$1000 bounty still unclaimed; future bounty suggestions?

I would like to see a direct tv box or cable box connected to the apple tv so the iphone could control both

Hey Folks,

I've got the USB drive mounted and see it within my ATV mounted volumes list - however it's not selected as the media location.

What file(s) should I edit to select this?

thanks

den

The old WebTV boxes used an infrared keyboard that was passable (wouldn't want to type a novel on it, but fine for search fields, URLs, etc.). These now litter yard sales and thrift stores, costing just a few bucks. Wondering if it would be possible for a hacked IR device driver to interpret such keyboard input.

I would be happy to pay someone for adding tv-tuner (DTT) and DVR functionality to the Apple Tv. Could be to get Eye TV and a DTT tunerr stick lige Miglia to integrate with the Apple TV?

I dont understand why Apple didnt add this by them self - except I guess its because they wnat people to by TV throug Itunes store instead of recording it. Personally I think this two things could easyli co-exist.

A non-Mac OS Linux install working fully would be the next best future bounty.
Like getting Ubuntu working 100% - sound, video, wifi/wired networking etc
Would open the door correctly to having XBMC working on the AppleTV

Hey nitoTV is the best, only thing that plays Vid's without shrinking them thanks. Any plans to have a Image on the left hand side?

I agree STRONGLY with #57. If Apple TV could play ripped DVD's from .VOB files, with full menu support, it would truly become the perfect balance. I would give up Tivo and forego eyetv/elgato if I had access to my existing library of DVD's with full menus. Then I could watch all that I currently own, and just buy TV shows I like from iTunes. THat's where it's going, people. I'd pay $100 into a fund for .VOB with menu support.

you can play video playlists in nitoTV, its been in since the first version was released.

I know that someone has been trying to collect on this bounty. Why hasn't there been any word on the results? I know a lot of people are waiting.

1) Video playlists - it's criminal that I can't create a playlist with a mix of music and music videos like we can on ipods.

2) Visualizer - okay, maybe it doesn't have the processing power for a 30 fps Visualizer, but a Visualizer Lite AT LEAST. For parties, you could crank up a killer playlist and start the visualizer on your 62 inch HDTV.

I'd like to see a hack that allows it to draw info from my TiVo account and be able to use the Apple TV as both a TiVo and Movie Viewer. I'm surprised Apple didn't do this one themselves since it seems overly obvious.

Apparently someone has submitted source for the USB HDD bounty. What is the status with that, I am very anxiously awaiting that task to be completed.

DVR (through EyeTV or otherwise) - put me down for $50

I know I'm in the minority, but I woud love to see a Wiimote hack with teh scrrensaver API. Surfing through pictures or coverart would be awesome.

I would also like to see a DVR/USB tuner hack, the XBOX360 HDDVD drive hack.

Someone has claimed that they have completed this external harddrive hack on Hackint0sh. Read the post here:

http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?...

So - what is the status folks?

The ability to stream non-itunes-formats from my PC (or MAC) (I'm talking .avi etc). There is a hack out there to play videos with mplayer on the appleTV, but it is not yet possible to stream the mplayer files from my computer.

I wonder, could we set up a PayPal account where people can donate money to a 'reward' fund; I know I would be willing to add more money to the genius who successfully attaches a USB storage device to an AppleTV-- with instructions allowing any layman to reproduce.

Oh - just one other thing! ;o)

I'd love something like AWAKEN on my AppleTV - a little app, that will wake up the device and start a special Playlist on the time I programmed.

:o)

I Would really LOVE to get 2 things:

1. EyeTV Streaming!!!!!!

I have tons of EyeTV-Recordings on my MacMini, which I use as a MediaHub. But exporting to H.264 or at least MP4 ... oooohhh, I don't have so much time!!!

So, as EyeTV Recordings are MPEG-2-Streams in an Special "Container", it should not be so difficult to get AppleTV into streamig the films directly.

1. Adding a ZOOM function

Lots of my films are in 4:3. Normally, my TV is able to zoom this to 14:9 or 16:9, cutting the upper an lower "stripes" of the picture. EyeTV can do this as well.

But when using AppleTV ... no possibility! I have black stripes on the right and on the left. :o(

How about ability to act as a wireless base station?

