AwkwardTV – Open Thinkering

Sync any type of video (DivX, Xvid, etc.) with an AppleTV

Posted on March 8, 2008 by Doug Belshaw

AppleTV My ongoing saga with the refurbished AppleTV I bought continues. After hacking v1.1 of the firmware that came as standard on the unit, I then upgraded it to v2.0 as soon as it came out. Currently I can transfer files via SSH directly to the device (instructions on how to do that here) and play pretty much anything, as I’ve installed the Perian plugin for Quicktime.

What I want is something like XBMC which I’ve got installed on my old Xbox. With that I can play almost any type of media directly from my NAS drive (an unmodified Buffalo Linkstation). I’ve tried following the instructions in the Take 2 Full Update Procedure on the AwkwardTV wiki, but to no avail; I still get errors when I try to access network shares from my AppleTV. 🙁

For the moment, I’ve found a workaround. It’s an AppleScript that basically fools the AppleTV into thinking it’s a standard .mov file that it can play out-of-the-box. I followed the instructions here, but all you really need to do is:

Download and unzip AppleTV Fooler (backup copy here).
Drop a video file onto the AppleTV Fooler AppleScript.
Drag-and-drop the new version of your video file into ‘Movies’ in iTunes.
Sync with your AppleTV.

That should do it. Any problems, just comment! 😀

Hacking an AppleTV v1.1

Posted on February 11, 2008 by Doug Belshaw

AppleTV This post will be redundant tomorrow. Apple are scheduled to release v2 of their firmware for the AppleTV that will switch on the ability for the device to directly access the iTunes store. This will mean the ability to purchase music and rent films directly – at least for those in the US. What I and others have done, however, is made the AppleTV a bit more flexible. A bit like Xbox Media Center, in fact.

Continue reading “Hacking an AppleTV v1.1”