JamanTV for Apple TV
A little while back we mentioned the Navizon "virtual GPS" application for the iPhone, which was one of the first commercial third-party applications for the iPhone which depended on the iPhone hacks. Of course, Navizon is now presumably broken along with the rest of the iPhone hacks. It seems that the online international and indie movie rental company Jaman is tempting fate with a forthcoming plugin for the Apple TV that will similarly depend on a hack to be installed. The guys over at Apple TV Hacks got an interesting sneak peak at the JamanTV player. The Jaman system requires the user to install the Jaman software on their computer (which functions something like iTunes), and then install the JamanTV plugin onto the Apple TV via a patchstick (this is a USB flash drive that patches the Apple TV without requiring you to open the box). The JamanTV player then syncs to the Jaman software on the Mac (or PC). So basically you rent the movies from your Mac, then sync them to the Apple TV for viewing.
It will be interesting to see if Apple allows this kind of commercial hacking. Of course, the mothership has seemed much less persnickety about hacking on the Apple TV than they have about the iPhone. So for anyone who's longed to rent movies over the net to watch on their Apple TV, the Jaman service could be of great interest (provided you're not looking for Hollywood blockbuster type movies).
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
David said 6:37PM on 9-28-2007
I am sure Apple won't mind. After all Apple TV is just a "hobby" and its not like Apple are best of friends with their TV partners at the moment.
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Aron Trimble said 7:18PM on 9-28-2007
So, did Patchstick get to a working state? I always wanted an AppleTV but I didn't want to open the case to mod it...
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Doug said 8:38PM on 9-28-2007
The Apple TV I have is about the most worthless piece of crap I have every bought. The lack of content is kiling this product. Apple needs to get it in gear with this thing or get out. If Apple TV is a "hobby" they should have mentioned that before I dropped $300 for the thing. I think I would feel better about the product if I could do direct download, but the download to itunes and then sync with the Apple TV is sluggish and seems like such an unnecessary step for a device that has mac os x under the hood and wifi.
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Thomas said 1:58AM on 9-29-2007
The AppleTV is easier to hack, as one can just plug out the harddisk after an update and mount it on any mac to check what has been added/changed. If that was possible with the iPhone's flash chips, I guess a hack would be found lots faster.
@2: Patchstick works flawless. I patched my appleTV 10 minutes after I bought it and have been enjoying a nice movie collection on my external HD ever since. The 40 Gb internal just wasn't enough to hold my DVD rips.
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autoy said 3:26AM on 9-29-2007
A lot of people are missing out on this little thing. You can hack it in 10 minutes with patchstick including Perian, then you can sync any DivX or Xvid content using iTunes and a little danmn useful droplet called AppleTV fooler that actually "fools" the apple TV to accept any movie Perian can play. Then you can hack it even further with all sorts of plugins, rss readers, etc. Worth every penny IMHO. Ok, maybe the price is a bit steep for a 40 GB drive but I heard they are halving the price on our Apple reseller because there is no movies in iTunes here where I live.
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MattM said 11:36AM on 9-29-2007
Well, in that case, can someone get Slingplayer to work on Apple TV?
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Drupa said 9:07PM on 9-29-2007
Wow, Apple is still selling the AppleTV? What do folks use it for? Can you still buy TVs that display the ATVs low resolution picture natively? What a shame this thing was released already obsolete. If it could output at a meager 1080i, I would have been interested. Also, what happened to the content? Will this be another Newton - an idea before its time? I suspect ATV will disappear and someone else will do the job right in a year or two.
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Jin Kam said 4:30PM on 10-04-2007
It is great to see somebody endorsing Apple TV hacking. Apple TV, once hacked, is a wonderful device.
By the way, the movies available on Jaman are considered better-than-DVD quality. Most of them have higher resolution than movies available on iTunes.
For true HD content, I usually frequent the HD podcast list at http://hd.appletvsource.com .
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