Hi !
I'd like really much that Apple TV could display webpages with a modified version of Safari for instance. And in complement, a gaim client using growl and maybe adapted to a media player (i.e. display chat as a kind of subtitle), for the last with the use of a keyboard.

My #1 request is server-side: The ability to get a 3rd party DAAP server (like Firefly Media server) to stream, or even better, stream + synch, to the AppleTV. This would let me store all my media on my main linux server with oodles of space, and leave my desktops for, well, desktop stuff.

A close second is the ability to have a video playlist. I'd like to be able to rip lots of short video snippets (sketches from the Muppet Show, individual Animaniacs or classic Looney Toons shorts, Schoolhouse Rock videos, etc.) to put into a series of playlists for better Saturday Morning TV viewing for the kids.

DVD ISO OR VIDEO_TS PLAYBACK

How about getting support for Elgato H.264 USB support for the ATV?

[image]http://iphone-scene.com/system/files/u1/turbo264_hardware.jpg[/image]

How about getting support for Elgato H.264 USB support for the ATV?

[image]http://iphone-scene.com/system/files/u1/turbo264_hardware.jpg{/image]

I for one would just like the ability to view the content from all of my streaming sources at once without first having to select the source I want to view.

Visually I want the appletv to appear to be one library combined from all attached libraries and select the streaming source when I select the video to view.

I have several itunes machines connected, one which downloads podcasts daily, two I use for tv and movies and one I use primarily for music and photos.

Moving between the different content is very cumbersome as is.

Why not lower the bounty and reduce the number of hoops the hackers have to jump through?

If someone could get USB external storage recognized and running at all I, for one, would be a very happy camper.

After they get USB storage working in the first place, then there could be another bounty for doing it without opening the box

John,

Yes - I've given a lot of thought to starting a public fund for a hack, and I've also been tinkering with a 'Poll' add on for the site.

I was holding off to see if the $1000 bounty got claimed, but I guess we could have multiple bounties at once. :)

I'll try to organise something for this weekend.

Just came back to check in. Tom, thanks for updating the front page. I suppose the frenzy of activity at the beginning made me feel that huge things were going to happen. I've put off buying a Mac Mini to use as a media center in the hope that EyeTV will end up running on the AppleTV. If the AppleTV is running OS X I would have thought that someone might have tried the EyeTV solution.

I'm wondering.....

Could we put a list together of top requests and people could donate to create a fund? I personally would put $50 in for EyeTV - hardware and software.

Any thoughts?

John & Richard,

Sorry you feel that way - we are trying to resist posting 'filler' content and at the moment no big breakthroughs are being achieved.

How about a way to make two Apple TV's work in conjunction such that actions taken on one are mirrored on the other. With this capability, you could get the same content playing on both Apple TV's sumultaneously in different parts of your house. Right now, the only way to do this is via i-Tunes and Airtunes but that involves streaming.

... a streaming-connection to an airport express with airtunes. Not for video-audio - just for audio playback ....

Yeah, unfortunately nothing happened here for about a week. But you can say the same thing about awkwardtv.org

Your site seems to have completely lost any momentum that it had. Oh well, off to find another site

Plugin manager/downloader/installer.

Point to a website (such as the plugin section of appletvhacks.net) and select from all available downloads. Install or uninstall.

I could use a mod to use the apple tv as a video kiosk, or at the very least be able to use the apple tv like an ipod creating playlists.

I really want to see 4:3 support for playing movies. Until I get cash for a HDTV, I want to be able to use the thing in 4:3 mode for movies, tv shows, etc with getting double bar'd. Right now I can sqeeze my TV into widescreen mode, but playing 4:3 content gets the vertical bars going, and its like watching a mini TV inside my 27" tv.

I still don't get why apple didn't include ssh from the get go. I mean it seems pretty obvious that lots of people would like it if it came with ssh. It would have cost them zero dollars to include it.

Playback of full HD would be great. We have a lot of home vids from our HD camcorder and would be nice to stream them to the TV. It would also be good for all of our recorded HD shows too...

How about 4:3 TV support? Anyone know where we could edit the resolution? Or force letterboxing for widescreen content and disable pillarboxing for 4:3 content?

I can understand not supporting composite and S-Video, but not all TVs with component inputs have a 16:9/widescreen mode.

as others have said, mythtv, or an os x mythfrontend as a plugin. hardware accelerated or not, if it could do hd playback over the network, that would be awesome.

