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165 Comments
- putnam, on 10/12/2007, -5/+83Before all the piggies come squealing FAKE, let me just say this is 100% legit. Take apart your Apple TV and plug in the drive yourself -- it's a pretty straight-forward OS X install (10.4.7).
It's kind of obvious that Apple doesn't really care, if you ask me, and to my knowledge Apple isn't losing money on these devices. We'll certainly see more streamlined solutions in the coming weeks, so this is just the beginning. - putnam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+72It was actually REALLY easy, and only took us about 2 hours total from unboxing the thing. It was really clear that Apple knew this was going to happen and didn't make any effort to stop it.
- Carniphage, on 10/12/2007, -1/+53This is great news - for a bunch of reasons.
The Apple TV is suddenly useful for watching downloaded TV - without transcoding everything.
And not to mention that this little box appears to be a solution for all manner of inventive applications.
How fast was that? - putnam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+50Also, I'm an idiot, and put "SSH client" in the description when I meant an SSH server (dropbear).
- putnam, on 10/12/2007, -8/+57Well, XBMC doesn't support HD content, nor does the console itself support HDMI. Hopefully XBMC will end up getting ported for more systems, including this one, before it becomes too obsolete.
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+47"The ONLY reason I would get this thing would be to mod it to hell."
I think this is a key to AppleTV's possible success-it is going to appeal to not one, but two groups of users:
a) Users like you and putnam, who want to hack it to hell and come up with crazy *****
b) Users who are really lazy, and just want something that works without having to do anything but plug it in. - swaggadocio, on 08/20/2008, -2/+45Yea I think Apple would've predicted this happen. It's news like this that makes hardware hackers and hobbyists buy things by the truckload.
Congrats for the work though! Very quick! - putnam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+42Oh, I was just joking about that. In this case we had root the moment we had physical access. It was just funny because when we enumerated the local users, we realized the username was "frontrow" and just kind of guessed the password the first time we tried to SSH in without a key. We had a very dorky high-five after that.
- putnam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+30It's just a modified OS X install. You can run whatever you want on it.
- EBFoxbat, on 10/12/2007, -3/+29Out-*****-standing!
- brufleth, on 10/12/2007, -7/+31@flag564
The ONLY reason I would get this thing would be to mod it to hell. Out of the box it is a nearly worthless device that replaces a single cable from a computer to a TV. Except it doesn't even do that since it forces you to get things into iTunes (a program I am not alone in hating) in order to play them. With modifications it can be a stand alone system that actually stores and plays media without arbitrary restrictions on format. - bluering, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23Well as far as I am concerned if you have never voided the warranty on a gadget you are either a very boring geek, are not a geek at all, or you are a geek who has seriously mismanaged your time and money.
Keep in mind I consider myself a geek and happen to think Make magazine is fine literature.
To each his own though. Without people like this we wouldn't have things like XBMC, hopped up muscle cars (or Japanese imports), Over clocked Celeron 300As, or fake titties. All these things made at least some people feel like they got more out life than what they had originally been issued. - rspeed, on 10/12/2007, -5/+28That's okay. We picked up what you were laying down.
- putnam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23We're gonna work toward a more soft-moddable way soon. Keep in mind we've literally spent like less than 4 hours of work on this. It seems to me like it shouldn't be that difficult to get SSH access to the device without opening it up, but who knows...
For what it's worth, there was no seal on the case at all that I could see, so they wouldn't even know that you opened it. - Gardenhead, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22Why would adding more codec 'ruin it'? Also, if you were careful and backed up the original image they might not even know you opened it.
- nanboya, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20Awesome, simply awesome. With a very deliberate move, Apple has snuck by a great piece of hardware past those DRM-crazy MPAA folks under the radar and turned the Apple TV into an instant geek toy classic.
- starvo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Same here. Although, the credit card only comes out if xvid/divx in 720p can be played. If that's the case, Hello AppleTV.
- putnam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18@Terc
We spent a few minutes trying to make that work actually. It looks like they put the modified frontrow into Finder.app on the Apple TV, so we have both tried to run that on a normal Macbook Pro and running the normal Finder on the TV. So far it hasn't worked but I think we're getting there...
