Apple TV Already Being Hacked 260
TunesBoy writes "Only a couple of days after being shipped, the Apple TV is already being modified in a variety of ways. A thread at Something Awful discusses installing VLC, and a dedicated site, AppleTVHacks.net, has appeared and is cataloging hacks including a hard-drive upgrade tutorial. Did Apple intend for the Apple TV to be so easy to upgrade and hack?"
Probably on purpose (Score:5, Funny)
USB2 tv tuner / DVR please! (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple TV is neat and all, but I still want to record most of my shows myself.
To illustrate my point: when the studios started selling TV series episodes on DVD, I didn't throw out my VCR and Tivo! I do continue to buy new movies and TV series on DVD, but I also still do a lot of recording of my own. One of my TVs has a built-in VCR that still gets a lot of use, as does my Tivo, especially for timeshifting 1 - 48 hours until I have time to watch my favorite shows... many of which I enjoy, but wouldn't want to buy on a commerical full season DVD.
Does that make any sense? Or am I the only one who still records?
Re:USB2 tv tuner / DVR please! (Score:5, Informative)
It makes perfect sense. I have one of these [amazon.com] DVD recorders, and I use it to do essentially the same thing. One DVD-RAM holds up to 8 hours of TV, so it works great for catching up on TV that runs late at night or when I'm too busy to watch it. Of course, I'd prefer a MythTV box with a nice big RAID array, but this was a lot cheaper. (It even came with a DVD-RAM disc!) It basically works like a "poor man's TiVo" when you use a DVD-RAM disc--you can watch a show off the disc while recording another (although seeking doesn't work as smoothly when it's doing two things at once), and you can start recording at any time and just press "Play" to jump back to where you started recording. (You can also tune the TV to another channel, like you can with a VCR.) It can schedule recordings, and is very diligent about cueing up the recording one minute before it starts, to make sure it's ready to record. The UI can be a bit sluggish, and it crashes extremely occasionally (about once a month, if even -- usually when it's juggling seven tasks at once), but it's a great deal, and much cheaper than a TiVo.
Re:USB2 tv tuner / DVR please! (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple TV or Apple is not to blame, they are not selling a computer or suggest it is a computer, it is a high tech "deck" which happens to run OS X inside to do its job.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
2) One could buy a mini, for about $400-500 more. If all one really wants is a "Front Row" to their tunes and shows, might a mini be a little overkill?
3) A mini counts as one of your allotted five systems. An ATV doesn't.
4) Now, IF one didn't have a DVR, then you might consider a mini plus a EyeTV dongle (another $150). But what about the rest of the house? Seems like $300 a pop per "station" is a lot more reasonable than $700-900 each.
I think too many
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
2. The mini does not "lack" HDMI. DVI and HDMI are pin-for-pin identical for the video signal. All you need is a cable with DVI on one end and HDMI on the other.
3. Your ghetto WMC has no optical sound output.
4. The mini also has both USB2 and FireWire, so your ghetto WMC has nothing on it there.
5. People are playing high-bitrate h.264 video RIGHT
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're missing the point. What Apple are trying to do is to switch you from your current content provider to the iTunes Store.
The Apple TV may not look too interesting in the USA with the many content providers and TIVOs and all, but here in Canada, it will be a very interesting choice. Here's why.
Just as a lot of people stopped buying CDs and now buy single tracks from the iTunes Store, some people will drop their cable/sa
Re: (Score:2)
The other interesting thing on the site was that despite statements to the contrary it works with ordinary non_HD TVs, so long as they have component video inputs.
The other thing I learned was
Choppy iTunes Video (Score:2, Informative)
Will
Re: (Score:2)
Holy shit. (Score:2)
Lemme get this straight.
They can create a $299 box with TV-out that has a discrete graphics controller built in, but they can't put one into one SINGLE model of Mac Mini? Wow.
This is both sixteen kinds of lame and sixteen kinds of awesome.
Lame because it shows Apple's massive, needless markup.
Awesome because, hey - $299 Mac with TV-out AND discrete graphics!
Of course, there is the teensy matter of the 256MB of non-upgradeable RAM, but what do you expect for $299?
Greed always beats malice. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm absolutely sure they did. They would have been stupid not to.
Why? Because they wanted to make sure that if anyone found a way to run "real" OS X on it, it would be close to useless because of the small amount of RAM. Sigh.
