Apropos Apple TV Hacks...

[nygiants242]

My family has just purchased an Apple TV for our home theater. I'd love to install a wireless keyboard (BTW, how would I connect them?) and mouse along with Safari to surf the web (no videos, Youtube, flash, etc) just flat out emails, news, and other basic browsing.

Are such hacks difficult or easy? Does it risk screwing up the machine?

What about other hacks, such as external hard drive and more? How are these things done?

Thanks for the help fellas

 

[tom1971]

Using firefox on the aTV is theoretically possible, but it is no fun. The ATV is pretty weak (processor and RAM wise), so you won't enjoy it.


There are hacks to use the external uSB drive, that are very nice.

Depending on your knowledge of *nix, you can either do the hack yourself, or choose a commercial product.

This product can be tested for free.

 

[TuckBodi]

Or just use the granddaddy of them all Patchstick product, which unlike tom1971's commercial product, is completely free AND blessed by the plugin dev's AND created by the developer who made the bootloader which all Patchsticks use AND of which he is one of the key developers on the venerable XBMC project.

ATVUSB-Creator

No brainer.

 

[kadeschs]

Using firefox on the aTV is theoretically possible, but it is no fun. The ATV is pretty weak (processor and RAM wise), so you won't enjoy it.


There are hacks to use the external uSB drive, that are very nice.

Depending on your knowledge of *nix, you can either do the hack yourself, or choose a commercial product.

This product can be tested for free.

It's not theoretically possibly, it is completely possible. I run Firefox myself. I find that it works great! However, to make it practical for use, you must get the Flash Player plug-in working since so many sites rely on Flash these days.

I used ATVUSB-Creator to load the KEXT installer that enables things like USB and bluetooth functionality. It also allows the use of SmartInstaller that updates and installs the rest of the missing KEXT files for you.

Good luck.