7 Comments

Apple TV hacked to support XVID

March 23, 2007 by in Apple with 7 Comments

Apprehensive to purchase an Apple TV due to the fact that well… its stripped / watered down nature? Rest assured that others share the same mentality. Fortunately, a few good hackers have spent some time figuring out how to make the Apple TV usable for video hungry users with XVID encoded libraries.

1. Open it up (4 screws on the bottom, small Torx bit)
2. Put the 2.5″ drive into a USB enclosure or whatever you want
3. Mount the HFS filesystem
4. Install Perian in /Library/Quicktime (as you normally would)
5. Install Dropbear (or enable SSH if you know how… we gave up and used Dropbear)
6. Add a startup script to disable the firewall or open up the ports you need for SSH
7. Put the drive back in and boot it, ssh login as frontrow, password frontrow (or add an ssh key for yourself)
8. Use a reference movie (use QT Pro to save a reference movie) to bootstrap your xvid file

The full instructions can be found on here [via]. So who’s going to try?


  • http://www.chasegale.com Chase

    Spend all that money on a device that can’t do what it should unless you void it’s warranty and perform home surgery?

    Nah, not for me.

  • http://is.derekpunsalan.com Derek

    Chase, agreed. I’m going to hold off until someone creates a software fix that will allow for additional functionality. Even more likely than picking up an Apple TV is going with a competing product.

  • websnap

    Chase, what do you mean “can’t do what it should “? Xvid was an unsupported file format, and they never claimed it could. I don’t know of any widely used “legal” download services that used the format, so why should Apple support it? It’s not like Quick time support it out of the box. I’m quite sure it’s strategic as to not appear to support piracy, thus pissing off studios and alienating content providers. My biggest grip about this product (and really, now that I know it CAN work on SD TVs with component, my only grip) is the Hard drive situation. It’s too small, not only for my current combination of vids and music, but for anyone’s expanding library. Will 40 gigs be enough for the common user 3 years down the road? But even that’s not a big deal if only it was easily replaced or upgraded. But it’s not and that’s a problem. I’d rather see a hack to utilize the USB port for an external drive than Xvid support.

  • drwho

    and?????????????????
    apple tv still sucks
    digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!! digg suxx!!

  • http://www.switchingtomac.com/wp/category/mac-vs-pc/ Mac vs PC

    Was hoping someone would be able to make a hack for DivX on the APple TV! Makes the Apple TV actually quit useful now! How smooth are HQ DivX files?

    http://www.switchingtomac.com/

  • Olivier

    Some of you keep claiming that XViD is for illegal downlaods but I would disagree.
    I have loads of DVDs converted to XViD for it to be more convenient for me to take on my laptop while travelling. It is also much more convenient to have everything on the HD, so I don’t need to go digging for the DVD.

    If Apple allowed to Stream DVDs from my computer to the Apple TV, this wouldn’t be so necessary.

  • emory

    interesting, I’m still not gunna get it though… I’m planning on building my own dvr.
    In other news, it’s posts like those of DRWHO that make me wish there was some form of sign up required to comment >.

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