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Jailbreaking of New Apple TV Eased by iTunes Restore Capabilities

Being a non-hacker type..... What are the odds that the new Apple TV could be hacked to work as a very minimal DVR? All I really want to be able to do is record a football game on Sundays so I can watch it in peace when the little ones are in bed. Obviously there would need to be an app on the software side but I guess my question is whether the hardware in this thing would be capable of something like that?

(I realize that there are options for recording TV using a Mac but I'm looking for a barebones set top box to do the job. Like a $99 box for example :D )
 
rajsukul said:
Could this be how Apple TV owners will upgrade to new updates?
Click to expand...

No; there's an option in the on-screen settings menu to upgrade the device. But I can imagine this would be used in the case that one of those updates didn't go as planned.
 
tripjammer said:
A $99 apple computer...all you need is a bluetooth keyboard and mouse and a monitor...oh wait we have a HDTV for that one.
Click to expand...

That would be great!

Kind of like a cheap Mac Mini.

Oh please, let it be so :D

But as I recall there's no support for a mouse. Maybe that could be hacked?
 
Didn't the EU make some mandate saying that all cell phones had to have a microUSB connector by 2012 (or some arbitrary date)?

Maybe Apple is just testing the waters -- perhaps the iPhone 4G/iPhone 5 will have a microUSB connector instead of the proprietary 30-pin Apple connector.
 
Yvan256 said:
  • Extremely low-cost Apple computer: check
  • So low-cost that it's even less than a license for Windows: check
  • So low-cost that it's even less than a dirt-cheap low-end computer running Linux: check
  • Runs iOS4, which will allow a huge number of applications, including Safari, Mail and possibly even FaceTime (via the mini USB port?): check
But to do that Apple would need to have a Bluetooth keyboa... oh wait they already sell one. But using a mouse in your sofa isn't practical, they'd need to sell some kind of Bluetooth trackpa... oh wait they also already sell that.

If that happens, then I'm sure Apple will release a new compact Bluetooth keyboard with built-in Magic Trackpad. And since there is room for another flash chip in the new AppleTV, I guess they'll come out with a 16GB version too, for those who want to store more apps/emails/etc.
Click to expand...

You need to do a little more research.
Using a mouse from the couch with no surface - Check Gyration mouse.

Use it all the time to control my HTPC from the couch.
 
Mazda 3s said:
Didn't the EU make some mandate saying that all cell phones had to have a microUSB connector by 2012 (or some arbitrary date)?

Maybe Apple is just testing the waters -- perhaps the iPhone 4G/iPhone 5 will have a microUSB connector instead of the proprietary 30-pin Apple connector.
Click to expand...

Not gonna happen.
 
btw- on the apple store, the ship date for Apple TV is now 1-2 weeks instead of 2-3 weeks.

It is also listed on Amazon at its appropriate price of $99 by Apple. It states "temporarily out of stock" though. Previously it was listed by third party at twice the price and there were people reviewing it before it had been released.
 
Guys there is no question of "if this can run apps". It's already been confirmed that the iPad can run the Apple TV app native in iOS (I think it was called lowtide or something of the sort, which is the Frontrow equivalent on Mac OS), which means the iPad can pretend to be an ATV. Why is this important? Well because all one has to do is replace the native Apple TV iOS with the iPad OS on the ATV and voila, you have all your iPad apps, and your ATV.
 
bierslayer said:
Being a non-hacker type..... What are the odds that the new Apple TV could be hacked to work as a very minimal DVR? All I really want to be able to do is record a football game on Sundays so I can watch it in peace when the little ones are in bed. Obviously there would need to be an app on the software side but I guess my question is whether the hardware in this thing would be capable of something like that?
Click to expand...

Slim. But maybe not "none".

There are 5 ports on the back of the box.
  1. Power - not gonna be very helpful
  2. HDMI - it's one way though - out. Not gonna help.
  3. Optical audio in - also one way, out.
  4. Micro USB - potentially helpful
  5. Ethernet - potentially helpful.
The big things that are missing are a tuner, and storage space. You're not going to get tuning inside the Apple TV, but maybe El Gato could come up with something potentially, if it could be hooked up.

SD recording takes roughly 2GB per hour, so there's not much room there for really anything useful after the OS, some buffering space, and apps. I'd say you'd be lucky to have room for 2 hours on board. Remember this is just SD.

So to do anything useful, you'd need an external hard drive to go with it. So that brings back the inputs - you've got 1 micro USB and 1 Ethernet. It's pretty expensive to hook up a drive via Ethernet, (think NAS), so for the drive to be economical, it'll have to be USB, and use that slot.

Now I'm not aware of any Ethernet based tv recording devices, but I suppose it may be possible,. Of course the software would have to be present on the ATV2.

Perhaps a more reasonable alternative would be to use a USB hub. Then you could attach both the drive and the tuner at the same time.

Hmmm. And we may have a winning straw man.

However. And I repeat, HOWEVER, devices to do recording exist, but rely on having a full fledged computer to do some of the lifting. And they go for about $200.

Dan
 
Dan-- said:
Slim. But maybe not "none".
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation. Still intriguing for all of the other potential uses mentioned. Was really hoping the Vulkano Monsoon would be my answer but it's been trashed in reviews so far. Anyway, will be curious to see what people do with this.
 
For people that want a DVR

I assume you already have a Mac or PC and may be that is not near the TV. You can buy a HDHomeRun and hang it on your LAN. Use eyeTV 3 to record your shows into your Mac. Use the automatic export to AppleTV setting in eyeTV 3. Then you can watch those shows on the TV using AppleTV. The disadvantage is you cannot watch anything live or while it is recording. I think for this the new Mac Mini with HDMI output is a better choice. Apple is not going to have a built in tuner and DVR. There are too many standards within a country let alone the world.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

I have OpenSSH or whatever on my jaibroken iPod Touch 1G and it's very useful. If they can get that on the Apple TV OS, maybe someone could port SpringBoard to the TV.
 
cmendill said:
That is h264 video. That is decoded with hardware, not the CPU. I am saying that new content brought in by jailbreaking will likely be FLASH. The CPU will likely not be able to handle much raw flash decoding. You need to understand the difference between GPU accelerated decoding of h264, which is how all iOS devices decode video, and which is why you don't have flash on your iPhone, and CPU decoding of non-h264 video.
Click to expand...

So your definition of "more powerful" is the ability to decode flash video? Why is Flash even relevant for an iOS-based, living-room device?

There's already a Hulu app, Slingplayer app, Netflix app, ABC app, VLC, Youtube, etc. etc. that works on iOS. The potential for jailbreaking the ATV has nothing to do with Flash and everything to do with running iOS apps.

It's been confirmed that the new ATV can handle much higher bitrates for h-264 video. That opens a lot more doors for potential users than Flash compatibility.
 
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