Scott Davilla of the atv-bootloader project has informed me that a new bootloader for Apple TV to boot Linux is now available. With this version, kernel patches to the EFI are no longer required. Also, atv-bootloader can now boot Linux from any mass storage device (including external USB device).

For more information on this, go to atv-bootloader site here.

Actually, Scott wrote to me a couple of weeks back. I just didn’t have a chance to update the site until now. Sorry, Scott.

Some of you may already knew this, but Apple TV unofficially supports Internet Radio. I found this out when 2.0 was released a few months back.

To get this feature working, all you had to do was create a playlist with Internet radio stations in it then just sync the playlist to the Apple TV. One major flaw was that, iTunes had to be running at the same time. Otherwise, the stations would disappear from the Apple TV.

With 2.0.2 update, this is no longer the case. The playlist with the Internet Radio streams would persist even when iTunes is not running on the computer it synced with. However, once you restart the Apple TV, the playlists with Internet Radio streams would disappear.

I have written a post about this on Apple TV Source . So while, we don’t have 100% functionality for Internet Radio yet, it is still much better than before.

Good news. Brandon has just released Couch Surfer 0.3. Just in time for us to relax and surf the net on our big screen TV getting ready for the weekend.

Here are some new features of Couch Surfer 0.3

• accelerated scrolling holds up and downi
• 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 plugins.

Thanks again, Brandon. You da man!

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

Jaman has released a new version of its player.  In case you ran into problems getting the Jaman player to work after you upgraded to 2.0.1, this is the version to get.

There are no new features with this update.  However, rest assured that all the requests for enhancements that you sent in have all been forwarded to Jaman.   I have also asked for an installer-only version of file.  They are looking into it.

The file is available here.

After downloading and examining the new software update, I did not notice any new features for this update. It is likely that this is just a maintenance update.

There have been reports that you can now browse movies by genre under “My Movies” now. I haven’t checked this out. However, the one thing I have noticed so far is that the user interface is much more snappy now. Everything just loads much faster. That’s just my impression after playing around with it for about 15 minutes. I could be complete wrong on this one.

Here are some articles from around the web regarding this new “stealth” release:

• iLounge
• macrumors
• AppleInsider

Got an itch to run Apple TV Take 2 on your Mac?  The guys at MacGeek have just released ATV4Mac 1.3 that allows you to run Apple TV Take 2 on your Mac.  It is basically a Front Row replacement with Apple TV frameworks.

A few caveats though.  ATV4Mac only works with Mac OS X 10.4.8 - 11 at the moment.  Also, the resolution is fixed to 1280 x 800.  Lastly, quitting the application doesn’t return the resolution back to the original settings.

So if you still haven’t upgraded to Leopard or have a Tiger partition, give this application a try.  It’s almost like running the real thing.

iClarified has an easy-to-follow tutorial on how to update your Apple TV Take 2 to play movie files in Divx, Xvid and WMV formats.

So for those who have been holding off on upgrading to Take 2 because you’re afraid to lose the additional codec support, hold off no more. Just follow the simple steps laid out by iClarified and you too can enjoy your Take 2 with Divx, Xvid and WMV support.

OK, the forums are finally up. Feel free to use them. If you feel that you need more forums/categories, please let me know, I’ll try to accommodate. Just write to me at luckk@appletvhacks.net.

As like all forums, please do not post any spams or use any profanity.

It’s a work in progress so please be patient. There are always room for improvements.

Hopefully, this will give you a more structured way to communicate with each other rather than leaving each other comments.

Also, I’m finishing up a rewrite of the article to enable ssh on the Apple TV (and many more articles to come). With these new rewrites, newbies should have a better understanding of how to hack the Apple TV.

[Update] I am having problems with the database.  So please bear with me for a few more days.

I apologize. 

It’s about 9 minutes long but it sure is worth it.

Update: The previous method didn’t work 100%. Here are two new videos from them. Same topic delivered in two parts.