News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

March 30, 2007

hardware

Apple TV gains USB accessory and local file playing support

Posted Mar. 30, ’07, 3:07 PM PT by Aaron Freedman
Category | Hardware

Apple TV Hard DriveI must say, I am quite impressed with the Apple TV hacking community. Within only a little more than a week of its release, the Apple TV has been hacked to do everything from function as a SSH server, have an upgraded hard drive, and even boot from an external drive. Well, now two more hacks have come out.

The first hack allows the Apple TV to play video content on its hard drive without having it transcoded or streamed from iTunes. Unfortunately, this hack does require codecs to be installed, from sources such as Perian and A52Codec. Still, this does allow the Apple TV to play “unsupported” video formats, such as .avi files.

The next hack makes use of the Apple TV’s “for service and support only” USB port. According to user “Turbo,” the Apple TV’s USB port can now be used not only for external storage, but also for use with a keyboard and mouse. While his method for enabling this has not yet been posted, a video showing it has.

It’s really quite amazing top see how fast Apple TV hacking development has gone. At this rate, who knows how long it’ll be before someone is able to install the full version of OS X, or even Linux or Windows, on it.


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