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Apple TV Hacked To Use USB External Storage
- Thread starter JonHimself
- Start date
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I don't have the guts (or the need yet) to do this to my Apple TV, but I'm happy to see this is do-able. It's a step in the right direction.
My impression is that you have to enable SSH, open the case, etc. To me, yes that's complicated. Not worth it since I personally don't need mroe than 160GB right now. But I'm still glad to see it's being done though.
BTW, how do you like that 160GB Apple TV? Does it have a good picture on a 1080P HDTV? I am getting tired of manually connecting my Macbook to the 65 inch Samsung via VGA. The picture is very nice (even though the video is scaled). Would the Apple TV provide comparable picture?
Cheers,
Gonna wait to try it
I'm going to wait until there's an easier "just plug it in" type solution. I'm going to need the extra hard drive space soon (will probably buy a 1TB drive eventually), but for now, i'm ok with the 160GB.
This hack is a bit too time consuming for now, although I could probably finish it in the time it's taking my macbook to convert my movies to h.264! so darn slow!!!
Although what would be ideal would be a way to have the
TV connect to the HDD connected to my airport, since i have my iTunes library housed in a 500GB USB drive connected to my airport extreme.
If I could do that, I wouldn't need to keep syncing everything - theTV would just connect to my entire iTunes library on the drive...sweet!
I can only hope this will come soon...
I'm going to wait until there's an easier "just plug it in" type solution. I'm going to need the extra hard drive space soon (will probably buy a 1TB drive eventually), but for now, i'm ok with the 160GB.
This hack is a bit too time consuming for now, although I could probably finish it in the time it's taking my macbook to convert my movies to h.264! so darn slow!!!
Although what would be ideal would be a way to have the
TV connect to the HDD connected to my airport, since i have my iTunes library housed in a 500GB USB drive connected to my airport extreme. If I could do that, I wouldn't need to keep syncing everything - the
TV would just connect to my entire iTunes library on the drive...sweet!I can only hope this will come soon...
This isn't really useful to the average user. If you want to keep a 1TB drive hooked up to the AppleTV, don't you also need to have another 1TB drive hooked up to the computer? I don't think you can keep media on just the AppleTV-- it also has to reside on the host computer. The computer is the hub.
This mod keeps you from having to swap around synced media, but doing that is a lot less of a hassle than most people seem to think.
This mod keeps you from having to swap around synced media, but doing that is a lot less of a hassle than most people seem to think.
Good to see that it can be done and that it makes use of the mystery USB port. However, I'm simply not interested in applying any sort of hack to my AppleTV. It works great, plug and play. I'm streaming most stuff off of my MacBook and an Airport Extreme with a hard drive now. It would be nice to have it all locally, but I'll stick with what I have got until Apple decides that this external storage thing is a good idea and supports it.
Good, now maybe I can jack my media filled 1.5TB drive into it without having to leave it connected to my MBP. 'bout damn time.
Ah. As I work at a PowerMac, that is a use I hadn't considered. Good on you, sir.
If you hack into it to enable SSH and upload .avi's (not synced to the computer) it becomes useful. What needs to happen is to stream media via a NAS.
Most of the things that all of you are complaining about you can already do.
- Patching it requires a USB stick and a couple lines in Terminal and you then have the ability to do anything you want to it without opening, or voiding the warranty
- You can plug a harddrive into the Airport Extreme and share it.
- You can also use any NAS hard drive, and stream from it.
- With an external usb hardrive plugged into the Apple TV, you won't need to sync it, you can store whatever you want directly on there.
- I suggest reading wiki.awkwardtv.com to really get educated about this stuff before making assumptions.
- Patching it requires a USB stick and a couple lines in Terminal and you then have the ability to do anything you want to it without opening, or voiding the warranty
- You can plug a harddrive into the Airport Extreme and share it.
- You can also use any NAS hard drive, and stream from it.
- With an external usb hardrive plugged into the Apple TV, you won't need to sync it, you can store whatever you want directly on there.
- I suggest reading wiki.awkwardtv.com to really get educated about this stuff before making assumptions.
Well, I tried following the instructions. AppleHacks website states ssh enabled
TV as a requirement and has a link to AwkwardTV wiki page for enabling ssh without opening the box. That wiki page requires a full blown OSX installation on TV with a link to how it can be done. In return, that page requires opening the box. Sorry, it looks like I have to open the box based on the link from the hack site. Do you have better links?I do this now, but it is still painfully slow as my iPhone and my roommates older Mac brings my network down to G, sometimes B speeds. So a media drive loaded with my 12,000 songs, 25 TV series, and 400 Movies plugged DIRECTLY into my AppleTV is much more desirable.
Does the AppleTV without this patch allow connecting flash drives? (I've no idea, that's why I ask).
I do not see it as such remotely strange the situation of going your friends' and stick your flash drives with a bunch of photos or even the digital camera itself in his Apple TV.
This should so obviously come out of the box, considering it is just a software issue.
Well, you can just stick your flash drive to your friends computer, from which
TV can stream.
I think iTunes on your computer has to fetch it from the external tied to your Airport Extreme while AppleTV is streaming or syncing from iTunes. That should require twice the bandwidth.
What an expensive USB drive though...you can get 500 GB for 159.99 in most place...cheaper even.
I don't understand why every web site is posting only the appleTVhacks.net patch. Awkwardtv.org also had a solution available to connect external disks and they published their results 2 days earlier. With their patch you can still use the internal hard disk to boot, the external one(s) will just be used as extra storage. But of course, the appleTVhacks.net website had a 1000US$ bounty running for the first one to make the hack working and they claim they were the first so they could keep the money themselves.
In the appleTVhacks.net way you are limited to using 1 disk in a special HFS+ format. You cannot mount that disk on your mac (and certainly not PC) to put movies etc on it, as the partition table will get changed and the appleTV will no longer recognise it.
The AwkwardTV way will allow HFS, HFS+, FAT32 and NTFS disks and you will not have to make sure some strange partition table is used. I just connected my big 500 Gb FAT32 disk to my appleTV and now have immediate access to all my stuff.
And as for the difficulties to get it to work: just follow the lines. Even a kid can use the terminal by copy-pasting commands I guess.
In the appleTVhacks.net way you are limited to using 1 disk in a special HFS+ format. You cannot mount that disk on your mac (and certainly not PC) to put movies etc on it, as the partition table will get changed and the appleTV will no longer recognise it.
The AwkwardTV way will allow HFS, HFS+, FAT32 and NTFS disks and you will not have to make sure some strange partition table is used. I just connected my big 500 Gb FAT32 disk to my appleTV and now have immediate access to all my stuff.
And as for the difficulties to get it to work: just follow the lines. Even a kid can use the terminal by copy-pasting commands I guess.
'Cause they want you to upgrade your AppleTV everytime they bring out a larger capacity.
Nice mod, although my 160GB's fine for me.
I wouldn't say that. I'd say it is more about them being able to claim control over what the device is capable of doing. It's not total control of course, but the hackers are obviously in the minority - they'd at least be able to guarantee what 95%+ can do with the device in their negotiations with content providers and such...
Or just print them and bring them on paper. I will not say what I think of your answer… would be against the rules.Well, you can just stick your flash drive to your friends computer, from which