Unlock Apple TV with a Thumb Drive Hack
Play Any Multimedia File with Boxee, Thumb Drive Hack for Apple TV
Boxee Thumb Drive Hack by Scott DavillaAre you an Apple TV lover that has been disappointed by the functionality of the system in not letting you play all those multimedia files you have collected over the years. There are quite a few people out there that have had complaints about Apple’s stringent restrictions on what media files users can playback on their Apple TV.
Well not to worry. With the advent of Boxee, users can now playback almost any video file on their computer with no media restrictions.
Boxee is a software patch coded by Scott Davilla that can be loaded onto an Apple TV via USB stick. Once users have patched their system they will see a Boxee menu appear on Apple TV which will give them an update option that will install Boxee on their Apple TV unit.
The software needs to be loaded via a “bootable” USB thumb drive in order to work properly but if your USB drive is not bootable by default there are many applications out there that can format the drive and make it bootable.
Right now Boxee is invitation only through Scott Davilla’s site but users that have received invites to download the software can also send invites to others. The software is currently only available for Mac, but Scott plans to release a Windows and Linux version in the following week.
The AppleTV is great for playing video from iTunes, but can’t play video from alternative sources like file-sharing networks. Now, a software update from Apple Core, called aTV Flash promises to unlock tons of great functionality for the Apple TV.
aTV Flash is essentially a bundling of open source hacks for AppleTV originally published at awkwardtv.org into a convenient flash based package that promises to take the guesswork out of applying the updates. aTV ships as a flash drive, that automatically updates your AppleTV as soon as it’s plugged in. The package claims a plug-n-play installation with 1 year of free updates.
Lost in the shadow of Apple’s big MacOS X announcement today was some less-noted but perhaps far more intriguing news from the iPhoneDevTeam.
The iOS hacker group has released a jailbreaking procedure for iOS 4.1 devices. Aside from allowing iPhone/iPodTouch users to unlock their devices, the unlock will for the first time offer jailbreaking for the latest version of Apple TV.
The DevTeam notes that there’s not much that can be done with an unlocked Apple TV so far, and the lack of an on-board hard drive may limit some of the applications, but given the things that have been done with iOS devices in the past, there should be some interesting software available for Apple TV in the near future.
As always, the jailbreak tool comes with warnings. The procedure is not for novice users and once you have jailbroken your device, you should make sure not to install any updates from Apple, as they have a tendency to cause issues with jailbroken devices.
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