with hardware encoding/decoding

'Black screen from DRM content is not a bug for Catalina it is a Hackintosh issue'.

Previously, My Gene VIII (Z170 based motherboard) used iMac17,1 but now it's using iMacPro1,1 without any side effects. Actually, boot time is much faster since it's not looking for iGPU but you must completely disable iGPU in BIOS.

I've read that iMacPro1,1 will work for 9 series motherboards (Haswell) but not anything older than that.

As far as backing up is recommended but unneccessary as changing system definition will not destroy your data on your drive but you will be prompted to login into Apple account as Apple will recognize that you're using a different system. You'll need to make backup of your config.plist and use Clover Configuratior to generate new serial number, motherboard serial number (MLB) and SmUUID.

Be sure to click on 'Check Coverage' in Clover Configurator to see if the serial number is not valid then you're good to go.

remington said:

As far as backing up is recommended but unneccessary

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I recommended backing up incase things didn't work out as hoped and it would be easy to revert back to original configuration, also if one decided to go with the new configuration, it is best to remove the old machine otherwise you'll have the ghost machine still tied to the account - My motto keeping things nice and tidy avoids confusion.

esafeddie said:

I recommended backing up incase things didn't work out as hoped and it would be easy to revert back to original configuration, also if one decided to go with the new configuration, it is best to remove the old machine otherwise you'll have the ghost machine still tied to the account - My motto keeping things nice and tidy avoids confusion.

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Ghost machine still tied to the account is because of nvram was not reset.

Everytime you change system definition, you need to reset the nvram to clear any leftovers from previous SMBIOS settings, serial numbers, etc.

You can do that by:
sudo nvram -c and reboot