To Those Who Put OS X on Their AppleTV.... speed, etc. questions

[meagain]

If Apple doesn't give me what I want at tomorrow's announcement, I'm going to consider buying an AppleTV. But I need to load OS X on it to surf the net and load a few programs on it. Realplayer Superpass, Quicktime, Safari/Firefox, Standard iTunes. What I can't get a handle on is how it is to live with in real life? I have little patience for technology that doesn't work well, and little patience with slowness.

Questions: Would doing the above on AppleTV be a nightmare in the speed/effectiveness department or is it a non-issue? I have a 56" 720 DLP. Would both the AppleTV and internet/programs look good on it?
I'm looking for objective impressions to glean if I can pull this off without getting angry at it.

Thank you.

 

[vandlism]

If you have little patience for technology that doesn't work well, I can't even begin to fathom why you would consider hacking an AppleTV.

Get a Mac mini. It does exactly what you're asking for, out of the box. Get a few cables, hook it up and you're golden. I don't even know what would be used for input on a hacked AppleTV aside from the remote. It doesn't have bluetooth and that USB port sounds extremely tricky to get functional in any way.

 

[Dustman]

I havent done the AppleTV hack thing, so take from this what you will.

If you have little patients for things not working, then hacking a tv component to be a computer sounds like a pretty dumb idea. that's just common sence, no offence.

My assumption is that your looking for a new apple computer, but don't want to pay the several hundred or thousand dollars that apple makes you pay. If that's how you feel, check out ebay or something similar and go used.

..just what ever you do, don't get a dell.


-Dustin

 

[Much Ado]

The people who hack TVs do so either as a hobby, a challenge or a bit of both. To do so to get a decent Mac up and running would not be advisable.

 

[mattraehl]

What I would really like to know is, if you get OS X running on your Apple TV, does connecting to a TV via HDMI "just work" with no overscan/underscan etc? Because the achilles heel of connecting a Mac Mini to a HDTV seems to be over/underscan when using a DVI->HDMI cable.

 

[meagain]

I'm surprised more people here haven't done this.

 

[Shoesy]

I'm surprised more people here haven't done this.

I guess you are after -

awkward tv forums

They seem to know about these things- it all sounds a bit scary to me tho!
Sell a kidney and buy a nice new imac is my advice.

 

[KD7IWP]

I also thought this would be more popular on our forum. Especially if you want a simple server at home to VPN or something. You don't need much CPU or RAM if you are doing command line stuff. My server is just an old 667mhz Powerbook, nothing fancy, but it sure does the job.