I'd rather see NFS before SMB. Samba is a reverse engineered hack (and a very good one at that) to work with Windows. My NAS is Debian. My laptop is MacOS X. There's no reason to make them speak a closed language to share files.

The next bounty should be playing ripped DVD's (VOBs) over a network from a NAS. A second choice would be mounting an ISO to play it. This would enable the AppleTV to be a front end for a home media server.

The holy grail is ssh without opening the box. Everything else is gravy. Things that I think would be nice:
1) Internet Radio. ITunes can do it, why can't AppleTV?
2) I like the RSS reader. Haven't tried it, but I think that was huge.
3) Some kind of automated system to have "non-supported" formats (XVID, etc) appear in the appropriate (not an extra) menu. Frankly, my wife won't understand why she has to look in more than one place for a TV show. The easiest way would be to hack iTunes into accepting these formats (easiest? Ok, maybe "the cleanest.")
4) People want a mythtv frontend. Maybe this solves some of the problem. I dunno. I never got my myth system up and running. But, I think for people using mythtv, connectivity would be nice.
5) However, for people like me that don't use myth, there are some neat tricks that would be nice: weather, webmail are my top picks.

Yep, then in the morning I can wake up, start the coffee, read my mail, and check the weather and news

I don't really see the need for PVR functions. I suppose it would cut down on the equipment (change a big ugly box for a small one), but I'm not sure that's really possible. I think without a fan and with limited RAM and processing power, you'd burn the thing up.

It would be great to use the appletv as an access point.
It would be possible considering how simple is to share a connection creating a wireless network on OSX

Support for the raw mpeg2 video produced by the variety of HDTV tuners out there. I just ditched my cable companies HD-DVR in exchange for the Apple TV. I'm picking up a few dozen digital channels and if I could record these and play the raw recordings without having to re-encode, that would be awesome!

Of course, being able to use the included USB port combined with the EyeTV software which could be executed in full screen mode from the Apple TV Menu would be fantastic.

Keep up the great work!

I would like to see mythfrontend running as either an optional plugin or a complete replacement. I think it would be a perfect frontend if it can handle HD content playback.

If someone wants to put up an AppleTV for me to work on, I would write the darn MythTV plug-in. I'd be doing so already if I had the $300 to burn.

It'll be cool if we can plug a USB TV Tuner on the Apple TV and if we can record movies on the Hard Drive, and very cool if we have a timeshifting option too !!! ;o)

So 2 things to do:
1- plug an external USB TV Tuner
2- add recording and timeshifting

Bounty !!! ;oP

the hack i'd pay money for is the one that makes hack not required.

Hack the AppleTV link in iTunes software.
so that plug-ins could be installed by dropping them in a folder on the linked machine and restore software would move it to the AppleTV.

No need to open the box, on need to own any of the additional hardware needed

With laptops as the top selling macs - the apple tv needs to perform more like a home base for households. The mac mini solution to diversified needs would be just another computer to administrate - don't have time for that. Just for the record I am a believer in apple tv. I would love to eliminate cable from my life. On demand content is the future.

the thumbdrive hack is of the utmost importance to avoid warranty issues - but is there not a potential wireless solution?

to make the apple tv more of a home base there needs to be:
- wireless backups of laptops to NAS or something
- its own connection to browse and buy from itunes store and distribution to household laptops
- ability to download its own podcasts and content for display and distribution.
- family message board (possibly integrated in screensaver)
- passively viewable widgets / screensaver (I would love to have a couple of pages of displayable info, weather, stocks, calendar events, email preview, RSS etc)
- some home and appliance networking options (how about a pop up that tells me my dryer is done? - Turn on the Roomba!)
- if I would be so lucky to have a few widescreens and apple tvs around the house, how about some apps that would be tailored to the kind of room - my cooking app in the kitchen - the alarm clock and home security app in the bedroom

Obviously I would like to be wired to the gills

Next, we all know that Apple makes money on the harware and not the content
- of course different formats need to be able to be played but what of other internet AV options?
- Netflix streaming, You tube?
Rogue ameoba makes air foil - an app that sends any sound from any app to airport express. We need the video version.

a bounty for the best suggestion for future bounties? :-)
I'm all yours if you want me to be the first awarded...

after awarding me, if you wanna spare another grand, my suggestion is a plugin that will allow one to watch videos in full screen from any page that may contain a video as Youtube, GoogleVideo, iFilm, DailyMotion, etc., on Apple TV.

