PLEX, the media center for OSX and iOS now has a proof of concept client for Apple TV2.  This client, installed on a jailbroken Apple TV2, will allow you to stream most any kind of video back to your Apple TV2.

The PLEX client rely on a server side (read Mac) component that act as a transcoding helper for all video served to the iOS devices.  In some ways it is doing a similar job as the iPhone and iPad AirVideo server side application does… but in a much fancier Apple TV friendly way.

PLEX on the Apple TV is also freeing you from the shackles of iTunes by leveraging the PLEX Media Center running on your Mac.  This is nice since right now, to play any personal video library, you need to interface via iTunes… and this is kind of annoying.

For the curious out there here is a short video of PLEX client for Apple TV2 in action:

The Software so far is nothing more than a proof of concept, which isn’t tested at all. However there are some known issues:

• “Local Servers” screen does only update when you press the up or down button on your remote
• Larger Sections timeout while they are loaded and do never show up
• Only Video playback is working (no music files, no images, no App-Management)

For now all video files are forced to be re-encoded.  Let’s hope that PLEX can address this and allow to stream iOS compliant files directly to the ATV2 in a way similar to what Airvideo does.  Maybe the folks doing Airvideo could contribute a little of their knowhow to this project… or come up with their own client for the ATV2.

Anyway, this is looking really good for the future of Apple TV2 applications.  Let’s hope that Apple’s next ATV2 iOS upgrade won’t throw too much of a monkey wrench to the JB community.