Update – With the latest Apple TV update breaking Boxee users install of the media center software, I thought it would be a good time to re-run our popular post on installing Boxee on your Apple TV, enjoy.

“Hacking” the Apple TV probably can’t get any easier that it is right now. I put quotes around the word hacking because you are really adding software to the Apple TV and all it’s current functions remain intact and untouched. Also, a factory restore will put your precious Apple TV back to as good as new. I prefer the term “patching”. 

In the past the choice has been to go to the various sites such as AwkwardTV or Apple TV Hacks and do it yourself or buy the install image and “how to” from a commercial site. I’ve tried the commercial offering and I prefer not to mention names but I’ll just say it’s not good value for money, more so now. Thanks to the folks at the atvusb-creator project on Google code, creating a patchstick is really easy. A patchstick is really a USB thumb drive or “key” that contains a boot image for the AppleTV that installs applications on its hard drive. The AppleTV is designed to boot from it’s USB port when powering up and if a suitable image is found it boots the USB image instead of the hard drive. The image created on the patchstick is written there by the atvusb-creator application – it’s really as simple as plugging in the USB key and running the program. 
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We’ve posted about this before, asking in general, what software you use to backup your DVD’s on to your Apple TV. It was more for spreading general useful information, but as blogs go, these things tend to get pushed to the back and lost.

We’ve decided to start a resource here at Apple TV Junkie, a page dedicated to Apple TV users looking to get alternative media on to their Apple TV and how to do that. And we don’t mean Boxee. All though we believe Boxee will be an important alternative for Apple TV users in the future, we believe it’s not quite ready for prime time and the average Apple TV Joe.

So the question would be to all you, what software do you use to encode media in the proper Apple TV format? This should be both Windows or Mac. All your submission will be important in helping us build our new resource page.

Thanks to ATVJ supporter John D. for the seed to this idea.

After a bit of an absence, I’m back. The last month has been busy for me, but that’s the past time to move forward and share some Apple TV love.

A quick tip today for all of us evil PC users. As we all know one of the best parts of Apple TV is we can stream content to it. I have a 500gb external drive hooked to my PC, unhacked Apple TV, and a Apple airport extreme base station for wireless goodness. Like most of us I use Handbrake to convert my videos to the proper format, but unlike on the Mac side I can’t just pop in my DVD and let it run. Unfortunately some mojo must be done first to overcome the encryption, and while there are programs that can do it for me most take some time to give me a “clean” file. That was the case before I found DVD43, this little plug-in un-encrypts in real time. A smiley face in the system tray is yellow when not being used, pop in a DVD after about 30sec it turns green and you’re ready to go. Go into Handbrake, select the Video_TS folder, and convert away. This is extra handy when converting a TV show, because I can then select each episode individually, que them, and convert a whole disc at one time. DVD43 has cut my conversion time down by about 25%, and has resulted in less stack dump errors.

As a side note, after the last update I can’t seem to get my Apple TV to go into sleep mode. Anyone else having this issue?

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As you likely know by now, I have a multiply hacked Apple TV. I now have more main menu items on my Apple TV than I want or need. It took some digging to get to the bottom of this so I thought I would post the solution here (thanks to this post here) :

1. You do need a hacked Apple TV with ssh access. Login: ssh -1 frontrow@Apple-TV.local
2. Find the Finder app plugins: cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns
3. Don’t delete the plugins merely rename them. For example I didn’t want the Jaman and Saphire plug in so: sudo mv Jaman.frappliance Jaman.frappliance.old   (sudo password is, by default, “frontrow”)
4. Relaunch Finder: killall Finder && open /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app