“remote” lets you control your iTunes or ATV remotely, very cool. While I haven’t yet upgraded my ATV to 2.1, I’m looking forward to it! Makes you wonder what other cool tricks are planned for ATV and iPhone/iPod Touch!

1.1.0 - 2Z694-5248-45.dmg
2.0.0 - 2Z694-5274-109.dmg
2.0.1 - 2Z694-5387-25.dmg
2.0.2 - 2Z694-5428-3.dmg

The combo updated which contains files that assist with Apple TV hacking. Note: I believe Apple have removed some files from this update that makes hacking the Apple TV a little harder, to be confirmed.
MacOS X 10.4.9 Combo Updater

One has to question the legality of this? I mean, in order to hack your Apple TV, certain OS X system files are required to “enable” the device. I’m talking, files that are available from the Tiger operating system. I’m talking property of Apple Inc.

Now I COULD be wrong here. I mean, most of these files are easily downloadable from Apple’s own servers, by anyone from the public. The downloads are OS X and Apple TV updates which contain files that help hack an Apple TV. So is selling this software illegal? You be the judge.

So I spent half of Saturday hacking their v2.02 unit. it’s getting a little more complex as Apple works to prevent people from hacking them. I applied much the same technique as I did for my v2 ATV however a little more tweaking was required to get USB working correctly. (Mainly getting the right kernel and patching it with the right patches)

In the end after applying my own knowledge to the hack. I ended up using a neat little util that someone has put together to make it just really easy to enable USB.. check it out here

In my opinion, enabling the USB is the most important part of the hack. It means you can hook up a hell of a lot of hard disk to the Apple TV and not even worry about the internal drive. I like it! I have 1 Terabyte hooked up to my Apple TV, it’s just great.

I hope to have more information on this soon..

Brandon Holland has just released Couch Surfer 0.3.

Here are some new features:

• accelerated scrolling holds up and down
• improved Bookmark support, now with support for adding current page
• history support
• back menu
• USB keyboard support for text entry dialogs.

The best part is that once Couch Surfer 0.3 is installed, USB keyboard feature is available to all other plug-in’s.

You can get the new software update from Brian’s software page here.

The site extrapolates that the total revenue from these sales is just under $123 million USD. Disney recently announced a $1 billion digital sales goal for 2008, which includes revenue from advertising online (i.e. ad revenue from online video viewing or from any of its sites), subscriptions to online games, downloads of movies and music, and e-commerce that is not related to its theme parks.

For perspective, Disney had sold 1.3 million movies by February 2007 after 3 months of the iTunes movie store being in operation.

Article Link

Adobe launched the Adobe Media Player 1.0 today. Adobe’s Media Player is a standalone Video Jukebox application that runs under their AIR platform. The Media Player is compatible with both PCs and Macs.

In many ways, the Adobe Media Player mimics iTunes Video and Podcast functionality by providing users with an all-enclosed application that provides access to network shows and podcasts. Content is sparse at the moment, but Adobe has partnered with a number of content providers such as CBS, PBS, MTV and more. Unlike iTunes, however, Adobe’s Media Player is not presently a “store” and offers free and ad-supported content. Adobe, however, has said that it plans on adding payment systems later to offer purchase and rental options.

The player supports playback for FLV and h.264 encoded content at up to HD quality (1080p, 720p). Content may be available for streaming or download with and without DRM depending on the rights granted by the content providers.

Predictably, there will be many iTunes users who don’t see the point of transitioning to a different player, but what this represents more than just another media player is the first effective cross-platform Digital Rights Management (DRM) video platform alternative. As much as end users dislike DRM, the lack of an additional cross-platform video DRM has hindered some features on Mac. Notably, Netflix stated that the lack of a publicly-available Mac DRM solution was what prevented them from offering their streaming service to the Mac. It’s not clear if Netflix will necessarily adopt Adobe’s DRM, but this may open up additional alternatives to Apple’s iTunes for content delivery on the Mac.

Article Link

People are suggesting it will be half the size of the current Mac Mini size, possibly have a tv tuner, and be more targeted toward the home-cinema crowd.

Some rumor links:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=449667
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=458202
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=461278

The biggest issue at the moment is sometimes when using ATVfiles to navigate and play my movies, I loose the sound. A reboot of the ATV is required to get the sound working again. Strange!

If anyone has experienced something like this, let me know. In the meantime I guess I’ll go check the wiki over at http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/

Tags: appletv2.0, atvfiles