An interesting conspiracy theory, but here's one that's slightly easier to believe: they minimized the amount of RAM
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not so hard to believe.
The Dothan ULV is a chip Intel sells solely for "embedded" applications these days (similar in performance and power enveloper to AMD's Geode NX). Core Duo processors in the Mac Mini cost quite a bit more.
The Apple TV also includes a 40GB 2.5" 4200 RPM hard drive, which costs a lot less than the baseline Mini's 60GB 5400 RPM drive. Pa
Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Funny)
I have the feeling that Apple (probably correctly) figures that Microsoft will do that all by itself without Apple having to lift a finger.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no program guide data available for them which renders it mostly useless.
MythTV naturally gets EPG data easily for Australia.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Totally! I mean, does anyone seriously think any intelligent person would buy media from a company that only played on that companies device?!? I think Apple tried that with that iPod thing and look how that turned out
]{
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words: by making it entirely different. This is the same argument that comes up every time Apple releases anything. Why a TV tuner? If I'm downloading content, I don't need one. If I'm not, why do I need a device to help me play downloaded content? Why not just get a TiVo?
Re: (Score:2)
If they released all that in the first version, then who would buy the second version?
Apple always releases a crippled version first. After all the early adopters have bought one, Apple releases a slightly enhanced version. This nets the customers who were hanging out for those extra features. And most of the early adopters buy the enhanced
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1.not wanting to pay royalties for formats and codecs they don't need
2.not wanting to take up space on the unit for formats and codecs they don't need
and 3.possibly not wanting to support certain formats seen more on pirated or illegally copied content than on legitimate content.
Re: (Score:2)
yes offcourse they did intent that (Score:5, Interesting)
They will not sell that much more hardware directly, but the PR image they create with it is worth a lot, and all they had to do is produce something decent.
Linksys is a very good past example of this: their wrtg routers were nice to modify and already ran linux. I bought one for myself to play with and later advised my brother to get that brand. Marketing is easy if your customers start doing the selling themselves.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
That is why they made the WRT54GL, you pay slightly more to have more NVRAM and it still runs Linux (the L in the model number is for Linux)
The change for the v.5 and 6 was to save money on the parts, not so that we couldn
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Intentionally, or just not-unintentionaly? (Score:5, Insightful)
It does seem like the norm these days is for companies to build equipment with huge amounts of power, but then they lock it down in an effort to.. protect.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hacking? (Score:2)
Go with the flow (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it was intent to "be easy to upgrade & hack" as it was realizing how much time & resources get wasted by other companies trying to achieve somthing that's not possible.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
It's harder than "username:admin, password:admin".
Re: (Score:2)
Simon
Re: (Score:2)
Why not ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Historically, Apple don't sell at a loss. I'm pretty sure that (even at the low price of $300 for a 1GHz/256/40G PC in that form factor) Apple will be making money off this - they don't care if you hack it.
In fact, the more hackable it is, the better - jo(e) public buys it so (s)he can watch their iTMS movies on the big screen, the geeks buy it to hack it. Box numbers go up either way, which helps Apple PR, and helps them persuade people they have *the* viable platform for the home.
I wonder how long it'll be before the USB-2 port is made available (it is running OSX, after all), at which point you get an external 1T drive on it as well, in one of the mac-mini style enclosures...
Simon.
Re:Why not ? (Score:5, Funny)
One of the most compact examples of political correctness I think I have ever seen.
The problem with (s)he (Score:5, Funny)
(s)h(it).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
People often use "they" incorrectly as stop gap.
I couldn't agree with thou more.
Will it stay open? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's tempting to buy one now in case they decide to toughen it all up in the future. And that's my tip for any device you may want to hack sometime in the future.
Re:Will it stay open? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless, of course, you're an Apple Computer with the obvious intent of becoming the 21st century king of content distribution. You probably wouldn't want people hacking into your real-time swarming video distribution system getting movies and TV shows for free. This apparent friendliness to the hacker underground may just be a ploy to get as many of the things out there as possible, by eliminating complaints that were common to late-generation Tivos and Dish Network products. They can always lock it up later.
Time will tell.
That part's already running on your own PC... (Score:2)
If they were going to do that, wouldn't it be easier to do that with the computer that's actually running the software (iTunes) that's doing the distribution? AppleTV isn't even potentially part of any "real-time swarming video distribution system".
