I had a look at the Apple Core LLC website and was pleasantly surprised that the USB patchstick was available again for purchase, either through post, or via software only download. I elected for the electronic only download, which did not take long. I had an old USB stick (1gb) sitting in the cupboard, so this formed the hardware for the patchstick.

The website claims that it is a fairly easy and painless job to create the patchstick using the software. What they do not tell you, is that it involves some Terminal work and once the patchstick is created, you need to use a SSH client such as FUGU to transfer files to the AppleTV.

In fairness to the Apple Core LLC, the instructions provided were very clear and even a terminal novice like myself was able to work my way through five (5) terminal entries (I just cut and pasted from the user guide).

Once the patchstick was created off to the AppleTV I went and again following the instructions, factory reset, updating the software again to the latest AppleTV version, turn the unit off (unplugging from the wall) and pluggin in the patchstick, turning the unit back on and away it went as promised in the user guide.

This whole process took a relatively painless 15 minutes and presto, some neat new features on the AppleTV.

The pain came, when I went to link the AppleTV to my IMAC's Itunes account and it would only sync the non DRM content. An hour of fiddling around, and then my pride got the better of me and I googled for an answer. Solution, a 5 second fix by authorising my Itunes account on the IMAC again, which then automatically authorised the AppleTV.

I used FUGU to connect into the AppleTV and it was just a case of drag and drop into whatever folder you create within the AppleTV folder structure. Since the 'Hack' installs Perian, most codecs should be covered, but the userguide also recommends to install additional codecs from an application called MPlayer all from within the Appletv menu on the tv (very quick).

End result - I am watching a Divx show on my AppleTV

Further features installed are things such as:

RSS feeds
Weather
Web Browsing (Where you can bookmark pages - handy for such great web front pages such as Mactalk).

My verdict: I am giving it a 10/10 for the results it delivered as promised. The 'software' for creating patchsticks can of course be found on various sites, but for a one stop fix, with clear instructions (that actually works) and email tech support and updates for 12 months, I was very happy with the price.

If anyone has any questions, just post here!

Damn, you're lucky. I took the plunge, and although it seemed to load alright, I didn't have a main menu screen, but after a while the screen saver kicked in, but then that is when things went bad!! I restored the atv again to the 1.0 firmware, but now it is stuck in an endless loop, from the menu to the apple logo and I can't access the menu long enough to update to the 2.0 software, nor is it usable in it's current state. If I ever get it back to 2.02, I am just going to leave it the fuck alone. It was easier to just convert my non atv video overnight, and have the whole thing working than this shit!!

I flashed my appletv and friends last week with the LLC patchstick worked a treat.

The solution could not be easier

i will try this one this weekend

Can you browse and play movies on network shared drives?

You sure can you just need to set up the shares

just installed patchstick, it took me 20 min to install

watching some Real format file,

got problem copying 800MB avi file using FUGU (350Mb was copied with no problems)

This is fantastic news for me. I held off getting the ATV as i couldn't easily play other file formats. Might be time to sell the Laser MediaMate and get me another Apple product

Since it has been three weeks I thought it would be interesting to provide an update. To date there have been no problems with the appletv. I also had some problems in transferring some files across to the Appletv using Fugu, but found that if the file name had spaces in them (e.g Doctor Who Episode) it would not transfer, but by changing the file name to one single string (e.g. Doctor.Who.Episode) the file transferred without issue. Happily watching material on my Appletv...

Probably a bit of a n00b question but does it matter what firmware your appletv has to start with? I seem to remember reading that you had to downgrade to firmware 1.0 for some of the plugins or is this part of what the patchstick does?

Basically I want to by a s/h apple tv on ebay but want to make sure the firmware version it has installed doesn't matter.

it does not matter what firmware the apple tv is on.

When you set up the patchstick, does the imac os need to be tiger?

I've been hacking at Apple TV's for a while now... and I'm curious, does this off-the-shelf product enable the USB port on the ATV so you can plug in an external hard disk?

Also, files used to "enable" the Apple TV are part of Tiger, if they are offering these files for sale (on their patch stick) they are clearly illegally selling part of Apple's operating system. (especially if they are copying the kexts to enable USB and filesystem support (ntfs, smbfs, msdosfs, ufs, etc.)

On the brighter side, if there are people out there running un-hacked Apple TV's your seriously missing out. It's like a soggy tissue without "opening it up" so it can play almost all formats, surf the net, etc.

I remember when I bought my ATV, I bought it with the sole intention to hack it and plug in an external hard disk with my media on it

fun stuff

As far as I am aware, the USB for external storage is a no. As for Tiger OS files, they get you to download a Tiger update file from Apple which they extract the files from.

Regards,
Shane.

the setup instructions tell you to do a restore - wiping everything and then upgrade to the latest firmware 2.02 isnt??

No you imac doesn't need to be on tiger, I used leoprad on my mp when i did it and it worked fine

hrmm as I suspected. I wonder what he "conditions of use" is for the update that you download. It's the intel 10.4.9 combo updater... When you actually use the update on your mac don't you have to agree to some conditions?

In any case, the public can download the combo updated from Apple's site, regardless of if they have a mac or not.

who knows... gray area