Air Media Center is a multi-platform mobile media center that lets you stream your media collection from your computer to Apple TV 4. Unlike other players, AMC will automatically transcode your music, video and photo streams when necessary.

Air Media Center is a suite of 2 applications: in order to enjoy AMC on your Apple TV, you will first need to download and install a free server application on your Mac or PC.

Learn more about Air Media Center.

Partnering with App Dynamic, the developer of AMC, we’re giving away 5 free copies of this amazing piece of software.

Here’s how to participate:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The post Giveaway: win a copy of Air Media Center for Apple TV 4 appeared first on Apple TV Hacks.

FireCore is today rolling out a big 4.2 update for Infuse, its powerful media player for iOS and tvOS. This is one of the major updates, and adds in some interesting new features including Library View on tvOS, trakt ratings sync, Spotlight search on iOS, improved Dolby audio, and a number of others.

Library View

Infuse will search deep within your folders to catalog every movie, TV show, and cat video it can find and group them all together in a slick new menu.

With a set of all-new Smart Filters, you can browse by genre, rating, release date, age rating, and even get an overview of all unwatched or recently added items.

Trakt ratings sync

In addition to playback progress and watched history, trakt ratings now also stay in sync between all your devices. Rated items are now designated with a set of distinctive orange stars that get updated from trakt automatically.

Ratings can be easily posted to trakt from Infuse on iOS/tvOS or through trakt.tv.

Favorites

The new Smart Filters can also be used to create Favorites that appear right on the Infuse home screen. It lets you customize Infuse to ensure your favorite content is front and center for whenever you’re ready.

Adding custom artwork for your Favorites can now be done right from the Apple TV menus.

Spotlight search (iOS)

Videos selected from within Spotlight will instantly start playing, and Infuse will pick up right where you left off if you happened to already start that video on another device.

Here is what’s new in Infuse 4.2 for tvOS:

• All-new Library View with Smart Filters
• New artwork picker for folder and library favorites
• Personalized trakt ratings
• Auto-select first unwatched TV episode
• Episodes now grouped by season in Recently Watched
• Streamlined sign in process for trakt
• Recently used subtitle languages are now grouped together
• Mark folders to use embedded metadata only
• Resume prompt now displays resume time
• Additional Continuous Playback options
• Better support for 60+ fps videos
• Apple TV ‘Dolby Digital’ option now works with 7.1 content
• Improved universal remote scrolling
• Improved indexing behavior
• Improved lower shelf navigation
• Improved double-tap browsing controls
• Improved display of DTS-HD MA track names
• Improved trakt rating prompt
• Many, many other minor improvements and fixes

Learn more about Infuse 4 for Apple TV and check out the video showing the setup process and explaining how Infuse actually works on Apple TV 4.

There are 2 ways to download Infuse.

1. Search for Infuse in the App Store app on Apple TV.
2. Download Infuse or Infuse Pro on a computer or iOS device, then locate Infuse under the Purchased tab in the App Store app on Apple TV.

Note: The same features are available whether you upgrade to Pro via In-App Purchase, or purchase the standalone Infuse Pro app.

Be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for all the latest Apple TV-related news.

The post Infuse 4 for Apple TV updated with all-new Library View with Smart Filters, improved Dolby audio, and more appeared first on Apple TV Hacks.

Air Media Center, a popular multi-platform mobile media center, has been recently updated with support for the new Apple TV. The app now lets you stream your media collection from your computer not only to your mobile device, but also to Apple TV 4.

Air Media Center doesn’t require any syncing or copying; it will automatically transcode your music, video and photo streams when necessary to match the playback capabilities of your device, so you don’t have to worry about codecs or file conversions.

Air Media Center is a suite of 2 applications: in order to enjoy AMC on your iPhone/iPad (Android and Windows Mobile versions will be available soon) or Apple TV, you will first need to download and install a free server application on your Mac or PC. Air Media Server is available for free in the Mac App Store. PC version is also available for free from the developer’s website.

To download the app on your Apple TV simply search for “Air Media Center” on the Apple TV App Store.

The app costs $4.99.

Features:
• Retina display optimized video and photo streaming
• Authenticate using your Mac or PC user accounts
• Hide files or folders using file system permissions
• Play videos, music, photos of any form or shape
• Provides instant live transcoding if needed
• Folder, iTunes playlist and iPhoto album sharing

Supported files/formats:
AVI, DIVX, XVID, MKV, MP4, M4V, MOV, MPG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, EyeTV MPEG2, MPEG-4, ASF, WMV, WMA, WAV, MP3, 3GP, OGG, FLAC, MPEG audio, ADTS AAC audio, Real Audio and Video, Macromedia Flash (Only embedded audio is decoded), FLV (Macromedia Flash video files), DVR-MS, WTV, CDR, ISO and more.

