Old Apple TV is not dead! Remote HD has just released a new plugin for the old Apple TV that adds the missing AirPlay functionality. AirPlay can now be added to any first generation Apple TV by installing the Remote HD plugin and activating it using Remote HD iOS application. Once the plugin is activated, any AirPlay enabled application can be used to stream video and photos to the Apple TV.

According to the developer, all existing Remote HD customers get this functionality for free. AirPlay audio streaming will be added soon.

Remote HD’s AirPlay supports:
- Video streaming from YouTube iOS app
- Movies and Podcasts from iPod iOS app
- Photo streaming from Photos iOS app
- Video streaming from iTunes 10.1.

Installing/Upgrading Remote HD plugin manually

Remote HD’s Apple TV plugin must be installed and running on the Apple TV before you can control it with Remote HD. This part explains how to unlock your Apple TV using free opensource tools and install/upgrade Remote HD plugin on it:

Unlock your Apple TV using opensource atvusb-creator.
Step by step instructions can be found here and here.

Connect to your AppleTV using your preferred SSH client:
Host: appletv.local
Username: frontrow
Password: frontrow

Recommended SSH clients are:
OS X: Use the buit-in SSH command line client using Terminal.app
Windows: Putty Download putty.exe from here

Here’s an example of how to connect to the Apple TV using Terminal.app on OS X:

ssh frontrow@appletv.local
Password: frontrow

Once connected, run these commands one by one.
These commands will download, uncompress, install/upgrade Remote HD plugin and restart the Apple TV interface.

scp ssh.remotehd.com:RemoteHelper.tar RemoteHelper.tar
tar xvf RemoteHelper.tar
./install-RemoteHelper

“frontrow” without the quotes is the default password.
If prompted with a security prompt to confirm connecting, type in yes.

Thats it, you’re done! Now grab your device and have Remote HD scan for available connections. Your Apple TV should show up in the list of available WiFi-connections – just tap to connect!
The default password is empty.

Installing Remote HD plugin using aTV Flash

Looking for an easier install option?

Use aTV Flash to unlock your AppleTV.
Then enable Remote HD from Maintenance > Install Extras.

Get the Remote HD from the App Store ($3,99 with 50% discount).

GIVEAWAY

We have 5 licenses of Remote HD to give away! Follow @appletvhacks, RT and join us on Facebook for your chance to win. There will be one winner each of the next 5 days.

You may also want to read:
AirFlick Streams Non-iTunes Data to Apple TV 2 (video)
How-To: Jailbreak Apple TV 2G on iOS 4.2.1 with PwnageTool
AirVideoEnabler Allows AirPlay Video Streaming from Any App

Visit What's on iPhone for the best iPad and iPhone app reviews!
Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!

After releasing an application called AirPlayer that allows you to stream video to your mac from your iPad using Apple’s built-in AirPlay services, TUAW’s Erica Sadun has now released AirFlick that transmits data to any Apple TV 2 outside of iTunes. According to Erica, AirFlick offers the potential of real-time transcoding of otherwise unsupported file types into Apple TV-compatible data. It also allows you to open videos located on the internet by pasting a URL and clicking the play button. Erica was able to watch a number of Internet Archive (archive.org) mp4 videos on a big screen TV by browsing that website, selecting URLs, and opening them with AirFlick.

This is how she explains how the AirFlick works:

Download AirFlick for Mac

[source: TUAW]

You may also want to read:
How-To: Jailbreak Apple TV 2G on iOS 4.2.1 with PwnageTool
AirVideoEnabler Allows AirPlay Video Streaming from Any App
Groovy Brings Grooveshark to Your Apple TV

Visit What's on iPhone for the best iPad and iPhone app reviews!
Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!

iOS 4.2.1 brought only some minor bug fixes related to resolution and download problems, so if you updated to 4.1.1 you are still able to jailbreak your Apple TV 2G with PwnageTool. All you’ll have to do is to use new PwnageTool bundle to jailbreak iOS 4.2.1 instead of iOS 4.2 PwageTool bundle. Note that this jailbreak is also tethered, which means you have to connect your Apple TV 2G with PC and use Redsn0w or PwnageBundle to boot it.

