So you caved in and bought the new 1080p Apple TV 3 and were horrified to discover that you cannot jailbreak it yet. Perhaps you were fortunate enough to find your older Apple TV (1st or 2nd gen) sitting in a dark damp corner of your closet underneath your old PlayStation. Regardless of which device you are fortunate enough to have, you will need one simple skill in order to take full advantage of your XBMC experience.

XBMC comes with the unique ability to install extra tools within the confines of its system. This means that once XBMC is installed you can add new add-ons/plugins to your Apple TV in order to give it some new features such as streaming live television, streaming movies from external websites, Pandora, Sports Channels, and much more.

Installing, and using, XBMC add-ons and plugins is a very simple process that can sometimes intimidate newbies, or first time users. The good news is that, by the end of this post, you will be able to install, uninstall, and find any XBMC tools you want within the confines of your Apple TV (1 or 2). Before we begin, let’s go over what we need:

• Computer
• Add-On/Plugin Source
• Apple TV (1st or 2nd-generation)

XBMC does come with many add-ons/plugins preinstalled in its database for you to install and play with. If you would like to use these specific tools simply skip ahead to STEP #9. If, on the other hand, you would like to add specialized add-ons/plugins such as IceFilms, NaviX, SuperTV, FastPassTV, 1Channel, or even Watchseries you will need to follow these instructions from beginning to end.

The first step would be to find the add-ons you want to install. You can search XBMC’s forums for things like skins, movie scrapers, music add-ons, picture add-ons, and more.  Once you find what you want… download the .zip file to your computer and remember file location you save it to.

The next step would be downloading an SSH client onto your computer. This tool will enable you to browse the Apple TV menu from your computer.

• Windows – PuTTY or WinSCP
• MAC – CyberDuck

Once you install these tools, you will need to connect the SSH client to your Apple TV:

1. Open XBMC on your Apple TV and navigate from your Home Screen to Settings > System Information. You need to locate and take note of your system’s IP address:

2. You now need to open your SSH Client. You will likely be met with either an option to open a Connection, if so select this option, or a group of boxes requiring input. Fill out the boxes using following:

• At the top you will likely see a drop down menu that says “File Transfer Protocol.” Here you will need to select the option that says “SFTP” or “SSH”
• Server: Here you need to enter the IP address of your Apple TV that we located earlier.
• Username: root
• Password: alpine

3. Click on the “Connect” button and you will find yourself inside the File System of your Apple TV.

4. Next you will need to navigate to the location that XBMC associates as its Home Page. This location is found @  “/User”

5. Now we need to find the add-on that you download earlier in this tutorial. Once you have located the file, you will need to drag it from your computer into this file location as seen below. In this case I have copied XBMC’s repo from my desktop into the file location provided.

Now that we have copied all desired items from the computer into the ATV we are now ready to put down the computer and pick up the ATV remote. The rest of these steps take place inside of your XBMC installation:

Installing  Add-ons & Plugins

1. Open XBMC on your Apple TV and navigate from your Home Screen to the System Menu. From there you should see menu options similar to what is shown below.

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!

Good news for old Apple TV owners (yes, there are still some lovers of the ‘original’ shiny box of joy out there):  App Dynamic, the same company that first brought AirPlay to the old Apple TV has just announced that AirPlay implementation on the 1st generation Apple TV is now complete as they have released a Remote HD update that enables AirPlay audio streaming to the old Apple TV as well as direct personal video streaming from iPhone’s camera roll. The new version also automatically installs Perian on AppleTV’s (if not installed already).

Check out this video for the instructions on how to install Remote HD Apple TV plugin.

More detailed instructions can be found here.

You may also want to read:
Remote HD now supports Apple TV 2
AirPlay Streaming Hacked into the Old Apple TV
How to Watch Hulu on Apple TV 2
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!

Want to win a copy of Remote HD, an iOS app that brings your Apple TV2′s display to your iPhone,  iPad or iPod touch allowing you to control your little black box from far away, even with the TV turned off? We are giving away 5 promo codes of Remote HD. Join our Facebook page and retweet the contest message for your chance to win. Good luck!

You may also want to read:
Remote HD now supports Apple TV 2
Seas0nPass for Windows Released
How to Watch Hulu on Apple TV 2

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!

Remote HD, an iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch application and Apple TV plugin that gives you access to your Mac, PC and Apple TV (the same that brought AirPlay to the first generation atv), has just been updated to support the new Apple TV. The feature you’re gonna like the most is RemoteView: it brings atv’s display to your iDevice (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch) allowing you to control your atv from far away, even with the TV turned off.

Among other features you will find:

• Full keyboard support in 3rd party plugins (including in XBMC)
• Global playback controls: skip songs without needing to first navigate to Now Playing.
• Dedicated Now Playing button designed to take you straight to the Now Playing view (pressing the menu button brings you back where you were)
• Easy restart and sleep.

Here are the installation instructions:

1. Jailbreak your Apple TV using greenpois0n or Seas0nPass.

2. Connect to your Apple TV using your preferred SSH client:

Host: apple-tv.local
Username: root
Password: alpine

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

ssh root@apple-tv.local
 Password: alpine

3. Once connected, run these 2 commands one by one (this will download, install/upgrade Remote HD plugin and restart the Apple TV interface)

wget http://remotehdcdn.appspot.com/Downloads/ATV2/remotehd-atv2_4.3.2_iphoneos-arm.deb;
 dpkg -i remotehd-atv2_4.3.2_iphoneos-arm.deb

Update: Remote HD has just been updated to version 4.3.2

What’s new

• XBMC now available in RemoteView
• Trackpad support added in CouchSurfer
• RemoteView – Tap to Click support added in CouchSurfer
• RemoteView – Tap to Click support added in AppleTV interface

Improvements and bugfixes

• Text entry fixes
• RemoteView refresh bug fixed
• Play/Pause button fixed in XBMC

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!