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Apple TV Already Being Hacked
TunesBoy writes "Only a couple of days after being shipped, the Apple TV is already being modified in a variety of ways. A thread at Something Awful discusses installing VLC, and a dedicated site, AppleTVHacks.net, has appeared and is cataloging hacks including a hard-drive upgrade tutorial. Did Apple intend for the Apple TV to be so easy to upgrade and hack?"
Linux wasn't hacked onto the PS3, Sony got it there.
And as for the PS3 being "popular"...
Here, Apple is only supporting formats THEY own, so they can spend the money on the hardware. Hacking it only drives up their market share, and to the complaint that people are watching all these unlicensed formats on it Apple can say "Hey, we didn't do it." But you still bought a box from them.
According to the specs, the Apple TV supports AAC, MP3, AIFF, Apple Lossless, WAV, MPEG-4, H.264, JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG.
The only format Apple owns is Apple Lossless audio. The others are industry standards. AAC, Advanced Audio Coding, is part of the MPEG-4 specfication although I belive it doesn't need to be licensed (unlike MP3 which requires a per-machine license). MPEG-4 (aka MPEG-4 part 2) and H.264 (aka AVC: Advanced Video Coding aka MPEG-4 part 10) also require licenses.
I'm not sure if JPEG requires a license, probably depends on the lawsuit of the day.
It makes perfect sense. I have one of these DVD recorders, and I use it to do essentially the same thing. One DVD-RAM holds up to 8 hours of TV, so it works great for catching up on TV that runs late at night or when I'm too busy to watch it. Of course, I'd prefer a MythTV box with a nice big RAID array, but this was a lot cheaper. (It even came with a DVD-RAM disc!) It basically works like a "poor man's TiVo" when you use a DVD-RAM disc--you can watch a show off the disc while recording another (although seeking doesn't work as smoothly when it's doing two things at once), and you can start recording at any time and just press "Play" to jump back to where you started recording. (You can also tune the TV to another channel, like you can with a VCR.) It can schedule recordings, and is very diligent about cueing up the recording one minute before it starts, to make sure it's ready to record. The UI can be a bit sluggish, and it crashes extremely occasionally (about once a month, if even -- usually when it's juggling seven tasks at once), but it's a great deal, and much cheaper than a TiVo.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
This "install VLC" article discusses the installation of an SSH server and Perian, NOTHING about VLC.
Indeed, I started following the SA thread yesterday, and there was nothing about installing VLC on the device there.
The people behind the SA thread have started a Wiki, which also deserves to be in the summary.
I'll be following this closely - I was thinking of picking up a Mini (if they ever slap a Core 2 Duo in the fucking thing), but the Apple TV would be sufficient if it'll play DivX/XviD.