The ideal plugin would be one that is not restrained to a bunch of video sites in particular, but one that allows one to enter in any page that has a video and see it full screen on TV.

Let's say:

I think the greatest thing would be SMB file share support. Mac OS has already SMB support, so I guess it can't be so difficult.

Second, enable VLC support from frontrow (and remote control). VLC is a great player and has support for many codecs (oh yes, it HAS support for H.264, VOB, DivX, Xvid, MPEG2/4, streaming radio...) already working out of the box on Mac OS: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html.

So... AppleTV + SMB + VLC: the perfect next-gen video player.

PLAYBACK OF VIDEO_TS FOLDERS
Wouldn't it be more efficient to concentrate on iTunes and Quicktime to make plugins for the AppleTV. It would be astonishing (and I would pay for it), when the AppleTV box was able to play my DVD collection on my HD instead of two devices in my livingroom (DVD player and AppleTV). Everyone could store their DVD's on an external HD of the streaming computer (maybe in the Home office) and watch all movies and DVD's via 802.11n wireless technologie and AppleTV in the livingroom. I am not so skilled that I could make such a plugin but if it is possible and if iTunes and Quicktime can enhanced by plugins, pleeeeease make it. I'm sure a donation for that would be no problem. However. AppleTV playing DVD's an HD stored as VIDEO_TS folders would be the best.

DVR.

I agree that hacking the Apple TV and making it a DVR would be great.

I would also like the ability to plug my set top digital TV box and Satellite TV box straight into Apple TV so that I can record TV shows off satellite or digital TV.

I'd happily contribute some money towards that too.

Keep up the good work!

The holy grail is to get H.264 hardware acceleration working and usable by MythTV. It would be cool if this happened on Apple TV first!

Such an effort could be used on many NVIDIA equipped Linux boxes, not just Apple TV. I was already thinking of donating $100 to such an effort before this post appeared.

Just to give more food for though, there might be multiple ways to get H.264 hardware acceleration working:

1. OpenGL native support (but if my limited understanding is correct, might still not take full advantage of hardware acceleration for H.264 decoding)

2. Reverse engineer a NVIDIA PureVideo driver and make new open source Linux version (possibly reverse engineer the working Windows drivers, or try to determine what changed between driver versions as PureVideo was introduced [10.8]?)

3. Somehow port one or more drivers (with verified working PureVideo) to Linux.

4. Somehow port (or reverse engineer) the video drivers for the NVIDIA chipset used on AppleTV (which is basically Mac OS X 10.4.7) to Linux? POSIX might make this possible?

Just to give more food for though, there might be multiple ways to get H.264 hardware acceleration working:

1. OpenGL native support (but if my limited understanding is correct, might still not take full advantage of hardware acceleration for H.264 decoding)

2. Reverse engineer a NVIDIA PureVideo driver and make new open source Linux version (possibly reverse engineer the working Windows drivers, or try to determine what changed between driver versions as PureVideo was introduced [10.8]?)

3. Somehow port one or more drivers (with verified working PureVideo) to Linux.

4. Somehow port (or reverse engineer) the video drivers for the NVIDIA chipset used on AppleTV (which is basically Mac OS X 10.4.7) to Linux? POSIX might make this possible?

The holy grail is to get H.264 hardware acceleration working and usable by MythTV.

Such an effort could be used on many NVIDIA equipped Linux boxes, not just Apple TV. I was already thinking of donating $100 to such an effort before this post appeared.

I know this isn't very exciting...
but I REALLY want a way to load alternative resolution settings.

Everything is tall and skinny on my television when using Apple TV (everything-- the menu systems, all videos, etc). I think it is because my JVC set is not quite standardized or something... like it has 500 lines of resolution.

Frustrating. So my wish is for a hack that would provide for other screen resolutions.
d

I too would love to see a MythTV plugin.

MythTV Frontend, selectable as an option from the ATV menu.

--Woof!

The best hack would be compiling xbmc and install it instead of the apple tv frontend!
In this way we get all codecs support, networked file sharing support, all audio formats suport and power to decode my H.264 HD movies. Then I'll throw away my xbox and buy an Apple TV! :)

I would buy 4 immediately if it could be easily turned into a MythTV frontend able to play streaming ISO's from a SMB MythTV backend server share. It would be awesome to have the 360HD DVD drive as an option, but giving it the MythTV functionality in this great package would have everyone I know running out to buy several.

