For the moment (and it’s probably only a moment), two white LEDs illuminate the fronts of two Apple TVs. One poor unit has been hacked so much that it takes several tries, several blesses and several plugging-and-unplugging sessions to get it to start. I think I’ve messed up its recovery partition beyond repair. (This is the one that got attached at one point to the G4.) For the record, I ended up having to bless both the CoreServices folder *and* the boot.efi file inside it. The command was: bless --folder=/Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/CoreServices --file=/Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi --setBoot
The other unit is newly factory restored (the first won’t factory restore at all any more–it just reboots into the blinking question mark if you try) with spanking fresh hacks, ATVFiles, Perian, and Joost. It’s working great and sits (albeit with its innards still exposed to daylight) in its proud place on a ceramic trivet next to my TV. The other one gives it dirty looks through my office wall and sulks in look-what-you-did-to-me-and-now-I’ll-only-boot-up-if-I-feel-like-it demeanor.
But they live. And for now, that’s going to be enough. I’ve got to head off to CompUSA to swap out a Seagate 120 drive that’s been making horrible clicking noises. It never ends.
Anyone have any requests for AppleTV ports? Any software you’d like to see on it? Ideas for custom plug-ins?
I'm really enjoying your coverage of this topic, thanks.
I primarily use the Apple TV to watch podcasts.
I wish I could:
- make playlists... from feeds and/or episodes
- sort feeds by last updated, last watched(?)..
- sort episodes.. same criteria..
- see them in a grid view (great for reference stuff)
- do other cool stuff that i can't think of right now
rss syndicated content is the future!
Can you get it to stream and control a Slingbox? Could this be added to the front row interface as an option? Or how about something to allow the box to cycle through a number of Widgets as "screen savers" so the TV could be used to display weather and my daily schedule when not it use.
Unfortunately, I don't own a slingbox so that's going to be a non-starter for now.
As for podcasts and playlists, I'm pretty sure you can do all that on the iTunes side by using Applescripting. Then if you stream your iTunes library, you've got everything up to date.
Unfortunately, I don't think that grid view is going to happen because of the Apple Remote limits.
I don't think you can push playlists of podcasts to the apple tv... I'd love to know how..