macnn/electronista
03/23/2007, 9:20am, EDT
Friday, March 23rdApple TV hacked to run XviD, other formats
The Apple TV has already been hacked to run non-supported video formats, according to a pair of forum users. Confirming Walt Mossberg's claim that the media hub runs a custom version of Mac OS X, the technique involves removing the hard drive and mounting it on a Mac, where it appears as a native HFS volume. Installing the SSH server Dropbear, the video container Perian, and a custom script lets the Apple TV play files outside of its normal MPEG-4 and H.264 standards.
The solution is not failsafe, the discoverers say: the solution requires the creation of reference QuickTime movies, preventing the hub from directly synchronizing the movies themselves. No video formats outside of the XviD standard have been tested so far, they add. However, the discovery suggests that the Apple device will be relatively easily accessible for hobbyists.
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cheers
I think it's meant to contrast with something more drastic like having to modify the hardware or hack firmware. Just installing a few things on the HD does seem pretty easy for anyone that has desire enough to go outside the box, so to speak...
You won't be limited to mov files you buy or things that natively come in that format. This potentially opens the door to all the DIVX/XVID/WMV/AVI/etc and "whatever the hip open format of the day is" content out there.
Makes the Apple TV that much more appealing a device. (No more need for the trusty Phillips DVP642!)
"Why go through all this work to support Xvid? Is the codec that much better than Apples H.264 codec?"
Not sure myself_ My guess is that Xvid/DivX are older formats than h.263/4_ And they aren't HD formats_ So my question becomes - why would one want to downgrade the play quality of a machine to meet the standards of a lesser format_
[read sarcasm] Yep - I bought a DVD player when they first came out and then instead of buying DVD based copies of the movies I owned - I opted to copy the VHS versions onto blank DVDs [end]
Otherwise I think they do it because it's there_