Posts tagged with "apple tv"

This Front Row Mockup Is Totally Gorgeous

Designer Zach Forrester tried to imagine what would Front Row look like if Apple updated its interface with new shiny pixels, animations and a visualizer. The result, a series of mockups available here, is impressive: Zach took the basic concept underlying Front Row’s UI and the Apple TV’s browsing experience and re-imagined them with a bit of artistic sense and pixel perfection in mind.

I’m not sure about the keyboard as-you-type he designed, but everything else looks great: from the Movies view with larger poster art and slide-in animation for a single item, to the music player that includes a subtle visualizer on top of the Cover Flow navigation and next to the Now Playing album art.

More screenshots are available here, and there’s a limited web demo for you to play around as well. [via Beautiful Pixels] Read more

Why Should I Jailbreak My Apple TV 2nd Gen?→

Why Should I Jailbreak My Apple TV 2nd Gen?

Good rundown on Reddit. Right now the options are: XBMC, Plex, aTV Flash, BTStack – and lots of other SSH tweaks you can play with. The current Apple TV jailbreak is tethered, but it’s a better scenario than the iPhone or iPad: when the device goes to “sleep” (TV is turned off, Apple TV doesn’t do anything) there’s no need to run the jailbreak software on next relaunch. As long as the power cord is plugged, the jailbreak is on.

Personally, I’m thinking about it just for Plex.

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Netflix: More Viewing Hours on Apple TVs Than iPads

In today’s earnings release, movie streaming service Netflix has announced that viewing hours on Apple TV have surpassed those through the iPad. What’s interesting is that the Apple TV was released in September 2010 and has sold less than two million units since then; the iPad, on the other hand, was released in April and has sold almost 15 million units.

It has to be considered, though, that Netflix makes more sense on a TV’s big screen than a tablet’s, and Apple implemented a native Netflix front-end on the second-gen Apple TV. The iPad has access to Netflix through an app that has to be downloaded manually from the App Store.

In spite of the iPad’s bigger numbers, people still like to watch movies on their TVs, apparently. Perhaps the iPad is more meant for “web video”, rather than just movies. [TiPB via Yahoo]

XBMC Comes to the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV 2

XBMC, a popular media center originally made for the first Xbox has become fairly widespread has been available for a variety of platforms, today that platform base extended to include the new Apple TV, iPhone and iPad.

The client on these new platforms is not stripped down to simply just view streams but is fully fledged with all the features you would come to expect it to have on a Windows PC. Because of this it is being distributed for the iOS devices through a Cydia repository and for the Apple TV through an apt-get install.

Scott Davilla one of the XBMC developers talked to TUAW and he revealed that development for the Apple TV 2 started only on November 1st last year and the iOS versions a few weeks later. He notes that the built in web server is currently disabled and the skin isn’t optimized but says improvements will be made including the possibility of implementing AirPlay into all the Apple related releases.

Perhaps one of the most interesting developments that occurred whilst XBMC was ported was the discovery of an API called VideoToolBox that allows hardware video decoding, encoding and scaling of the video size to match the final display size. So powerful is this API that Davilla and others that developed XBMC for iPad are able to stream full 1080p video with no transcoding to the iPad and it plays nearly perfectly, only dropping a few frames. Davilla’s confident however that the A4 processor can handle 1080p and will be working to ensure fully smooth playback.

TUAW put together some video’s demonstrating it running on all three of the new platforms, check it out here.

[Via XBMC, TUAW]

Seas0nPass Jailbreak for Apple TV 4.1.1 Released

The FireCore developers (the same guys behind aTV Flash) have released a jailbreak tool for the Apple TV 2nd generation called “Seas0nPass”. This jailbreak tool, like the popular Pwnage Tool app, can create a custom firmware file for the device to load and install non-Apple approved apps. Seas0nPass has been created exclusively for the Apple TV and also comes with an option to perform an easy “tethered boot” – a procedure that requires you to boot the Apple TV plugged in your computer. Seas0nPass lets you do that with a few clicks, in a simple and minimal user interface.

To use Seas0nPass, Mac OS X 10.6 is required. A Windows version will come out soon and, again, this only works on the 2nd gen Apple TV – don’t try to use with any other iOS device. Seas0nPass is free and open source, you can download the source code here. For instructions on how to use the app to jailbreak your Apple TV, see here.

First-Gen Apple TV Gets AirPlay Support with Remote HD

Remote HD is a new app developed by the Fire Core guys – the same folks behind the ATV Flash browser / utility – which brings AirPlay streaming to the original Apple TV, the first-generation silver model. Once installed on your iOS device from the App Store and on the original Apple TV through the Install Extras menu, you’ll be able to beam videos, Youtube, video podcasts and photos from your iPhone or iPad to the Apple TV.

If your iOS device is jailbroken and has AirPlay enabled for 3rd party apps, you’ll get the possibility to stream video from anywhere. Remote HD also lets you stream videos from iTunes on your computer.

Remote HD for iOS is available at $3.99 here.

1 Million Apple TVs Sold In Three Months

Last week, Apple announced they would reach the 1 million Apple TV units sold in a few days. According to John Paczkowski at Digital Daily, today Apple confirmed 1 million Apple TVs have been sold in three months since its release date:

Last Tuesday Apple said it expected sales of its next generation Apple TV to top one million units before Christmas. Today the company confirmed to me that they did just that. Seems the addition of AirPlay support for wireless streaming, better iOS integration and the device’s aggressive new $99 price point have done quite a bit to spike sales of Apple’s so-called “hobby.

That’s indeed an impressive result for what Apple used to call a “hobby”. I guess this is the effect iOS has on devices, and we haven’t seen apps on the Apple TV yet.

AirPlay Hacks: XBMC on Linux, AVI Live Conversion

Missed Erica Sadun’s latest AirPlay hack yesterday? It’s a new Mac app called AirFlick that allows to send video and URLs (say, from Youtube.com) from OS X to the Apple TV without needing to load a file from iTunes. It’s a standalone app that can send video files through AirPlay to an Apple TV 2nd gen running on your local network. Together with AirPlayer (which allows you to send videos and photos via AirPlay to a Mac), it’s another great hack from Erica Sadun.

It turns out, anyway, that AirFlick can do a lot more than “simply” allowing you to send video from OS X to the Apple TV. First, TUAW reader BC managed to stream with AirPlay .avi files using Air Video Server’s live conversion system, by copying the URL of AVS’ m3u8 playlist and paste it in AirFlick. It requires some serious Terminal skills, but it’s possible. Read more

Apple Expects Apple TV Sales To Reach 1 Million This Week

Apple just sent out a press release announcing that the company expect Apple TV sales to top one million units later this week. It also announced that iTunes users are now “renting and purchasing over 400,000 TV episodes and over 150,000 movies per day”.

The best part? The Apple TV is not a hobby anymore, but is described by Apple PR as “the perfect iOS accessory”, thanks to AirPlay. That’s quite an evolution.

Press release below. Read more