Unlocking the Apple TV

The Apple TV is an elegant, almost silent set top box which allows you to listen to music, watch videos and show off your photos through your television. The device is much loved for its ease of use and fast access to digital media in the living room.

However, out of the box it suffers from some significant drawbacks:

• The hard drive is small for a media center: The Apple TV comes in 40GB (£195), or 160GB (£263) variants
• YouTube is the only accessible internet video service
• Its incompatible with many common video formats

This Mac-centric post runs through how to overcome these issues:

• How to add an external hard drive
• Use the BBC iPlayer (UK only)
• Enable the playback of most video formats
• View IMDB information for your films
• Optimize videos for the Apple TV

Installing the software
There are many ways to do this, but the easiest way to enable all of the features listed above is to use aTV Flash to create a patch stick. aTV Flash costs $49.95 and is available for Mac and PC.

Create a patch stick (Mac)

1. Download this file
2. Open the downloaded file. This will mount a volume on your Mac called OSBoot.
3. Insert the flash drive you wish to use into the computer (256MB – 4GB size)
4. Run the aTV Flash application directly from the downloaded aTV Flash disk image
5. Select the flash drive you wish to use from the drop down menu, and click start
6. Select these plugins…
   
7. The installer will copy the selected plugins to the flash drive automatically. When the process completes, a message stating ‘the drive cannot be read’ may appear. If the message appears, click eject. The flash drive can now be removed from the computer. It is ready to be used to upgrade your Apple TV.

Installation & setup

1. Update to most current software through Apple TV Settings > General menu
2. Unplug the Apple TV
3. Insert the flash drive containing the aTV Flash software into the Apple TV USB port
4. Power on the Apple TV
5. After a few seconds you will see the aTV Flash logo, followed by some text running down the left side of the screen
6. After a few more seconds, the text will stop, and you will see an install confirmation near the bottom of the screen
7. Remove the flash drive, and restart (power down, then up) the Apple TV
8. Your Apple TV will start up and complete the software installation automatically. It will reboot itself once. Once complete, the Apple TV menu screen will appear.

To add an external drive

• On the Apple TV navigate to nitoTV > Settings > Install Software
• Run the Smart Installer
• Once this process completes, restart your Apple TV

Your Apple TV can now support up to 1TB drives via its USB port. Media on the external drive should now be visible to Nito TV / ATVfiles / Sapphire / XMBC / Boxee. All of these plugins can play videos, but I recommend ATV files as its the only player which supports HD video, resume, and file deletion.

To watch the BBC iPlayer (uk only)

1. Create an account at Boxee
2. On the Apple TV navigate to XMBC/Boxee > Boxee
3. Enter your Boxee login details
4. In Boxee navigate to Video > Internet > BBC iPlayer

Playback of iTunes incompatible videos

• To playback a DVD backup use NitoTV or Boxee (Mac users can backup DVDs using MacTheRipper)
• To playback a standard definition video use ATVfiles, NitoTV or Boxee (supported formats include mkv, ivx, xvid, avi, wmv, rmvb as well as the native m4v, mp4, mov formats)
• To playback a 576p or 720p HD video (m4v, mp4, or mov only) use ATVfiles or NitoTV (the Apple TV doesn’t support 1080p playback, although it can upscale to 1080p)

To view IMDB information for your movies
On the Apple TV navigate to Media > Sapphire and populate the file data.

To optimize video for the Apple TV
To get the best quality out of your Apple TV use 720p video files (H264 m4v, mp4, or mov only) up to 5Mbps. Video files are often distributed in mkv format – unfortunately the Apple TV can’t play this format in HD. You can use VisualHub (free, Mac only) to convert incompatible files. Setting Visual Hub’s Apple TV preset set to high quality and 2-pass produces high quality files.

VisualHub ignores soft subtitles. If you require subs and the source video has a .srt file you can associate it with your Apple TV optimised video using Subler (free, Mac only). Rename the video’s file extension to m4v. Whilst video is playing hold down the Apple remote’s play/pause button to select subtitle options.

More

• Remove unused buttons from the Frontrow menu
• FTP movies onto your Apple TV
• Use an Apple TV on a standard definition television