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Welcome to the AwkwardTV Wiki

As you probably know, Apple TV is a set-top box manufactured by Apple. Out of the box, it is enabled to stream digital content from any computer running iTunes. As there is little information provided about what is going on "under the hood" of the Apple TV, this is a place to collect and share information.

This website is dedicated to finding additional uses for the Apple TV by (legitimately) enabling its Potential Capabilities, and is a place for the community to share ideas, discoveries and solutions. It is for informational purposes only. AwkwardTV is not responsible if you void your warranty or damage your device.

Latest News

• The AwkwardTV project launches its forums!
• Emulation Nintendo Emulator running on atv
• $1000 Bounty offered for external USB drive hack.
• Plug-in directory
• Linux on Apple TV-- Linux kernel loader from gimli; we have full hardware support (accelerated video, wireless, USB).
• "Mac nano": Mac OS X can run on Apple TV, Google video.

Note: Some features may be non-operational with semthex's legal kernel recompile.

• ATVFiles released. Plugin for Apple TV that plays video files without transcoding and syncing/streaming them.
• USB port works. Keyboard, mouse working. Youtube video.
• Asterisk running on an Apple TV (Digg): Instructions from l0rdr0ck
• AppleTV plugin that plays movies (duggmirror): Discuss on the Plugins wiki page
• awkwardTV in the news on germanys biggest newssite spiegel.de
• awkwardTV gets press in Austria
• "DVD" Jon Lech Johansen gives us a mention. Hi Jon, keep up the good work!
• Leo Laporte and Merlin Mann mentioned hacking the AppleTV (but not AwkwardTV) in a recent episode of MacBreak.

Plug-ins

Plug-ins directory and instructions

FRAppliance_101 - Tutorial for creating new PlugIns

FRScreenSaver_101 - Tutorial for creating screen savers. Please read FRAppliance_101 first.

Advanced BackRow Coding - An Ongoing Series

1. Introduction To Custom Controls
2. A Custom Layer Controller
   • Extra Credit 1: Animations
3. A Downloader Controller

IRC

You can find us on IRC: #awkwardtv on irc.moofspeak.net. Register your Nick

Please feel free to contribute! We are all learners at this stage ;-)

Pre-Requisites

• Pre-Requisites

Projects

(Please put your projects here-- in categories)

OS Related

• Booting from a USB Thumbdrive Pre-made 256MB image for testing; small download
• Boot.efi Information An effort to understand the boot.efi file format
• Linux on Apple TV Our AppleTV-Linux Resource Guide (work in progress)
• Patchstick A project to build a Darwin kernel plus tools to have a 100% legitimate way of enabling hacks on the ATV (without opening case) (work in progress)

Awkward Project Wikis

• ATVFiles Plugin to play back video files that are not in the Apple TV library.
• Emulation Efforts to test and tweak compatibility regarding Game Emulation. (work in progress)
• Install Developer Tools (work in progress)
• Patch Over Network - Patching AppleTV over the network (without opening case) (work in progress)
• Enable Internet Sharing (work in progress)
• Volume control Control the volume (analogue) with the remote control + and - (during playback) (work in progress)
• HD DVD Playback Enable USB-based XBOX HD-DVD Player to allow regular or HighDefinition DVDs with DVD Player.app

Outside Awkward

• QE/CI/Rotation on AppleTV OSXNano Install! =Testers/Help Needed=
• Dual Boot ATVOS/OSXNano from internal ATV drive
• How to upgrade hard drive with GUI tools ($100) or CLI
• How to upgrade hard drive using command line. (more pictures)
• Macworld's in-depth (mostly CLI) hard drive upgrade tutorial with pics.
• InsanelyMac Apple TV resource compilation
• Apache on Apple TV
• Turbo's AppleTV hacks @ 0xfeedbeef. A wealth of information, especially USB related.
• How to set up the Apple TV skin for XBMC
• Running mt-daapd/Firefly (iTunes server) on ATV

How To

Hard Drive Preparation

• Backup your original Hard Drive Methods of imaging your drive; a key safety measure.
• Prepare a Hard Drive for use in the AppleTV

Alternate Bootstrap

• Boot OS X from an External USB drive without voiding your warranty! (hackint0sh)
• Enabling USB and boot from USB External Hard Drive

General Software Modifications

Services

• Enable SSH Without Opening the Apple TV
  • Install SSH
  • Install SSH without an Intel Mac
• Install SU and VI

• Mount ReadWrite
• Mount a Remote Drive via AFP
• Mount a Remote Drive via NFS

• Enable Remote Desktop (VNC)
• Enable Quartz Extreme and Quartz 2D Extreme (To Speed Up Certain Applications)
• Enable AFP Server (Personal File Sharing)
• Enable WebDAV (Personal File Sharing - requires apache)
• Enable FTP Server
• Working with ASL (Syslog)
• Correct Time Zone

• XAMMP - Apache/MySQL/PHP5/Perl Howto install XAMMP on the Apple TV

Settings

• Install System Preferences
• Configure Firewall
• Enable Verbose Boot

OS Mods

• Replace Finder
• AppleTV FrontRow on Intel Mac Installing ATV's FrontRow 2.0 UI on a Mac
• How To 'Enable' Mouse Cursor/Pointer on the AppleTV

Misc

• Uncompress LZSS compressed files like mach_kernel.prelink
• Connect the Apple TV to a TV with Composite (Monochromatic Picture)
• Connect the 2.5" IDE drive to a USB/FW bridge without having to remove it, use a M/M 2.5" ide adapter from here
• Here are some NTSC color bars to use when calibrating your TV.
• Some of the additional Apple Remote key combinations for the Apple TV

Hardware

• Parts
• Hardware Profile
• Sysctl output
• Various diskutil command results
• Power Usage
• Airport Card in MacBook Pro or intel MacMini

Does anybody fancy upgrading their RAM using a SMD removal kit? http://www.rsrelectronics.com/sdr_smd1.htm

Software

• Apple TV OS 10.4.7
  • file list of a virgin Apple TV
  • List of new files compared to stock Mac OS
  • List of files in mach_kernel.prelink (by n8man)
• Boot Process
• Watchdog
• osputil command-line program to control the LED
• screencapture
• dmesg output
• Ps output
• glQuery output
• kextstat output
• kernel_settings.xml (by n8man)
• Media Library
• Open Source 10.4.8 Components you can install on Apple TV
• XML Downloaded By ATV

Third party software

• Codec Sources
• Remote Buddy
• MediaCentral
• nano Excellent, lightweight text editor for scripts and such.
• vim Another classic text editor.
• MacPorts suggestions to bootstrap the MacPorts infrastructure natively
• Xbench 1.3 Benchmark

Potential Capabilities

• Potential Capabilities

Known Issues

• Connecting drive to PowerPC Mac makes drive unbootable (successes reported inside as well)
• Apple TV HDMI "Green Screen" bug

Tried & Working Video

• 720p Xvid
• 720p Divx (Perian)
• MKV with VLC (Coming in perian 1.0 for Quicktime)
• .vob(DVDrip) with VLC (Menu, subtitles, 5.1 surround working). No skip on network play (802.11g) if you setup a buffer in vlc options.
• MPEG2 using QT MPEG-2 Component. 720p and 1080i playback was very choppy.
• WMV using Flip4Mac WMV Import component.
• .vob on a DVD pl
• List of file formats working on Apple TV

Wiki documentation

• Consult the User's Guide for information on using the wiki software.
• Configuration settings list
• MediaWiki FAQ
• MediaWiki release mailing list