• How I Turned My Apple TV Into a Home Media Powerhouse
In the early days of the Apple TV, I followed the hacker community far enough to enable USB storage support and add the Perian Quicktime component. This was enough to watch downloaded TV shows, which is all I really wanted.
But several software revisions later, Boxee provided an easy way to play Hulu content on my TV. To teach my Apple TV this new trick, I had to brave the wikis and forums to hack the latest (2.2) software, and hope that my USB hard drive still worked.
In hopes of making life easier for others, here is my quick and easy guide to making it work. This is not intended as a true step-by-step guide for your grandmother, but as a map for experienced and knowledgeable Mac or Linux users who want to breathe some new life into their Apple TV. Links to the original instruction pages are provided.
What you’ll need:
- atvusb-creator
- A USB memory stick (I used a Crucial 4GB)
- Boxee1
- nitoTV2
- An Apple TV
- A Mac
- OS X 10.4.9 Combo Updater
- Experience with using Terminal.app
- Experience with ssh and scp
Step 1: Patchstick
The key to making this all work is the patchstick, a USB thumb drive made into an Apple TV boot device, loading key software onto the device and turning on SSH support. By default, the Apple TV has no external access, since content is managed by iTunes. For our purposes, the ability to write to the drive (and play with the OS, if that’s your thing) is essential.
Plug in your USB thumb drive and download the atvusb-creator package. The software will automatically partition the USB drive for you and load the required bits. Make sure you have selected the proper target drive. If the first attempt fails, don’t worry. Simply reboot your Mac and try again. This worked for me on the second attempt.
Once the patchstick has been created, pull the power from the back of the Apple TV. Insert the thumb drive and plug the power back in. If you’ve ever used Linux, the boot sequence from the USB drive will look familiar to you. When the patchstick has completed its work, you’ll see a Linux login prompt. Time to pull the plug again, remove the thumb drive, and boot the Apple TV.
When you get back to the Apple TV menu system, try to SSH to it.
ssh frontrow@appletv.local
The password, conveniently, is “frontrow”. Yay! For our next trick…
Step 2: nitoTV
I made this project much harder on myself that I needed to by trying to enable USB storage right after the patchstick had completed. The 2.2 software is a step removed from earlier 2.x updates, and many of the old hacks no longer work. I’ll spare you the boring details, but the neat thing about nitoTV is that it handles this problem for you.
Download the nitoTV package and copy it to your Apple TV. Once expanded, the nitoTV folder will contain an installer. If your TV is on, you’ll notice the menu turn to an Apple logo. This is normal, and does not indicate a reboot. This just means the menu system is being restarted for the nitoTV package to show up.
Within the nitoTV menus you’ll have a whole host of settings. I won’t go through each one, but for software installation, you’ll want all of the “download” options, most of which require the 10.4.9 combo installer (thankfully, the on-screen instructions tell you where to put this). By the time you’re done, you’ll have USB storage support. Reboot your Apple TV and plug in a USB hard drive.
diskutil list
You should see a /dev/disk1 (or at least a second /dev/disk* option). If you do, hooray! Reward yourself with an ice cold Dr Pepper.
Step 3: Boxee
Note: The atvusb-creator should install this for you. If not…
The original instructions cover this better than I can, so I’ll keep this brief. You’ll want to download the Boxee software and copy it to your Apple TV. From here, the .frappliance should be copied into Finder itself.
sudo mv ~/XBMCLauncher.frappliance /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/
sudo mv ~/BoxeeLauncher.frappliance /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/
And then reboot.
Once you have everything installed and the Apple TV has been given a final reboot, you are ready for action. If you’ve made it this far, I will trust you to figure out how to tweak settings and navigate the new menus.
I take no responsibility for anything bad that might happen to you as a result of following this guide, but if you see any glaring omissions or mistakes, please let me know.