If possible, the Apple TV able to detect and browse the files on airport disk.

1. full functionality of the USB port so I can attach a USB hub, get my external HDDs attached, and eventually an external DVD (HD?). THat will get rid of my DVD (well the mini did). But an external DVD can be hacked for a region free which my mini does not have yet.
2. DVR funcionality via USB
3. Ability to play MPEG2. This is my biggest issue with the Apple TV. Pley MPEG2 for an external HD. I have a long list of movies already ripped on my external HDDs. I do not have the time and patience to put them in the "Apple TV format". I don't buy from the ITS and their selection is extremely limited. And I would like to have the media as well. Just in case my storage stuff all goes to crap one day. I have quite a large number of "non - hollywood crap movies". I like full dvd resolution and I need my various subtitles.

if you're not a hacker but are interested in the device and it's potential, what's the next step?

I'll agree: A fool-proof method to "unlock" the ATV with the use of a thumb drive ... has to be able to be done from someone with windows (Or non-intel version of OSX).

iTunes running on the Apple TV.

Think about it. Move your entire library to the Apple TV, stream your music and movies to any machine on your local network (even other Apple TV's!) - plus free up gigs of HD space on your regular machine.

Or, at the very least... AFP (or SMB for those whiner PC users) on the AppleTV would let you have a media server... Back up your machine, drag-and-drop media into folders...

-NJ.

I have no Apple TV (yet) so I don't know if I'm correct on this..
But isn't SMB mount support already included through the mount_smbfs command? Or has apple disabled this feature? :o

A timer
Something to stream a dvd who is played in Mac osx

No matter what functionality you want, the most helpful bounty at this point would be the creation of an easy way to install mods and extend an Apple TV without opening the case. The most promising effort I've seen to do this is Patchstick, which is a development to create a USB bootable thumbdrive image that would enable SSH and other goodies and allow remote updates. To me this is the first step to all other hacks as I don't want to void my warranty quite yet.

Rick

An easy way for installing plug-ins. That would make them accessible to more users, and encourage MORE!

It would be nice to use it as a gateway like the Airport Express, so I could stream my radio / Itunes Library without turning on the tv.

Support for Internet radio streaming. This is something FrontRow already has so how hard can it be?

I would love to see a plugin that can download directly from my TiVo. While I would love to see full functionality as a DVR, I've already got a TiVo and it would be great to be able to just grab videos off of it without having to first convert them with my MacBook. Think about it!

SMB support so I can play videos right from my NAS!

Streaming internet radio. I would even contribute to the fund

While a DVR would be nice, I would totally settle for support for a USB TV tuner (preferably one that supports HDTV). Being able to just select "TV" on the Apple TV menu would be fantastic. One could set up the controls so that pressing + and - would change the channels. This seems like a fairly simple hack (at least, if it's possible to make plugins and you can get a full version of OS X running on the thing, I don't see why it wouldn't work). The main reason this would be beneficial is so that people wouldn't need an extra tuner box in their cabinet if their TV doesn't have a built-in HD tuner (and so they wouldn't have to pay Comcast any more money to rent the damn thing).

All of the hacks going on so far seem to be a great start to really start exploiting the abilities of the Apple TV. The Apple TV is a great first stab at entering the digital living room by apple, but as shown by the vast number of hacks tacking place, there is a need for more features than those that currently exist with the box. Can't wait until booting and running from an external usb drive is achieved so that we can finally attach a huge library of media to be able to run locally, rather than streaming (imagine a 750GB external hdd attached with all your dvd collection). I guess one question that i have is the ability for the apple tv to play mpeg2 files so that i do not need to convert all of my dvd collection into mp4s...ripping and saving dvds in their original file size in mpeg2 format take me no longer than 20 mins per disc...but converting to mp4 can take a whole lot longer.

I guess a real feature I would like to see as asked by some others is the ability to add the support of an external dvd/ hd dvd drive so that you no longer need a seperate dvd player or hd dvd player. This would make the apple tv all you really need (along with pvr recording ability). Let's see what we can turn the apple tv into over the next couple of months. Good start guys!!