In February PolyVector and I got an Apple TV. I promised a small article on modding it once we had everything all setup. So, here it is! I am going to do a small little walk through on the resources I used and how I managed to get everything up and running. I do want to note the methods used here are after a second round of trying to figure out an easier way to modd the Apple TV after the 2.0.x updates were released. Our first attempt at modding was extremely difficult and made getting any Apple TV updates not impossible, but very time consuming. By the way, this little run down is going to have you hacking your Apple TV without removing the internal hard drive, or taking it apart in any way.

Preparation

Well, the first thing you need is an Apple TV. The new Take 2 versions are completely acceptable. We originally modded a 2.0 and this modding method was a direct result to get the new 2.0.2 software up and running.

A USB thumbdrive that is at least 125MB. I used a 256MB Cigar Pro 2.

An Intel Mac OS X Tiger system restore disc. One that comes with a new Mac, I used my aluminum iMac’s install disc. The disc definitely needs to be newer than the first gen MacBook restore discs, as when I was going through this it did not work properly.

The last thing you need is pretty much a tutorial link. I am not going to walk you through the tutorial myself as I think the one I followed was pretty darn easy and specific enough except for the few notes I gave you above for preparation. All the downloads you need will also be linked to in the following tutorial.

Go straight to iClarified - AppleTV Install SSH with a Take 2 Patchstick. Be sure to follow the tutorial exactly and you will have a perfectly working USB drive that will auto patch your Apple TV so you can SSH (or SFTP) to install plugins.

After the Initial Hacking

So you have SSH (SFTP) enabled on your Apple TV, what can you possibly do with this thing. Actually a lot! You can now access the Apple TV’s file system so this means you can add video and audio codecs. The Apple TV is using a special version of Front Row which means that it uses Quick Time. Playing DivX, XviD and other formats is as easy as installing Perian. To make it even easier, you can follow another iClarified tutorial which walks you through all the Terminal voodoo.

The downside to all this is you still won’t be able to stream DivX etc, files from your desktop. This means you need a way to access the file system on your Apple TV via the GUI you see on your TV screen. This is where ATV Files comes in. It allows you to set folders and an easy way to get to them on your Apple TV for playback. Once again iClarified has a tutorial on installing ATV Files, but the link to the ATV Files download is to an older version that is very difficult to setup. Instead of downloading the version stated in the tutorial you should get the newest version from the ATV Files wiki. Because you are going to be using a different version than the install tutorial, you might need to modify the Terminal commands you use to match the file name of the newer ATV Files version.

Resources

This is the last little bit I am going to go over quickly. Some huge resources you should bookmark regarding hacking/modding your Apple TV are as follow:

AppleTV Hacks - For news on plugin updates, community forums for help, and general Apple TV info.
iClarified Apple TV Tutorial section - Some of the easiest and most up-to-date tutorials for modding your Apple TV.
AwkwardTV - A place to find ATVFiles and a bunch of other plugins to make your Apple TV do more than you probabl ever thought it could.

Done

I hope you enjoyed my tiny walk through. Thanks for reading!