Be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for all the latest Apple TV-related news.

The post Air Media Center updated with Apple TV support appeared first on Apple TV Hacks.

Since its release, XBMC has completely changed the way we consume media through our devices. Originally standing for Xbox Media Center, this software media player has come a long way and the developers think it’s time for a name change – a name change to Kodi.

Team XBMC has written a detailed post on their blog, discussing the circumstances leading to this decision as well as on how it will affect the users. The most important cause is that the name simply didn’t make sense anymore.Though initially brought for Xbox, XBMC hardly works on hacked Xboxes now and has never run on the new Xbox 360 and Xbox one.

Also XBMC now runs addons, games and streams content than just videos, turning itself into an entertainment center rather than a media center.

In essence both the “XB” and “MC” simply don’t make a whole lot of sense any more.

Another reason cited by the team is the legal issues concerning the fact that their name XBMC is derived from Xbox which is a trademark of Microsoft. Though they have never faced any legal actions against this, it largely restricted the usage of the name. Also:

In the past few years, we have seen the mass confusion that resulted from this lack of control first hand. Users have been fooled into wasting money buying boxes running hacked and typically broken versions of XBMC. News sites and blogs have gotten caught in confusing language numerous times. Unrelated fan communities, often founded under the best of intentions, have found themselves under attack, simply because no guidelines existed to simplify the process of clearly distinguishing themselves from the XBMC Foundation

Hence, the devs decided to change XBMC to Kodi Entertainment Center. About the term Kodi and how the team came up with it – you can read that here.

Surprisingly, this is not the first time this has happened. In fact, XBMC has had three name changes since its release in 2002. But the team promises that Kodi will be the final one.

Kodi will take over the XBMC title staring with the next major release, Kodi 14. Team Kodi has also confirmed that the renaming won’t cause any difference to an average user and that they are neither selling out nor partnering with any other companies in the process.

Also read: 

• How to install XBMC 13.0 Gotham on Apple TV 2
• How to get XBMC on your HDTV via Apple TV 3 (or non-jailbreakable Apple TV 2)
• Top 10 best XBMC addons for Apple TV 1 and Apple TV 2

Be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for all the latest Apple TV-related news.

The post XBMC changes name to Kodi appeared first on Apple TV Hacks.

Some time ago we reported on a new hack discovered by an iOS hacker David Schuetz that let us put our own apps on Apple TV. By enabling an Apple TV OS feature called Add Site, Schuetz was able to add a custom site pointing at a Raspberry Pi media server which he added to the Apple TV. The hack quickly got closed as Apple disabled the Add Site feature. In a new post Schuetz explains what exactly happened and speculates on the future of his hack.

You can go through the article for the detailed explanation of what happened with the Add Site feature, here’s the conclusion:

If your ATV is on 6.x, and it doesn’t already have the Add Site profile loaded, then you can’t add it, unless you get a profile signed by Apple. And since the Apple TV program isn’t open to the public, you can’t get that profile. So, we’re pretty much stuck.

Great for Security. Lousy for DIY Apple TV hackers. Right?

Well, there is one workaround: If your ATV is on 5.2 or 5.3, you can still add the profile (you just won’t see the button), and then upgrade to 6.0, and, boom!, the Add Site application is available, and fully functional.

Unfortunately, Apple also introduced a signature test when using the Add Site feature. How to deal with this? Schuetz promised to discuss it in the next post.

Be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for more coverage of this topic.

The post Apple TV hacking: “Add Site” hack follow-up appeared first on Apple TV Hacks.

A new hack was discovered which allows custom site bookmarks to be added on pre-iOS 7 Apple TV’s. The backdoor hack comes from an iOS hacker David Schuetz who discovered a way to enable an Add Site feature which adds the ability to add custom sites to the Apple TV menu. However, it seems the hack has already been closed: it seems Apple checks for the existence of additional links placed on the Home Screen and actively disables them, so unfortunately the hack was short lived. Hopefully, Schuetz’s discovery will inspire people to figure out how to disable this check. Despite the hack being closed, here’s the details.

The hack didn’t even require a jailbreak and is compatible on version 5.x and earlier builds of Apple TV. By enabling the Add Site feature, Schuetz was able to add a custom site pointing at a Raspberry Pi Media server which he added to the Apple TV.

