Apple TV Taken Apart

[andyblac]

on a second look, it appears to be the same stuff as my macbook

cool so it looks very likely we should be-able just to copy the Divx, etc codecs in there and it should them be-able to play avi's, could you try ?


but first you'll need to make the AVI file iTunes friendly. open a AVI in quicktime the do a save as -> choese self contained file. this will then make the AVI file with a quicktime wrapper around it (a .MOV file) then import that file into iTunes then sync it to the AppleTV

 

[Malcster]

cool so it looks very likely we should be-able just to copy the Divx, etc codecs in there and it should them be-able to play avi's, could you try ?


but first you'll need to make the AVI file iTunes friendly. open a AVI in quicktime the do a save as -> choese self contained file. this will then make the AVI file with a quicktime wrapper around it (a .MOV file) then import that file into iTunes then sync it to the AppleTV

Yup, looks like these guys did exactly that to get xvid/perian working on it.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2391956

edit: its on digg, i think there killing the server at the moment.

 

[moldymac]

like these:

QuickTimeMPEG2.component
QuickTimeIIDCDigitizer.component
QuickTimeMPEG.component
QuickTimeH264.component
QuickTime3GPP.component
ApplePixletVideo.component
QuickTimeUSBVDCDigitizer.component
QuickTimeVR.component
QuickTimeStreaming.component
QuickTimeMPEG4.component
QuartzComposer.component
QuickTime Updater
QuickTimeFireWireDV.component
QuickTimeComponents.component

Everything except
QuartzComposer.component
QuickTimeMPEG2.component

 

[pilotError]

Less than 24 hours after release and its been pretty exposed.

Seems like there's some light at the end of the Codec tunnel!

 

[gkarris]

How much RAM does this thing have?

All someone needs to do is modify OS X to work on it, and voila - a $299 Mac...

 

[killmoms]

You can just make reference movies for Xvids, so you don't have to create a big file that won't be compatible with anyone else's stuff—just create a reference movie that points to the AVI and you should be good to go. I believe that's what the SA guys did.

I'd be interested to see if the MPEG2 component could be put on there as well. It's not quite "playing VIDEO_TS" folders, but all those guys who have DVD rips that aren't re-encoded could just demux/remux into a QuickTime file and not have to re-encode. No quality loss!

 

[andyblac]

You can just make reference movies for Xvids, so you don't have to create a big file that won't be compatible with anyone else's stuff—just create a reference movie that points to the AVI and you should be good to go. I believe that's what the SA guys did.

but the original AVI would need to be on the same HD as the reference file if your streaming the AVI that would work, but i don't think a reference file would work when sync'd.