Hasta La Gadget!

Your Apple TV just got a lot less boring with the help of nifty new tools that override its restrictions and add powerful capabilities.

Launched Friday morning, the XBMC app for Apple TV 2 — which requires jailbreaking — expands the set-top box’s multimedia playback to support almost every type of audio or video format, including 1080p HD content. By default, the Apple TV can only play a few formats compatible with iTunes, and only supports 720p video.

Most interestingly, you’ll be able to install plug-ins to add new features to the XBMC media player that have yet to be released (similar to the add-ons or extensions found in modern browsers like Firefox and Chrome). That could open the door to additional tools, such as support for Bluetooth keyboards and mice, widgets to display additional web information, new codecs and the like.

The XBMC player also launched today for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, giving these devices similar capabilities to play different kinds of media formats. Installation requires jailbreaking the devices.

“With what we’ve done under XBMC and iOS, we’re going to see very shortly a huge jump from what people start offering under the Apple TV,” said Scott Davilla, maker of XBMC.

The XBMC app is part of a renewed communal effort to hack the Apple TV, as Wired.com reported late last year. Shortly after Apple released the Apple TV 2, coders realized it ran iOS, the same operating system as the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Some key programmers in the iOS community and a few hackers of the original Apple TV have turned their attention to tinkering with the new $100 set-top box.

“Now you have all the people who have done amazing stuff on the iPhone working with us, and it’s made our jobs for the Apple TV a thousand times easier,” said Kevin Bradley, an Apple TV programmer who works under the handle [bile], in a previous interview with Wired.com. “I think some really amazing things could come out of this.”

The first new Apple TV hacks have been promising. Prior to the release of XBMC, programmer Erica Sadun released a utility called AirFlick to stream non-iTunes-supported video from a Mac to the Apple TV. She also released an app called AirPlayer to stream video from the Apple TV to the Mac, which you can’t normally do with the Apple TV alone.

So far, Apple TV has been jailbroken and a few apps, like XBMC, are available for the jailbroken platform. But there is no equivalent to Cydia, the underground marketplace for apps available for jailbroken iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches.

Apple TV hackers are working on that, as adding Cydia support would allow people to add a wide variety of apps to the device’s main menu. For now, you’re limited to adding plug-ins to the XBMC media player, or manually installing a handful of other apps.

XBMC has not yet announced what plug-ins will be available, but stay tuned on the XBMC plug-ins page for any new releases.

To install the XBMC software on your Apple TV 2, you must connect it by USB to a computer and jailbreak it with Season Pass, which will automatically install XBMC.

Photo: _zand/Flickr

So, AppleInsider has some new info on Apple’s successor to the A4, which we were talking up last week, and our sources say it’s spot on. Specifically, AI claims that Apple is moving to dual-core SGX543 graphics, up from the A4’s single SGX535 GPU (also known as the PowerVR 535). What’s particularly great about this move is that the graphical power improvement is rated at around 4X the current generation — which makes a true 4X resolution iPad “Retina Display” upgrade seem much more of a possibility. We’re also starting to see 1080p HDMI video output as a “default” spec in this year’s generation of devices, so there’s no reason Apple will want to be left out — particularly in the Apple TV — and these dual graphics cores could handle that easily. The same cast of A4 characters are to credit for this new A5 generation, including the Apple-owned Intrinsity and PA Semi, while Samsung will again do the production duties. But details aside, we’re just excited to play around with all this new horsepower when it hits — apparently the PSP 2 is rumored to use the same graphics architecture with even more cores. Isn’t Moore’s law a grand thing?

More details emerge on Apple’s A5 chip for upcoming iPad 2 and iPhone 5 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AppleInsider  | Email this | Comments

Apple said last week that it expected its new Apple TV to cross the one million mark in sales before Christmas, and it’s now quietly confirmed that it’s managed to do just that. For those keeping score, that means it’s sold a million in three months, which is certainly impressive for something Apple still describes as a “hobby,” although that description does have the peculiar tendency to lower expectations somewhat. As you may recall, Roku also announced last week that it expected to sell a million units before the end of the year, and its CEO noted that the introduction of the new Apple TV actually seems to have led to a spike in sales of its own media streamers.

Apple confirms it’s sold one million new Apple TVs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 16:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Electronista  |  All Things D  | Email this | Comments

If you’ve run out of things to do with your Apple TV and have been using it as a hockey puck now that the lakes are getting solid, you’d better go dig it out of the snowbank. Following up on her iOS AirPlay hacks, Erica Sadun has released an alpha version of a tool called AirFlick which enables the playback of any ‘ol media files on an Apple TV. That’s demonstrated in a video below. Things aren’t perfect yet but already others are having a field day with the tool, the folks at TUAW figuring out how to not only stream whole DVDs to an Apple TV but their entire desktop image too by simply providing a VLC screen:// URL into the player. The quality looks a little iffy and, as you can see in the video below, it’s not entirely error-free. But, if you have the smallest little bit of patience, it’s sure worth a shot, eh?

Continue reading AirFlick allows streaming of arbitrary media, DVDs, even screencasting to the Apple TV (video)

AirFlick allows streaming of arbitrary media, DVDs, even screencasting to the Apple TV (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Dec 2010 07:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink MacRumors  |  TUAW (Airflick), (DVD Playback), (Screencasting)  | Email this | Comments

Curious timing, no? This morning, Cupertino’s PR department has blasted out a blurb stating that the newfangled Apple TV — which only started shipping three months ago — is expected to cross the one million mark in sales prior to Christmas Day. The obvious remark is hard to ignore: “That’s a lot for a hobby.” And yeah, it is. But it probably has more to do with trends in consumer purchasing and a delightfully low $99 price point than anything else, and if you doubt that logic, you should probably have a sit-down with Roku CEO Anthony Wood. The folks at Business Insider did, and Wood confessed that Roku media streamer sales have actually doubled since the introduction of the second-gen Apple TV. As the story goes, Jobs did the whole sector a solid by refocusing consumer attention on the set-top box realm, and with the most basic Roku retailing for just $59, it’s pretty clear that the outfit drives a tough bargain. Roku’s also expecting to sell its one millionth box by the close of this year, but of course it’s had a lot longer than three months to do so. Still, for an up and comer, selling one million of anything (let alone looking at $50 million or more in annual sales) is quite the achievement.

Continue reading New Apple TV, Roku media streamers race to break one million in sales

New Apple TV, Roku media streamers race to break one million in sales originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 09:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TUAW  |  Business Insider, Apple  | Email this | Comments