We did find all the icons and that cool movie that you see when it boots up, though! - WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Praise Jebus, this is the news I was waiting for.
/me reaches for credit card... - MikeOSX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Don't you just love it when companies release a product that is intentionally easy to hack?
- kris33, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Since the server is dead:
1. Open it up (4 screws on the bottom, small Torx bit)
2. Put the 2.5" drive into a USB enclosure or whatever you want
3. Mount the HFS filesystem
4. Install Perian in /Library/Quicktime (as you normally would)
5. Install Dropbear (or enable SSH if you know how... we gave up and used Dropbear)
6. Add a startup script to disable the firewall or open up the ports you need for SSH
7. Put the drive back in and boot it, ssh login as frontrow, password frontrow (or add an ssh key for yourself)
8. Use a reference movie (use QT Pro to save a reference movie) to bootstrap your xvid file - totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16"Um, that's the key to success for ANY device."
Uh..not really. The iPod being the prime example. The AppleTV doesn't have the same broad appeal, so it will probably benefit more from having both the hacker crowd and the lazy consumer crowd interested in it. - ricksite, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17It doesn't have Firewire and I haven't heard of target disk mode working with USB. I am not sure that is even possible.
- slashclee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16You know how to put together an HTPC that can do component out as well as HDMI and supports 720p H.264 for under $300? Please, enlighten the rest of us.
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15jyangwrites,
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/diy-apple-tv-hard-drive-upgraded-to-120gb-246567.php
looks like it! - stupidbrowner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Just wait a few weeks and you will almost certainly have a complete list of all necessary linux drivers for the apple tv and at least 6 tutorials on digg :P
- trekkie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Why should they have come up with something more clever password wise? Maybe they wanted this to happen. I'm sure they're making good 30% margins and if every geek on the planet buys one they make money, and you get a pretty cool little box to geek out on to your hearts content.
- joshuakuhn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14And what would the SSH info be for that? This is actually useful for some people...
- julian9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13My question now would be "How can I take AppleTV UI code out and put it in my Mac Mini..." ;)
- iobuffa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Color me impressed. Two hacks in one day. This thing is going to be a whole different machine a month from now.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14The only question I have is, is it possible to upgrade the harddrive in the AppleTV? If so, it would finally be the HD replacement for my XBMC that I've been yearning for.
- deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12UPDATE for people who don't want to read the forum:
They've got a web browser working, VLC and iTunes. Looks like it's trival to get OSX apps working natively. (although the lack of SSE3 may be an issue) This box is going to become the next Xbox in terms of easy media center modding. I'm pretty sure Apple did this on purpose -- the ATV has been public for 2 days and it's already more functional than the PS3 and Xbox 360 for my needs. - putnam, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14You might be watching a show being upsampled to 720p, but you're not watching an HD show that is actually in 720p. At least not at an acceptable framerate.
- jjesusfreak01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11@putnam
What could have possibly caused thousands of pageload requests in a few minutes on their server? Hmmm... - RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15Cool. I want to see someone install the MythTV frontend (which runs in OS X) on that bad boy :)
This would be the ideal frontend. You could set up a dual-boot to still keep the MacTV funtionality in it, but set up an ugly PC box in another room of your house and set it up to do all your recording / transcoding / commercial flagging and use this as the frontend to view everything... - WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11You can get DVI to HDMI adapter cables... My HDTV also has DVI inputs, so the mini would be fine as is...
- LexLethol, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13This is great news..
I guess a lot of ppl stand in the same place I am..
I love XBMC all codec support (specially xvid) but we are already looking for the next gen solution to play our HD content.
PROs= Cheap hardware, lots of features, great Samba support to play your all content directly from any other PC/NAS that supports Samba (Linux, Mac, Linux).
CONs= Hardware showing its age for playing HD content, no WIFI, no HDMI, a bit bulky and a bit noisy for HT or bedroom.
I've been following Xbox360-hacked linux development and was placing all eggs on that being my next media center (hoping the XBMC guys would port everything there. If we do get there, I'm guessing this is what we'll get:
PROs= All in one solution for games and media center. HD content support. SAMBA support?
