Cashing in on Apple TV customizations
Posted in Apple by Derek at 1:33 am
This post was published 2 years 7 months 12 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.Is that paltry 40GB hardrive in your Apple TV filled to the brim yet? Could you use a little hardrive upgrade love? Check out TechRestore – they’re offering "overnight" service for hardrive upgrades. Understand that your warranty will definitely be null and void but who cares! This thing is so damn simple it should never break!
The base upgrade will set you back $99 with the max upgrade option of 120GB setting you back $99 + $120. Of course, you’ll need to calculate shipping costs into that final price and you end up pushing the checkout cost over the actual price of a second Apple TV.
Personally, I think a the streaming capabilities of the TV work well enough. Regardless, would you upgrade your Apple TV?
Its a 40 GB Hard Drive in the Apple TV
Ok so I don’t have an AppleTV however the upgrade process is much cheaper than that.
taking the instructions from http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2007/03/10045/ and a larger hard drive from http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380%20130971534%201309721216&name=120GB there. It can safely be said that you can clone the hard drive over with carboncopycloner. (get it at: http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html )
At that price, wouldn’t a Mac Mini make more sense? Then you can do whatever you want with it without all this “hacking” nonsense.
Not that I don’t want an Apple TV. I just see the possibility of a software update coming down the line that completely wipes out any customizations or possibly even break systems with unauthorized hard drives. Wouldn’t that suck?
Just get a xbox for 100 bucks and install xmbc. :)
@Killeroid agreed
XMBC is amazing but its not quite interchangeable with the AppleTV. For example, the XBox is big and ugly. It doesn’t allow you to stream photos and videos from your computer wirelessly. Finally, it doesn’t support HD.
The AppleTV does all those things far more easily than even the very lovely and polished XBMC. It is a different product and is silly to claim the two are the same or even interchangeable for the end-user.
it looks like the $99+$120 gets you a 160gb hard drive, and a 120gb is a bracket below that
Does anyone know if you can sync and stream from the same computer/iTunes Library?
In other words lets say I have 80 Gigs of music. Can I go ahead and sync 30 Gigs or so until in fills up the Apple TV’s hard drive and then stream the rest of my collection from the same Computer/iTunes Library? Will all of my collection show up in the Apple TV’s menu system even though it is not all actually synced?
Thanks
Tom
if you don’t want to tear your own appletv apart and mess with the software, this is pretty cool. I think the reason to have the bigger drive in there is that you don’t have to turn on your computer at all – once you download all of your videos, music and photos onto the AppleTV. And remember, photos don’t stream, so you have to have enough room to store all of those on the drive.