What's in it for them? Why would they? (Score:2)
What's in it for them? They're not selling games that they get a kickback from, they're not selling it under cost and making it up on content, or on services... the AppleTV hardware isn't worth $300 by any stretch of the imagination. There's no loss to them if you buy it and "hack" it.
Not that I'd classify installing a binary on a hard drive a "hack".
Double whammy in Apple's favor (Score:5, Insightful)
Here, Apple is only supporting formats THEY own, so they can spend the money on the hardware. Hacking it only drives up their market share, and to the complaint that people are watching all these unlicensed formats on it Apple can say "Hey, we didn't do it." But you still bought a box from them.
Re: (Score:2)
AAC is Dolby
MP3 is Fraunhofer (arguable debate ongoing at the moment)
H.264 and MPEG are standards formed by multiple companies
More relevant point is I'm sure Apple has licenses for all of the above for decoding purposes, and incurs no additional cost above what they already incur for such devices like the iPod.
Re: (Score:2)
Regardless, Dolby is the licensing administrator for AAC in the MPEG-4 standard. From the point I was making, Dolby is still the key player for AAC licensing from Apple's perspective. http://www.dolby.com/assets/pdf/press_releases/72
I don't recall saying MP3 WAS mpeg3, btw.
Huh?? Apple doesn't own those formats! (Score:5, Informative)
According to the specs [apple.com], the Apple TV supports AAC, MP3, AIFF, Apple Lossless, WAV, MPEG-4, H.264, JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG.
The only format Apple owns is Apple Lossless audio. The others are industry standards. AAC, Advanced Audio Coding, is part of the MPEG-4 specfication although I belive it doesn't need to be licensed (unlike MP3 which requires a per-machine license). MPEG-4 (aka MPEG-4 part 2) and H.264 (aka AVC: Advanced Video Coding aka MPEG-4 part 10) also require licenses [wikipedia.org].
I'm not sure if JPEG requires a license, probably depends on the lawsuit of the day.
Re:Double whammy in Apple's favor (Score:4, Informative)
If they want Ogg support, they can install the Xiph component http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx
I just did to watch Novell videos and they show perfectly in my Quicktime plugin.
Re: (Score:2)
For example, I've written a small app that plays media files and reads a second "bookmark" file to provide jump-to points and notes for anything QuickTime plays (and I know some formats support this nativ
Re: (Score:2)
Why don't I just buy a 360? (Score:2, Interesting)
For a meager $399, I could get an Xbox360 with all these features AND dvd playback. It even does Hi-def downloads, Live Arcade games, and awesome AAA titles (GTA IV, Devil May Cry 4, (possibly) MGS and FF). That's got a remote, Windows Media connectivity, etc- and is expandable to play HD-DVD, potentially Blu-Ray in the future if it "wins".
It'll even play music off your iPod. Unless you buy ALL your tv off of iTunes, why would you get this? I'd just get a 360 for this money. Both are
Re: (Score:2)
Then again the general consumer standpoint is to buy what ever offers the features they want in an easy to use package. While the 360 is probably a good option, people don't perceive its primary task as being a media platform, and this is what makes the difference.
BTW I am adverse to WMV. MP4 is my preferred format since it has easily accessible specification documents.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You're not in AppleTV's target demographic then.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Other jackass-
Macs do not make you creative.... it's just a goddamn white-plasticky computer. Its operating system is aesthetically-pleasing. Christ, you guys are worse than scientologists.
Apple is more than just a computer- it's a personality disorder.
I've got a mac laptop and a Vista PC. Somehow I am able to be productive on both without grossly changing my personality.
THINK FOR YOU
There's a difference between Windows and Mac OS (Score:2)
My sister always ends up having to make the girl scout camp DVDs they hand out to parents. Why? She has an iBook, and all the others have Windows PCs. She's the only one who can figure out how to do it. Hell, my mom, who is a school teacher and was never able to figure out how to save a word document to a floppy (she's not stupid, she's just scared that she'll break something if she does something wrong) actually has figured o
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why don't I just buy a 360? (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes more noise than a medium sized air craft at take off. -Seriously!
Re:Why don't I just buy a 360? (Score:5, Funny)
This is a slight exaggeration. It's actually more like a small truck in neutral.
-:sigma.SB
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You can get the Xbox to connect to iTunes, but as far as I know it requires manually editing some XML.
The Xbox 360 is very noisy, so it can be distracting, especially while watching TV.