CONs= Very noisy for bedroom, no WIFI support.
AppleTV-hacked
PROs= Designed specially to be a media center, HDMI, 11n WIFI support. Samba support?
CONs=Limited feature set compared to XBMC. (I can browse RSS, check email and watch youtube on XBMC)
All in all the feature set for me has a secondary priority. If Apple TV is able to play my xvid collection and newer HD videos via SAMBA that will do it for me, although extra scripting and hack support would be cool of course..
I never felt comfortable having neither my xboxes1 nor my xboxes360 ON 24/7. I never had any problems leaving them ON for a day or two, Im sure someone can prove me wrong but I just don't feel they were designed for running 24/7. Althought I dont have an AppleTV yet, the chipset based decoding solution rather than the 'software' based decoding solution gives me the impression that AppleTV is better designed to do that. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10First thing I would do is install MAME on it.
- cleverboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11People. It's over. All you whiners saying that Apple TV is for "light weights", start ordering your diapers. It was over the moment someone said "MacOS X" and "SSH". The damn thing runs OS X. Small hard drive? Who the #$%@ cares?
Step 1. Drop-in script to disable the Apple TV's firewall and enable SSH access on reboot.
Step 2. SSH into the box using username: frontrow / password: frontrow.
Step 3. Rename the AppleTV media folder (look in "/mnt/Media/Media Files") to something else, like "Media Files2".
Step 4. MOUNT YOUR NETWORK DRIVE.
Step 5. In its place create a symbolic link to the network drive. (# ln -s "Media Files" /Volumes/AirPortExtremeConnected/USB/TeraByteDrive/Path)
Koff. Light 'em up boys. We have our $299 wireless, HDMI-ready media jukebox. --And it is BITCHIN'.
Oh, and next question... can we connect El Gato's EyeTV to the USB port, install drivers, and create script to copy over EyeTV program preferences for automatic recording of broadcasts to network drive and media library. While the tutorials will take some time to optimize and streamline... only a matter of time. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9They're just installing additional QuickTime plug-ins, so everything else would remain unchanged.
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9bmasse, I'm waiting for someone to post an Automator script that will read an inserted DVD, access HandBrake/MactheRipper to pull off the VOBs, access VisualHub to convert to AppleTV format, then send to AppleTV.
- bluering, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Looks like I am buying one then. I was going for the Mac mini route, but this would be about half the price.
Thanks guys. - Carniphage, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I suppose there is no obvious way to persuade the AppleTV into booting into TargetDisk mode?
Too much to ask I guess. - andyrobo60, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12An apple TV would make a nice myth client (or small myth server).
- sv650touring, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I don't know how to respond to such an idiotic suggestion.
$300, tiny (less than half the size and weight of an average laptop), good looking, HDMI/Component/optical, 802.11, remote, quiet
Sorry, but here on earth you can't get all that in parts from newegg, let alone pre-assembled, for that money.
Plus it runs OSX. Are you kidding me?
XBMC comparisons are a bit more reasonable(only because it is cheap and feature-rich), but probably won't be for long. I love my XBMC, and HTPC hasn't been an attractive successor (cost, complexity) because I'm a bit lazy. This is looking to be more my speed. - monkeyrun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Hopefully there'll be a more elegant solution, like not pulling out the harddrive.
but the fact that the admin username/password is frontrow/frontrow means Apple really don't care if you crack up the thing. - Thuktun, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10"I think this is a key to AppleTV's possible success-it is going to appeal to not one, but two groups of users: [...]"
I think this is exactly why the Series 1 TiVos were so popular.. - WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8If it's really this easy to install software on the thing, and it's capable of 720p output, then I can almost guarantee that the answer to your question is a resounding "yes". This thing can be hacked up to your heart's content, and it's basically a very small PC.
- pkulak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Just rip them with HandBreak. You'll get compatibility for free (no hacks necessary on the Apple TV) and save a butt load of space.
- WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I think you would be better off with frontrow, which you could have set to launch upon login. At least you could always exit out and launch a web browser or mplayer or whatever...
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