The Apple TV hacks are coming fast and furious as recorded on both the Something Awful thread we already told you about, and at the Apple TV Hacks blog. Over at Something Awful, user macado shows the Apple TV successfully decoding a 720p XviD clip using the open source VLC player (though only for 6 minutes). Other users have demonstrated Firefox and iTunes running on an Apple TV as well. Meanwhile at Apple TV Hacks, there are already tutorials up on getting SSH and AFP access and even setting up Remote Desktop (VNC) and Apache.
In short, the Apple TV has been busted wide open and is well on its way to being hacked into a general purpose (if rather underpowered) mini Mac mini (Mac nano, perhaps?), running OS X 10.4.7 as you can see above. For those of you with a hankering to break your warranties, it looks like the Apple TV is eminently hackable and has a lot of potential.
[Via Apple TV Hacks]
Update: the 6 minute thing has to do with the fact that the Apple TV automatically resets after 6 minutes (see the comments below).
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
3-26-2007 @ 10:32AM
Thomas said...
The reason it only shows for about 6 minutes is discussed earlier in the SA-forum: if the frontrow app is not running, the AppleTV resets itself after about 5-6 minutes.
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3-26-2007 @ 10:35AM
yoday3di said...
The problem is the following. You can in fact run any application (e.g. vlc) once ssh is enabled. The problem is that ATV will reboot within 5-6 minutes if the ATV frontend is not running. The name of the game at the moment is to deactivate a piece of software called "watchdog" which is responsible for this. Thus: hacked yes but not quite there ...
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3-26-2007 @ 11:29AM
John Laur said...
The "Only 6 Minutes" problem isn't really that mysterious if you bother to read a little bit.
The AppleTV has a watchdog that reboots the unit every 5-6 minutes if the standard interface isn't running. Presumably (if it's anything like a normal watchdog) you could work around it by either finding the timer device and writing updates to pick up where the 'normal' software leaves off or you could prevent it from starting the timer in the first place.
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3-26-2007 @ 12:01PM
Evan said...
Click the play trailer button to view the Apple TV in action:
http://www.hungryflix.com/view_media_movie.php?mid=479
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3-26-2007 @ 12:13PM
mungler said...
If someone can set it up to double as an 802.11n router, i'd buy one in a jiffy. :)
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3-26-2007 @ 12:41PM
olly said...
When someone makes it easy to gain acess to the core OS and run EyeTV's software on this I will buy it for my dad. He's wanted me to build him a windows media center PC for years but ive held off. I cant see why the processor would limit the performance because my iBook runs EyeTV flawless ly and it only has the 1.07GHz G4.
PS. Can somebody please rip the Disk image and put a torrent out there. I want to try and hack it to run on my brothers Intel Mac Mini.Reply
3-26-2007 @ 1:18PM
Michael Rose said...
Olly -- please, PLEASE do not solicit Mac OS piracy on the TUAW comments.
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3-26-2007 @ 1:38PM
mrhumpy said...
The watchdog has now been disabled
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3-26-2007 @ 1:43PM
Ben Stafford said...
So how long before we have a $300 Full Fledged Mac on our hands? Still no VGA/DVI port but a component to vga adapter will work. Yeah under powered but not for me!!!
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3-26-2007 @ 1:44PM
Mat Lu said...
@10: HDMI is essentially DVI audio, so it's easy to get HDMI to DVI adapters.
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3-26-2007 @ 1:53PM
mrhumpy said...
Quartz Extreme and Quartz 2D Extreme ave been enabled
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3-26-2007 @ 2:18PM
grayskyz said...
olly, you know better than that dude.
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3-26-2007 @ 2:33PM
Paul said...
Ben, I don't think this will make a very good Mac, with only 256MB RAM and very few I/Os (outside of the AV I/Os). However, the media center modding is looking really good on this box.
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3-26-2007 @ 2:36PM
nownot said...
just stating a fact here. xbmc has been able to do this for years, all this stuff is nothing new. by the time you purchase apple tv, bigger hd, hack, have to update etc..... you could of bought a regular xbox and modded it for fraction of the price and less time. im just saying all this is nothing new
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3-26-2007 @ 2:41PM
Nick said...
nownot: Except linked only to Windows.
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3-26-2007 @ 2:46PM
Mat Lu said...
@14: the other issue is the size and slickness of the Apple TV. I had an original Xbox (and I have a 360 now) and if nothing else the fan noise sucks. Further, I don't think the XBMC is capable of smoothly rendering 720p content.
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3-26-2007 @ 2:52PM
Chris said...
Linux is now running but without a gui
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3-26-2007 @ 5:35PM
Olly said...
Sorry fellas. I just wanted to give something back to the community.
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3-26-2007 @ 5:56PM
Chris said...
Its all going on at www.awkwardtv.org (Mainly in the IRC chan - see site)
USB booting seems to be working - soon there will be no need to open the case
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3-26-2007 @ 8:30PM
Leonard Nimrod said...
@ Chris,
How can achieve USB booting without first removing the HDD to enable the port?
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