Here are the instructions from nitoTV

Disclaimer:
If you do not have your SHSH blobs backed up for your AppleTV at 4.1 I HIGHLY advise avoiding any upgrading whatsoever, tethered or not, until a real proper jailbreak is available.

If you don’t understand the above GO BACK NOW, do NOT attempt the following.

Made it this far? Another warning:
If you aren’t a developer or someone trying to tweak iOS 4.2.1 the following jailbreak is STRONGLY discouraged. Booting tethered on the AppleTV is an easy process, but it is still a PITA that a casual user would probably not have the desire to put up with.

Read the ENTIRE documentation at least once before running through the process.

You will need a computer that is close enough to your AppleTV that it can be plugged into USB, power and HDMI without any major movement of the AppleTV itself), if you don’t meet this requirement the following is impossible, unless your microUSB cable is REALLY long.

Required:
A MicroUSB cable
An Intel Apple laptop Running Snow Leopard (I say laptop because of reaching distance for the USB, power, HDMI)
AppleTV 4.2.1 ipsw AppleTV2,1_4.2.1_8C154_Restore.ipsw
PwnageTool 4.1.2 or 4.1.3
PwnageTool 4.2.1 Bundle for Apple TV 2G

1. Move this entire folder to the desktop and replace “AppleTV2,1_4.2_8C150.bundle” subfolder with this “AppleTV2,1_4.2.1_8C154.bundle” subfolder.

2. Open Terminal app (if you don’t know where this is, you REALLY shouldn’t be doing this.

3. Run the following commands (this will fail if you didn’t move this folder to the desktop, PwnageTool almost MUST be in your /Applications folder)

4. Run PwnageTool on the 4.2.1 ipsw (if you don’t know how to do this, again you REALLY shouldn’t be here) saving into the ~/Desktop/tethered folder with the default name PwnageTool gives it (AppleTV2,1_4.2.1_8C154_Custom_Restore.ipsw

5. Back in the terminal run the following:

unzip -j ~/Desktop/tethered/AppleTV2,1_4.2.1_8C154_Custom_Restore.ipsw Firmware/dfu/iBSS.k66ap.RELEASE.dfu kernelcache.release.k66 -d ~/Desktop/tethered/

6. Restore the AppleTV to the ~/Desktop/tethered/AppleTV2,1_4.2.1_8C154_Custom_Restore.ipsw firmware (your AppleTV SHOULD be in DFU mode after finishing up with PwnageTool)

NOTE: Do not install any packages through cydia in expert mode, this produced very unpredictable results.

7. Unplug and then replug the USB, after the AppleTV has finished started up (will be blinking steadily), plug in the power cable

8. Run the following commands in terminal:

cd ~/desktop/tethered

./tetheredboot -i iBSS.k66ap.RELEASE.dfu -k kernelcache.release.k66

NOTE:  it will loop a complaint re: DFU mode, just ignore this, once you are finished getting in DFU mode tetheredboot will take over.

9. MANUALLY put the AppleTV in DFU (*DO NOT USE PWNAGETOOL*)

- Disconnect power cable and connect your Apple TV with your computer via microUSB
- Now reboot your Apple TV by holding down Menu + Down buttons together for around 6 seconds.
- After reboot, immediately hold Menu + Play until you see the message in iTunes saying that Apple TV in recovery mode is detected

Successful output from tetheredboot looks like this:

