It has been a while since my
last post about Apple tv. I have bought the new Apple TV 2 a few
weeks ago, and I’m really excited about one thing, one thing I
couldn’t easly do with my old (hacked) Apple tv. The thing that
exited me is, of course Airplay. A feature that Apple could have
easily been added to the Apple TV 1, since the encoding happens on
the other device, but than again the 99 dollar isn’t that big
amount for a product with really big potential. The limitations of
Airplay in IOS 4.2 is a bit of a bummer, but Steve Jobs has
promised us improvements:

MacRumors
Reader: Hi, I recently updated both my iPhone 4 and
iPad to 4.2. I think my favourite feature is airplay. This is
seriously amazing and makes sharing content seamless. I just
purchased Apple TV and was wondering are you ever going to make
airplay video work for videos in safari and 3rd party apps? I hope
to get a response.

Steve
Jobs: Yep, hope to add these
features to Airplay in 2011.

Let’s
just hope the broadcasters will not pull the same trick they pulled
on Google TV (blocking content to IOS ). For now we have
jailbreaking our iPhones and iPad. The Cydia tool AirVideoEnabler
by Martin Rosnski is just what we need. Thanks to some “spelunking”
work by TUAW’s Erica Sadun, it was discovered that a single line of
code is all that’s necessary to spread the feature to any app that
relies on Apple’s MediaPlayer framework, including VLC, AirVideo,
and even Safari. For now I don’t see a reason for jailbreaking my
Apple tv it self. As Erica Sadun shows, there is a big potential in
iPhone and iPad apps using Airplay.

Imagine playing the Incident on your TV via Airplay

Check out Erica Sadun’s
website for more great Airplay and Appletv hack. P.S. In my opinion
AirVideoEnebler + href=”http://www.inmethod.com/air-video”>Air Video app
is the greatest home theater experience out there!

Here is a little tutorial on how to Hack your Apple tv, to run Boxee, XBMC and enable a external-hard-drive.

This tutorial is an alternative to atvflash and is completely free!

After you hacked you apple TV with this you can play the following video formats:
- AVI, DivX, Xvid, FLV, WMV, RM and RMVB
- MKV formats supported up to 480p resolution (hardware limited)
- MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-3 and MPEG-4
- DVD files (VIDEO_TS/VOB)
- AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
- Subtitle support for SSA and SRT

We will install:
- FTP/SFTP/SSH Access – Transfer files to and from the AppleTV
- NitoTV – Play DVD files, enable USB storage and much more
- XBMC – A fully customizable media center software
- Boxee – Watch and share media with your friends
- Sapphire 6.5 – Play and organize media using IMDB database

What you need:
- AppleTV running software v2.3 or later
- Mac running OS X v10.4 or later
- USB Flash Drive – sized 256MB – 2GB recommended drives
- Internet connection

Step 1: Make a usb patchstick
First we need to download the uber USB flash drive creator for the AppleTV, witch can be found onhttp://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/The usb flash drive creator will make a patchstick that enables SSH on your Appletv (so you can access the apple tv’s file structure) and installs Boxee and XBMC. The creation of the patchstick is pretty straight forward, just follow the onscreen instructions.

Update: manually download the Apple TV .DMG from iClarified and then manually select the dmg. Thx Clark

Step 2: Install the patchstick
1) turn of your apple tv (unplug the power)
2) Place the patchstick in the apple tv
3) Turn on your appletv (wait for the patchstick to do its thing)

4) After a minute or the patch should be installed (wait for instructions on your screen)
5) Remove the patchstick and restart your Apple TV.

Boxee, XBMC and SSH should now be installed and enabled on your Apple TV.

Step 3: Access your Appel TV
Because we enabled SSH on the Apple TV , we can now remotely access the Apple TV with Coda or Cyberduck on your Mac computer.
In coda (or an other SSH application) connect to the Apple TV via:
1) Select SFTP (SSH)
2) server: yourappletvip (or the ip-adress of your Apple TV)
3) username: frontrow
4) pass: frontrow
5) Press Connect (you will get access to the Apple TV)

Step 4: Enable external USB drives
Now we have remote access to the Apple TV we can enable external USB drive support.
We will do this by installing NitoTV.

You will need to download Nito tv to your Mac. Download.

1) Download Nito tv and unzip.
2) With Coda or Cyberduck login to your Appel TV and copy the content of the nito TV folder (installme and nito TV ) to the Apple TV
3) With the terminal Application>utilities> terminal login into the Apple TV.
4) ssh frontrow@yourappletvip
5) When prompted for a password, enter ‘frontrow’.
6) Now go to the directory where you placed Nito TV on your AppleTV and type the following command:
sudo ./installme (When prompted for a password, enter ‘frontrow’ again.)
7) Now restart your Apple TV. Now Nito tv is installed

Go To Nito tv and Install Smart Installer

That’s It, you can now watch almost any kind of video with your apple TV and use external hard-drives!