AppleTV and LPCM Lossless Audio & 24p Question

[xfiring]

I have an old gen1 apple TV laying around and I am finally thinking about getting rid of my aTV 2's and 3's for something I can get true Bluray MKVs playing back from in my reference theater. The question here is two fold.

1. I read that the original aTV can not decode lossless audio, however, if you were to convert the DTS-HD / TrueHD tracks to LPCM and have that in the MKV file, would the Apple TV output that for which would indeed be lossless quality?

2. Can the Broadcom ATV OpenELEC play back at 24p?

3. I will put a general 3rd question in, any issues playing back actual full blurry rips (30/40GB files)?

Thanks in advance

[chewitt]

To answer questions:
a.) Conversion from any form of HD audio to something else will involve loss. I'd argue most users wouldn't ever tell the difference, but it will involve loss.
b.) Yes, if you enable the "adjust refresh" option in XBMC and the TV advertises a 23.976Hz mode.
c.) The largest rip I tested with is around 22GB which was fine. I've seen reports of larger ones working, but it's not personal experience.

but:
I'd guess that if you can afford the large amount of storage space for a library of 30-40GB rips and are concerned about lossy audio in a "reference" theatre set-up you can probably afford something newer than a mk1 AppleTV to play things on. AppleTV is right at the end of it's useful life and I'd position it as a last-resort option.

[xfiring]

Thanks for the quick reply.

On point 1. It is possible to take either Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD and convert to LCPM without any additional loss. This LPCM 5.1 channel is then sent out already decoded so there is no issue other than the bandwidth to send this. This is how Plex can output the latest audio on Mac OS X which doesn't support those codecs. Granted it is more work to do that but it does work.

Yes I can afford another device like a NUC but had the old aTV laying around so thought I'd start there. Let me know if you have any insights on LPCM 5.1 on the first gen apple TV. Also any issues with the NUC and lossless audio? Is openELEC compatible with Plex Media Server on a Mac?

Thanks again