News for Tuesday, 27 March 2007

First do not stress, Macbidouille/Hardmac is not going to turn into an Apple TV-dedicated website. We are simply reporting all information about this product available for only couple of days. And we are mostly interested by the way to add features or hack some limitations; as the Apple TV looks to be prone to be modified, as the Apple II used to be in the past.
Despite official Apple statements, the website wiki.awkwardtv.org reports that the USB port is fully functional and not reserved for maintenance, as one can boot in single user mode by plugging a USB keyboard and pressing the 'S' key when booting.
Even better, the following video demonstrates how to boot the Apple TV from an USB external HD:

You simply need to press simultaneously the 'menu' and '-' buttons from the remote control to boot from a partition located on an USB external HD.
This trick is important, as it allows users to modify the system while giving access to larger storage space without disassembling the machine to change the HD as we published the procedure this morning.

Hacking the Apple TV: Part II
Every day, users report their tips and tricks to add functions and/or feature to the Apple TV. If it remains still difficult to identify true claims from rumors, the Apple TV appears to be a rather opened device, especially surprising for an Apple-branded hardware. The system is indeed an OSX Lite, lacking all unnecessary features. To illustrate the potential of this Apple TV, forum members from Somethingawful could launch FireFox and even run VLC to watch an Xvid-encoded movie at 720P.
Of course, it is not easy to perform, and one will have to find the way to get access to the USB port to plug a keyboard, or even better a BT dongle (if the BT drivers and management tools are still present in the system).
Last but not least, Rogueamoeba demonstrated that Apple TV works with CRT TV and supports 480i display mode. Quite surprising, but there is a technical reason: if your TV is recent enough, it might include a YUV/component video input, then it will be recognized and supported by the apple TV. If it does not sport a YUV/component video input, then it will not work, and you will either not be able to use the Apple TV on this CRT TV, or you will have to buy a compatible TV:

Apple TV works with widescreen, enhanced-definition or high-definition TVs capable of 1080i, 720p, 576p, or 480p resolutions, including popular models from these manufacturers.

You might also use a YUV to SCART adaptor, but here again it will depends on the components located in the TV or how old is your CRT TV. And buying a YUV to SCART converter will then be so expensive that it could be a better investment to purchase a new TV.

At the 2007 Optical Fiber Conference, IBM demonstrated an new optical transceiver chipset able to deliver speed 8 times faster than current component.

With such component, one can reach 160Gbits/s, or 20GB/s. IBM plans to quickly initiate the production of this component, which should not be particularly expensive, and provide exciting capabilities for our internet connection. If one can already get 100Mbits/s when connected to a optical fiber-network, we can already dream of much higher data speed transfer, once such component will have been added to the ISP sever and in the consumer fiber modem/router. In other words, such gain could be reached with the already installed fiber networks.
Of course, with such network data transfer speed, one will have to make a second revolution, for our HDs, we will have to dramatically improve access time and write/read speed, otherwise the new bottleneck will be our storage units.

After having launched in March Airport 802.11n cards dedicated to the upgrade of Core Duo-based MacBook and iMac (US$149), Quickertek has recently added a kit for upgrading a Mac mini to 802.11n (US$179); in addition to the tools and the upgrade card, it also includes an antenna. Such a price might prevent many users to perform the operation, as one can buy a Mac mini Core Duo from the Refurb Store for around 400€.
PS: we think Quickertek must read carefully our website, and offers the upgrade kit as soon as we release the procedure to perform the operation...

We finally received our Apple TV yesterday, and we immediately decided to change its HD. Hereafter is the procedure to perform this operation.

First, flip the unit upside down, then remove (or should we say peal?) the latex-based foam covering the surface.

Once the foam is removed, you will spot 8 Torx-type screws. Remove the screws indicated by the red arrows, you should get 2 long ones (from the front side) and 2 shorter ones. The screws pointed by the blue arrows maintain the HD, so do not remove them before having entirely opened the case.

Open the case of the Apple TV carefully, then unplug the HD ribbon cord from the motherboard. Then you can remove the 4 blue arrows screws and disassemble the HD from the case.

We exchange the original 40GB Fujitsu HD by a 120GB Fujitsu HD, as they are known being rather silent while releasing much less heat than other HD. Of course, such HDs are not exhibiting high performance level, but in the Apple TV it is not really a key factor, and in addition they are not expensive (79€ from our partner Macway). If you wish to have a larger storage space, you can install any 2.5" HD.
Then, install the original HD in an USB2 or FireWire external case, then connect it to a Mac Intel (we do not know if one could perform the following operation on a PPC-based Mac).
From that point, you will have to use the Terminal, so launch it. We used part of the instruction from a tutorial published by appletvhacks.net/
Enter the following command diskutil list then execute it.
It will indicate the path of your Apple TV HD, so for us it was /dev/disk1

Then, enter the following command, and replace /dev/disk1 by the path you obtained, and "Lionel" by your user name then execute the command and be patient:
dd if=/dev/disk1 of=/Users/lionel/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img bs=1024k
For information, with a MacBook connected via FireWire to the Apple TV HD, it took about one hour to create the image of the original 37.26GB. Once the operation is completed, you should have a disk image file of 37.6GB entitled "AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img" and located at the root level in your user account.

You can now store in a clean and safe place the original Apple TV HD.
Then, install the new HD in your external case, and execute the following command diskutil list to identify the path.
Then, enter the following command, and replace /dev/disk1 by the path you obtained, and "Lionel" by your user name then execute it:
dd if=/Users/lionel/AppleTVDrive-Compressed.img of=/dev/disk1 bs=1024k
Be patient, it should not be faster than the first step.
Then, one will need to change the size of the partition currently defined to 32GB; as a manufacturing reset is NOT efficient to modify the partition scheme.
We used iPartition, a powerful and easy to use application; try to use it regularly as it has a price: 41€.

Modifying the partition scheme takes couple of seconds, then your new HD is ready to be installed in the Apple TV, and the latter to be finally connected to you TV.

As shown by this capture, it is now done and working perfectly.
If you plan to change the HD, then do it immediately as all modifications or setting will be lost.