Apple TV 2 (ATV2), jailbroken with XBMC is awesome

Over the weekend, I bought a new AppleTV.

In Australia, the cost of one of these is $128. Pretty fair price considering what it *can* do after you hack it.

It comes with a Power cord and a remote control only. No cables, so I had to also buy a cheap HDMI cable to plug it in.

Front view

Rear View

The MicroUSB connector is used for connecting to iTunes to restore the factory firmware. Its also used to flash your hacked firmware and to perform a tethered boot.

Out of the box, functionality is fairly limited, and pretty much useless to me, so within about 10 minutes of powering it up, i was already trying to jail break it.

Being a mac user (not a fanboy mind you), I was able to use Seas0nPass to do the JB and the tethered boot.

The insstructions for Seas0nPass didn't work for me for putting it in DFU mode and flashing. After some help from my good friends on IRC, I was given this link. This method seemed to work, although the process listed isn't perfect. I found the following worked for me:

• connect usb (wait 10 secs or so) and then the power
• press menu+play/pause for 6 secs ( until you get the faster flashing)
• remove the power <-- this is the key <---- Seriously, this is really important.
• put the ATV into DFU mode by menu+play/pause for 7 secs or so ( until faster flashing)
• plug in power
• Press the "Create IPSW" button in Seas0nPass. Say yes to scripting if it asks. It builds and uploads to ATV2, taking control of itunes in the process - dont press any buttons, leave the computer alone
• iTunes says 'success' - no error messages
• disconnect usb and plug in HDMI and then network cable

After the flash succeeded, for Tethered boot to work, I had to:

• Plug in USB - wait about 10 seconds
• Plug in Power
• Press menu+play/pause buttons for 7 seconds to put it in DFU mode
• Seas0nPass does some magic and eventually says success
• Once it says success, pull out the USB cable and plug in HDMI cable before light stops flashing
• Watch ATV2 boot, and you're done.

Next, I ssh'd in and followed instructions as per here for XBMC.

Win!

As a media centre, XBMC is as good as I remember it to be on my old original Xbox, except with the AppleTV2, it will render up to 1080P content. Unfortunately it only outputs 720P, but its hard to tell the difference, even on big 52" TV.


The interface is slightly laggy, but I'm sure thats something they'll fix in future revisions of XBMC. Given how good the development was back when i used it on my old Xbox, I'd say it wont be long before that problem is fixed.


So far its played pretty much everything I've thrown at it with the exception of ISOs of DVDs sitting on my file server. There was also one 720P AVI that was playing, but was a bit jerky. 720P and 1080P MKVs with subtitles are no problem, neither are your average standard def .avi TV episode.


I highly recommend this as a cheap media centre solution for anyone with a HDMI capable TV/Stereo.