AwkwardTV

Today I have given the wiki captcha’s. I know I shuld have done this a lot earlier, but due to some events I wasn’t able to.

I hope you can all enjoy the wiki again, and my apologies for the delay.

Gizmodo reports: “At last someone has developed a patch to expand the Apple TV’s storage through its USB 2.0 port, using the internal hard drive to boot and one fat external 2TB drive”…

Jump right to the instructions. (Update: Also see the USB patch on appletvhacks.)

Yesterday Apple released the long-awaited AppleTV software update, including the new YouTube plugin. Along with this, the software update added a fair few things for developers to use in the BackRow framework and a new ‘AppleTV’ framework.

Sadly, they also removed just about everything from the image that wasn’t absolutely necessary for the functioning of the AppleTV software itself. So that means that there is no longer an AFP server, or AFP, NFS, etc. clients. We’ll be looking into a number of workarounds for that over the coming days, and we’ll post any useful information here.

Plugin developers were also in for a surprise when their appliance plugins stopped working on the new system. This was due to some (minor) changes in the way plugins were validated and loaded, particularly concerning the new parental controls within the latest AppleTV software. However, these were quickly worked around, and information posted on the AwkwardTV wiki detailing how to update appliance plugins for the new system.

So far ATVFiles and ATVLoader have been updated for the new system, and the BackRow Developers’ Kit has been updated to use it too, including new 1.1-compatible project templates and headers.

More information can be found here:

• The wiki page on the update
• The forum thread on the update
• Alan Quatermain’s post on the new Loader and BDK

AwkwardTV now has its very own shop at CafePress, currently selling some limited edition WWDC-themed T-Shirts. We have three designs at present: a black shirt with a white AwkwardTV logo (pictured left), and white shirts with the plugin logos on the front, AwkwardTV on the back, or vice versa.

So, if you’re going to WWDC this year, pick up a T-Shirt and send us a photo of you wearing it there

Apple will finally integrate functionality into Apple TV that has been available from 3rd-party developers (AwkwardTV plug-ins directory) since May 20.

Back when the Apple TV was launched this March, AwkwardTV stated: “No company in the world can build all the features into a product that users might want right from the beginning. But given Apple’s proven track record of building great improvements right into the next version, we see enormous potential.” And boom! Indeed, Apple is following 3rd-party development closely.

Also, AwkwardTV stated back in March, “In this spirit, we hope that Apple will eventually release a developer kit, or a guide for embedded applications. Especially since the Apple TV stands on the shoulders of giants.” Again, the community was faster.

What will we see next?

To round out an exciting week here at AwkwardTV we have some news that will bring joy to the hearts of all AppleTV plugin authors: The BackRow Developers’ Kit has now been released.

There is more information on the AwkwardTV wiki and on the author’s site.

There is a video tutorial available at the Internet Archive, and AwkwardTV member datafr0g has posted a link to a torrent version on the forums.

…it’s A Series Of Tubes!

Newcomer Xdog of the AwkwardTV community made one hell of a surprise entry. He created “A Series of Tubes” (or ASOT in short), which is a frappliance (plugin) that plays YouTube movies. We already posted a preview of it, but now you can grab it yourself.

Please see the wiki entry for more info, and use the forums to ask questions or thank Xdog

EDIT: due to a small bug, version 1.0.1 got released. Grab it here.

alanquatermain presents a video featuring “A Series of Tubes”, a plug-in by Xdog that brings YouTube to the Apple TV. Watch the AwkwardTV plug-in directory for its appearance, which can be expected to be soon.

This just in:

|bile| from the AwkwardTV community just gave us a preview of his “nitoTV” plugin. It plays movies using mplayer.

It’s been a little while since the news of the AwkwardTV Loader plugin was first released, but I’m very pleased to say that the item itself is now available.

This version provides the ability to download and install plugins listed at the AwkwardTV Plugins Directory, along with the ability to enable and disable AFP and SSH access to the AppleTV.

Future plans include a plugin manager/uninstaller feature, and support for installing QuickTime codecs and AppleTV screensavers.

More information can be found on the author’s site or on the wiki, and any comments, requests, bug reports, and so on can be posted in the ATV Loader forum.

Thanks go out to Dakaix and macTijn for testing, and to BigBaconAndEggs for marvellous artwork.