The Apple TV is far from perfect, but the Xbox isn't so great either. I'm saying this as a 36
Smaller, quieter. outputs, more dedicated to use (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Much larger
2) Much noisier
3) Lacks HDMI output
4) has media support as an addition, not as the primary foucs of the device.
The two are almost totally seperate devices. I'll grant that if you are getting a 360 already then you have many features which are duplicated by the Apple TV. But the AppleTV is aiming at a much broader market than a game console (and this includes the PS3) can really reach I think.
Furthermore by focus, I really mean focus - as in the AppleTV is dedicated to ease in delivering internet video to your TV. Not even just any video like DVD or newer HD disc formats, but just IP video. That kind of focus usually results in a simpler system that is more appealing to people in that is does what it is meant to do very well.
Apple should port Itunes to xbox 360 (Score:2)
Very possible, easily done.
MS would cry foul, but if that fails, apple could just make an xbox 360 game (cheap basic one, any crap) and include
itunes360 on the disc for free.
As a 3rd party developer they could do this, im not sure what MS can do, or if EU can tell MS, to allow it or die.
Failing that, port itunes/appletv app to Ps3 linux, theres your free appletv box.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In what way is the media functionality of the ATV superior to that of the 360? As far as I can tell, there is no reason to buy an ATV if you have a 360 unless you must have everything that Apple releases.
Ohh, I just no
Re: (Score:2)
second project (Score:3, Informative)
Obligatory linux comment (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, more to the point: I look at this and see more than a DVR. I see a $299 (very) small form factor computer with a Pentium M (per Anandtech), 100base-T ethernet and wi-fi. $299 is dirt cheap and there's a lot you can do with a lowly Pentium M... It doesn't have to run Linux as long as it's installed OS can be modified.
Re:Obligatory linux comment (Score:4, Insightful)
I look at it and see no tuner or program guide or recording capability. I'm not sure how that equals more than a DVR. It's not even comparable to a DVR.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Galaxy IPTV (Score:2, Informative)
is this VLC hack confirmed? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't waste your time with restricted Apple TV (Score:2)
Its Wifi, DivX, mp3, ogg support and all the goodies you need, with a remote - it totally rocks.
http://www.slimdevices.com/ [slimdevices.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Still an awesome music player.
Re: (Score:2)
Hardly qualifies as a "hack". (Score:3, Informative)
Installing a program on a hard drive on a computer that's got absolutely no protections against installing programs on it hardly qualifies as a "hack".
Looking at the forums pointed to from this story, it's amazing how naive a lot of these wannabe "hackers" are. You've got folks asking, apparently seriously, whether you can run Power PC binaries on the AppleTV. I mean, really...
There are MUCH more interesting tricks the AppleTV and its baby copy of OS X might make possible.
GPU is an nVidia 7300 (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bound to happen (Score:5, Informative)
And as for the PS3 being "popular"...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
it's bound to be hacked at some point
The assertion is that marketing departments know this now and have known this for decades. The observation is that, possibly, hardware hackers are becoming a target group of consumer. When companies design new products they may be specifically tweaking the design to allow the hardware and software infrastructure to be hacked because that will make the product more appealing to an important segment of the consumer population.
Do inquisitive hardware hacking geeks have enough financial clout to significantl
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But lots and lots of video cards do DVI and component, and every HD set on the planet at least does component.
Go shopping for a $100 Nvidia or ATI card, I bet you'll find more with composite HDTV output than a VGA port on the back. (Not counting the ones that come bundled with a DVI-VGA converter, of course.)
Re: (Score:2)
Now that this little box is starting to open up, I may change my mind, but I'd probably just spend a little more money and get a lot more functionality from a Xbox360 or Mac Mini.
Having said that, I've had a lot of fun in the past playing with embedded linux devices; an embedded OSX device could be a lot of
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
its $100 more than a computer (Score:2)
A basic 2.6ghz box with HD everything, $369, appletv $480+ here.
SUre its a lot damn bigger, but can do a hell lot more.
Re:Nothing about installing VLC (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, I started following the SA thread yesterday, and there was nothing about installing VLC on the device there.
The people behind the SA thread have started a Wiki [awkwardtv.org], which also deserves to be in the summary.
I'll be following this closely - I was thinking of picking up a Mini (if they ever slap a Core 2 Duo in the fucking thing), but the Apple TV would be sufficient if it'll play DivX/XviD.