Initializing libpois0n
No matching processes belonging to you were found
Waiting for device to enter DFU mode
Device must be in DFU mode to continue
opening device 05ac:1227…
Found device in DFU mode
Checking if device is compatible with this jailbreak
Checking the device type
Identified device as AppleTV2,1
Preparing to upload limera1n exploit
Resetting device counters
Sending chunk headers
Sending exploit payload
Sending fake data
libusb:error [darwin_transfer_status] transfer error: timed out
Exploit sent
Reconnecting to device
Waiting 2 seconds for the device to pop up…
opening device 05ac:1227…
Uploading iBSS.k66ap.RELEASE.dfu to device
[==================================================] 100.0%
libusb:error [darwin_reset_device] ResetDevice: device not responding
libusb:error [darwin_close] USBDeviceClose: no connection to an IOService
Waiting 10 seconds for the device to pop up…
opening device 05ac:1281…
Setting to configuration 1
Setting to interface 0:0
Uploading kernelcache.release.k66 to device
[==================================================] 100.0%
libusb:error [darwin_transfer_status] transfer error: device not responding (value = 0xe00002ed)

10. if all went well, unplug USB and plug in HDMI and your AppleTV should be ready to go. You will need to repeat 7-9 every time you restart your AppleTV, this isn’t a convenient process by any stretch!

11. To get nitoTV installed (I couldn’t get the cydia, or custompackage sot work in PT)

apt-get install wget
wget -O- http://apt.awkwardtv.org/awkwardtv.pub | apt-key add -
echo “deb http://apt.awkwardtv.org/ stable main” > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/awkwardtv.list
apt-get update
apt-get install com.nito.nitotv

[source: @nitoTV]

Visit What's on iPhone for the best iPad and iPhone app reviews!
Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!

Apple has just released a minor iOS 4.2.1 software update for the Apple TV 2G. It addresses an issue that causes some high-definition TVs to incorrectly display at 480p as well as an issue that may cause a movie or TV show to be re-downloaded. The build which is marked as iOS 4.2.1 (8C154) is reported by Apple TV as software version 4.1.1. The previous Apple TV iOS 4.2 was Build 8C150 and it was reported on the device as 4.1. According to nitoTV, it appears that SettingsAboutViewController grabs the “software version” number from the Info.plist inside of AppleTV.app rather than [ATVVersionInfo currentOSVersion] which is why it listed 4.2.1 in 4.2 and 4.1.1 in 4.2.1. NitoTV also confirmed that tethered Jailbreak for 4.1.1 still works “just fine”.

Visit What's on iPhone for the best iPad and iPhone app reviews!
Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!

Fire Core has finally released the first beta version of aTV Flash (black) for the Apple TV 2G. It gives you a web browser with HTML5 support (not all HTML5 sites are supported yet), a Plex client that lets you stream nearly any kind of video from Plex Server running on your Mac, Last.fm access and some info on demand (current weather and news feeds). Fire Core promises to enable additional media formats such as AVI, MP4, MKV, DVD files and to support media streaming from most NAS devices (including Airport Extreme and Time Capsule) in the near future. You don’t need to be worry about the original Apple TV features, they will all remain fully operational.

The new aTV Flash is compatible with the 4.0 Apple TV software only. The new 4.1 software requires a few adjustments and the company plans to have compatible version available soon.

Note: before installing aTV Flash (black) your atv will need to be jailbroken!

Currently the software is for Mac only. Windows compatible version is expected to be available within the next few days.

For the current users aTV Flash is available as a free upgrade.
(Some instructions from the developer: After logging into your account you will have an extra download link for aTV Flash (black). Your normal aTV Flash license and download links will remain unchanged. Additionally any available renewal specials can also be found in your account.)

For the new users the software is available at the discounted price of $19.95 during the beta (pre-order) phase. Once the final version is ready for release the price will return to the normal level of $29.95.

The original aTV Flash is also being reduced to $39.95.

GIVEAWAY

We have 10 licenses of aTV Flash (black) to give away! Follow @appletvhacks, retweet the contest message and join us on Facebook for your chance to win. The winners will be announced on Monday (December 6^th).

Related news
AirVideoEnabler Allows AirPlay Video Streaming from Any App
Apple TV 2G Gets 4.2.1 Software Update
Groovy Brings Grooveshark to Your Apple TV
How to Install Plex on Apple TV 2G

Visit What's on iPhone for the best iPad and iPhone app reviews!
Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!