Apple TV Already Being Hacked

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?"

Re:Bound to happen

[solevita]

Linux wasn't hacked onto the PS3, Sony got it there.

And as for the PS3 being "popular"...

second project

[macTijn]

over at awkwardtv.org [awkwardtv.org] we're basically doing the same thing. wiki at http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/ [awkwardtv.org]

Huh?? Apple doesn't own those formats!

[green pizza]

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.

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:USB2 tv tuner / DVR please!

[ThinkingInBinary]

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:Go with the flow

[Anonymous Coward]

Choosing 'username:frontrow, password:frontrow' for the device shows they sure didn't intent to make it very hard.

Re:Double whammy in Apple's favor

[Ilgaz]

People outside OS X thinks Quicktime is just that dumb looking player. It is a framework which is installed systemwide.

If they want Ogg support, they can install the Xiph component http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/ 29804 [versiontracker.com] and have Ogg support all over the system. They can even drag a ogg file to Textedit window and it will "show" (!) there.

I just did to watch Novell videos and they show perfectly in my Quicktime plugin.

Re:USB2 tv tuner / DVR please!

[shmlco]

1) My Comcast box already has a DVR. Do I need another?

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 people are focusing on what it can't do (yet) and not paying enough attention to those situations and environments where it might actually be useful.

Re:Nothing about installing VLC

[PygmySurfer]

This "install VLC" article discusses the installation of an SSH server and Perian, NOTHING about VLC.

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.

Re:OpenWRT = Good; Linksys = Bad

[Windowser]

Linksys is an example of a company which apparently DOESN'T want its hardware to be purchased by DIY-ers.

Witness the Series 5 and Series 6 WRT54G routers; they stripped down the NVRAM to emasculate their equipment to the point that it's no longer desirable for general applications.

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't hack it.

Galaxy IPTV

[aktiveradio]

I don't get why anyone is buy these things the Galaxy IPTV looks about the same, is the same size, but has support for XVID and DIVX. They cost about half as much as the AppleTV does on ebay.

Choppy iTunes Video

[wperry1]

I had the same problem with Video on iTunes. After a little searching about I found someone that recommended playing them in QuickTime. It was a hundred times better. The same video on the same system played flawlessly. You might give it a shot.

Will

Re:Nothing about installing VLC

[Anonymous Coward]

By 8:00pmPDT the AwkwardTV guys had VLC, Address Book, Firefox, iTunes, and Dropbear running. No USB support, yet.

Re:Awesome!

[rm69990]

Why not just rip your DVD's to an AppleTV compatible format instead of DivX. AppleTV is not just limited to iTMS purchases. Any store that wants to sell their media in a compatible format will work just fine.

Hardly qualifies as a "hack".

[argent]

Unless cracking the box open requires some particular cleverness.

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.

Re:USB2 tv tuner / DVR please!

[Mykroughpsyoughpht]

Check with Elgato Systems [elgato.com].

See if their eyeTV hybrid works on AppleTV [elgato.com].