Recent weeks have seen me busy spinning, i.e. achieving very little on the technology front outside of work. A nasty cold and related sinus issues has kept me away from computer screens as much as I can get away with but now at last the problems are receding and I’m starting to get traction again.
As somebody who tends to fall into the trap of over-committing themselves I have a number of projects in a variety of states…
My Formula One site is approaching the winter maintenance window where I’d like to implement OpenId support. Which first requires me to pick up Maven properly. That all needs finishing by the end of the year. At the same time I need to move the site to new hardware provided by me, but before I can do that I need to sort out how to configure the DNS and mail server.
Now add in one or two other real back burner projects relating to consolidating my external hosting into one account with one provider and you can see I have enough to keep me busy for some time to come. Obviously this is the time to start yet another project. Step forth Apple TV.
When the Apple TV was launched I liked what I saw. A quiet, slim box that will sit discretely under the TV and provide access to all my media. Except of course there are a few teeny weeny restrictions. The box only supports a couple of video formats (H264, MPEG-4) while almost all of my video is MPEG2 or DivX. Oh, and to access material not already on the device’s hard drive requires iTunes to be running on the machine that holds the media. All of my audio and video is on a NAS device and I don’t want to run another machine just to get access to it.
The Apple TV is a good starting point for a home media centre because it is in essence a small, low power, Intel based PC but as always in the Apple world, there is a tie-in to iTunes thereby providing Apple with a revenue stream once you realise that all video has to come from them, or be converted first.
Under the covers the Apple TV is simply an underpowered Mac OS X and a specialised user interface, and this has given hackers a way in to ‘customise’ the device (which will, of course, void the warranty). However it is a relatively simple process to provide remote SSH access and from there move on to install additional CODECs and indeed other software to extend the functionality. Apple TV comes with either a 40Gb or 160Gb hard drive and it is possible to change those as well…
So I’ve bought a nearly new 40Gb Apple TV on eBay and after cloning the hard drive (I want to keep the original drive in its unmodified form) I will crack it and then upgrade it to be the machine it always should have been. About the only thing it won’t be able to do is record. The things I am currently considering:
- Adding a range of additional CODECs so that I can play non-MPEG4 format videos
- Adding support for accessing media across the network without the need for iTunes to intervene
- Changing the CPU, if feasible, to something with a little more grunt so that I can…
- Run background processes to perform other useful tasks like downloading podcasts and other media resources from the internet.
I’ve already found one good source for achieving at least some of theses goals at appletvhacks.net.
My delivery is due any day, and I’ll post updates as my customisation progresses.