Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

My Experience Hacking

D

DaveWonders

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 12, 2006
102
0
Sorry if this is boring to you guys, thought there might be some others out there in my situation...

First, I used to have a 30" CRT HDTV that was 720p. I used my Xbox360 and Connect360 to stream Divx tv shows from my iMac. This worked pretty well. Only issue I had was the lack of a file structure (i.e. Shows->30Rock->Season 1->Episode I actually want). So it took some creativity naming each video file so that they were listed chronologically. Then I got a new Samsung 40" 1080p LCD. Great TV so far, but for whatever reason it would play my Divx files from my 360 at a native resolution, so for example my 30Rocks are encoded in Widescreen, but on my new TV it showed up very small in the middle with black all around it. But Podcasts like MacBreak played full screen. The TV wouldn't even let me zoom in on the picture like it does with cable, the option to zoom was greyed out. That was what made me decide to buy an AppleTV.

So of course while it's in transit I read up on hacking. I didn't want to open it up and deal with the rubber bottom so I focused on Patchsticks. I read awkward.tv's wiki pretty thoroughly. So when it came and I first made the patchstick with my iMac G5 and it didn't work I was befuddled. Then I just got the feeling it was because I was using a PPC machine. The wiki didn't really mention that explicitly...how hard is it to mention that in the article...So then I realize that basically you have to use an Intel Mac that has Tiger. That's a pretty small sector of machines. But I have a Tiger Mac Pro at my office so no worries, right? Wrong. Followed the directions to a "T." Terminal said my stick was ready to go. Running it on the ATV just gave me factory restore options. Yuck.

So then to my surprise I find the site atv4windows.com. I was SHOCKED to see that some PC guys have totally SPANKED the Mac community in ease to hack an Apple device. Their patchstick not only enabled SSH, but auto installs ATV files, Couch Surfer, etc. Biggest kicker was that they had a thorough YouTube screencast walking through each step. And it worked the first time. Only problem was looking silly asking my PC roomie to borrow his laptop.

Anyway, I haven't ironed out all the kinks yet with the ATV and my Harmony remote (Thanks MR for the guide on that...) but its going well so far. I'm super impresed with the speed of downloading trailers in HD - they play instantly. I'm also blown away by the quality of the HD movies. I was going to buy a cheap BR player and sell my HD-DVD player. But now I'm cancelling my BB rental subscription and just going all iTunes HD.
 
IMO, it's one thing to throw a few auctions up on eBay to try to sell something under the radar, but atv4windows.com appears to be rather blatant about it. Unless they've done something magical, their patchstick contains code from Apple, which usually isn't very cool when other people resell it!
 
I believe they have a free version. I obtained my files from another source, hehe.
 
DaveWonders said:
Then I got a new Samsung 40" 1080p LCD. Great TV so far, but for whatever reason it would play my Divx files from my 360 at a native resolution, so for example my 30Rocks are encoded in Widescreen, but on my new TV it showed up very small in the middle with black all around it. But Podcasts like MacBreak played full screen. The TV wouldn't even let me zoom in on the picture like it does with cable, the option to zoom was greyed out.
Click to expand...

The way to get your screen to fill on the 360 is a setting right in the 360. If you press menu on the 360 remote then go to the icon that looks like a screen hit that and it will change from (auto, zoom, 4:3, etc etc).
 
son of a.....

And you know what else??? Just TODAY TUAW had a story about Rivet, which is basically exactly like Connect360 but lets you have folders with hierarchy. Go figure. But hey, the ATV is pretty slick as we all know, and I was really not expecting such good quality from HD rentals. I thought it would like more like the free trailers and be passable. But I found that as long as the shot was bright it looked great laying back in my bed. I'm sure if I was all up on the screen I could see artifacting. Especially with blacks and dark shots, but oh well. I think if iTunes offered HD rentals to any Mac and not just ATV I would have sprung for a Mini, or held out for the next Mini revision.
 
I have Connect360 and really like it but I've always wanted it to show the folder structure. I am going to give rivet a try when I get home tonight. I feel like nullriver has stopped developing Connect360 and only makes changes if Microsoft updates the 360.
 
I was going to post this as a thread, but this seems like a relevant place to ask- I'm thinking of an Apple TV at some point but have lots of avi files- I would convert them in VisualHub but wondering if the hacks are an easier way of the Apple TV 'seeing' them and playing them- once the Apple TV is hacked to play divx files, how does it find them?

Do they need manually moving over or will any avis on your computer simply show up on the Apple TV?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back