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Likelihood of hack to play non Apple formats?

rediffusion

rediffusion

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 26, 2006
202
38
Fairfield, CT
What is the likelihood of their being a hack for the AppleTV to allow users to play non Apple formats such as .avi files? Am I right in saying that all streamed content is played via iTunes? If this is correct, I guess the only way around this is converting the files (which is a pain)
 
yeah this is the main reason why i have not yet bought an apple tv, always thought it was cool. hopefully someone will be able to do something with this version so we have more options with it.
 
I would imagine not anytime soon, as everything is streamed, so you'd need both ends to work well with each other.
 
InsiderApps said:
I would imagine not anytime soon, as everything is streamed, so you'd need both ends to work well with each other.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought :(
What's the best alternative to the TV?
I predominently want to watch downloaded avi files although Netflix & YouTube would be a nice bonus
 
the lack of a HD onboard the new ATV will make is a much harder device to hack. not sure if this was one of Apple's intentions or not...
 
shakesfist said:
Can't buy with the new Apple TV. Also, if you buy disks, you can't play them on your new Apple Tv. But you can rent. High Horse, get down.
Click to expand...

sure you can. buy from itunes on your home computer and stream. if you want to purchase a disk, you can rip it on to your home computer and...stream.
 
dmm219 said:
the lack of a HD onboard the new ATV will make is a much harder device to hack. not sure if this was one of Apple's intentions or not...
Click to expand...

On the original ATV you don't need the hard drive to run a hack. I'm running a crystalbuntu USB Disk Image on mine, which can also run on a virgin ATV system. Put the image on a 4gb-8gb flash drive plug it in, and boot up. Runs XBMC great, nice and snappy.

And I've heard there's someone working on an ARM XBMC version, which I'm sure at some point will be running on a boot image (of which I'm sure ATV Flash and Patchstick.ca will claim as their own...).
 
TuckBodi said:
On the original ATV you don't need the hard drive to run a hack. I'm running a crystalbuntu USB Disk Image on mine, which can also run on a virgin ATV system. Put the image on a 4gb-8gb flash drive plug it in, and boot up. Runs XBMC great, nice and snappy.
Click to expand...

do they make micro-usb flash drives? that might be a problem.
 
I use a PS3 and run ps3 media server to stream content. works with lots of different formats.
 
dmm219 said:
the lack of a HD onboard the new ATV will make is a much harder device to hack. not sure if this was one of Apple's intentions or not...
Click to expand...
Well of course it will have a hard drive. The question is how big it is. Rumors are that its to be a 16GB flash drive. Which of course it needs to store the os as well as a video and network buffer I would imagine.
 
dynaflash said:
Well of course it will have a hard drive. The question is how big it is. Rumors are that its to be a 16GB flash drive. Which of course it needs to store the os as well as a video and network buffer I would imagine.
Click to expand...
There's also the problem of no USB port on the new unit. Hard to use a patchstick if there's nowhere to plug it in.
 
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