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AppleTV: Xvid Support, 120GB HD, Unpacking photos
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2007-03-24 07:55:37
When the AppleTV was first announced, the question on the minds of many (including the collective iPod Hacks admin hive-mind) was whether or not the unit would playback videos encoded in the rather popular, extremely high compression DivX format. As it turns out, the answer is "yes," for AppleTV users not loath to roll up their sleeves, that is.
As MacRumors reports in summary, a recent forum post made over at Somethingawful.com details the process, which is, in short, the following:- Open it up (4 screws on the bottom, small Torx bit)
- Put the 2.5" drive into a USB enclosure or whatever you want
- Mount the HFS filesystem
- Install Perian in /Library/Quicktime (as you normally would)
- Install Dropbear (or enable SSH if you know how... we gave up and used Dropbear)
- Add a startup script to disable the firewall or open up the ports you need for SSH
- Put the drive back in and boot it, ssh login as frontrow, password frontrow (or add an ssh key for yourself)
- Use a reference movie (use QT Pro to save a reference movie) to bootstrap your xvid file
Once the above has been completed, your AppleTV will play DivX videos by way of the Perian Xvid codec. There is no reason that other codecs couldn't be installed on the unit in a similar fashion to achieve playback capability of additional video formats.
A point to note is that, in digging into the unit to achieve the above result, the poster confirmed that the Pentium M-powered AppleTV is indeed running a somewhat standard install of Mac OS X.
Those tempted, by the above, to load their library of thousands of Xvid videos onto an AppleTV will note with pleasure the account of a Jonathan Bare who successfully upgraded the unit's modest 40GB hard drive to a rather more capacious 120GB drive. Strong work.
See my AppleTV unpacking gallery for a closer look.
Related links:
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