The process is explained in detail on this website and is shown in the below video:

Ultimately, to get this to work you have to do the following:

1. Start up a simple web server somewhere and put the .mobileconfig file there
2. Go to the AppleTV Settings app
3. Select “General” then scroll the cursor down to highlight “Send Data To Apple”
4. Press “Play” (not the normal “Select” button)
5. Enter the URL for the .mobileconfig file (don’t forget to add https://)
6. After loading, you may need to restart the AppleTV for the change to take effect

The possibilities that this opens up are endless, but it seems Apple have patched it in the 6.0 firmware. Let’s hope someone can figure out how to disable the checks Apple impose.

Be sure to follow Apple TV Hacks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for all the latest Apple TV-related news.

The post Apple TV hacker discovered how to add custom sites, the hack gets closed quickly appeared first on Apple TV Hacks.

Do you have more than one Apple TV in your house? Are you the techy in your community, forced to install and set up XBMC on Apple TVs for all those people you know and love? What if there were an easy way to simply clone the XBMC installation from one device to multiple others? Well, you can. This process can be used for a variety of reasons, but the most popular would absolutely be:

• Backing-up your current XBMC set up (allowing you to restore to it at any time)
• Building an XBMC template (if you will) to help setting up other Apple TV’s quicker & easier
• Creating a standard of XBMC, including add-ons, for installing on your other iDevices (iPad, iPhone, etc.)

Whatever your reasons, this is a worthwhile skill to have. For the sake of clarity, for those of you who do not know, the Apple TV 1 and the Apple TV 2 differ from each other in that they bother run on different operating systems. The Apple TV 1 was originally build on the OSX platform, same as the older MACs. The Apple TV 2 on the other hand is built on the iOS platform. Same as the iPad, iPhone, & iPods. These differences will cause the process of cloning your Apples to vary dependent on which devices you own. That said, grab your ATV, your computer and let’s go:

Requirements

If you are using a Windows Machine

• WinSCP – File Manager
• PuTTY – Terminal App

If you are using a MAC machine

• CyberDuck – File Manager
• Terminal App (preinstalled)

[Extract The Items Needed For Cloning]

Step 1: We first need to open your File Manager. You will be met with either an option to open a Connection, if so select this option, or a group of boxes requiring input. Fill out the boxes using following sample. Note yours may look different but the information will be the same.

• At the top you will likely see a drop down menu that says “File Transfer Protocol.” Here you will need to select the option that says “SFTP” or “SSH”
• Server: Here you need to enter the IP address of your Apple TV
• Apple TV 1 (SILVER BOX) = Username: frontrow & Password: frontrow
• Apple TV 2 (BLACK PUCK) = Username: root & Password: alpine

Step 2: Now we will need to navigate to the following file location, and save a copy of the folder titled “XBMC” to your desktop, or any other location that you will remember. This will take some time as this file contains EVERYTHING pertaining to your XBMC installation:

• Apple TV 1 (SILVER BOX) = /Applications/XBMC.app/Contents/Resources/XBMC/
• Apple TV 2 (or any iDevice) = /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/

[REMEMBER] this is your CLONED XBMC folder. It is important that you take good care of this item as this is what we will use on the next machine… or your current machine should you simply be making a backup. Once this is done, all following steps will take place on the device you want to install the CLONED FOLDER on.

Installing The CLONED XBMC Folder

Step 1: Start with a blank canvas:

• Factory restore your target device (making sure you don’t upgrade to an un-jailbroken firmware)
• Jailbreak the Apple TV again
• Do a fresh Install of XBMC on the device.

Step 2: Launch XBMC… THEN EXIT XBMC… on the same device.

Step 3: Connect to your to the Apple TV using the File Manager as we did in beginning of this guide.

Step 4: Navigate to the following file location:

• Apple TV 1 (SILVER BOX) = /Applications/XBMC.app/Contents/Resources/XBMC/
• Apple TV 2 (or any iDevice) = /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/

Step 5: Once you can see the XBMC folder on your current machine we need to do two things:

• Rename the XBMC folder, on the Apple TV, to “OLDXBMC”
• Upload the CLONED XBMC FOLDER, from your desktop, that we saved on your computer earlier in this guide. This may take some time to upload as this file contains EVERYTHING pertaining to your XBMC installation. So give it time

Step 6: Now we will need to connect to our device via the Terminal App, via SSH, using the following commands.

• ssh root@[Your Apple TV’s I.P. Address]
• Example: ssh root@192.168.2.18
  • This can be found under General/Network on your ATV’s main menu
  • Note:Should you receive an “Authentication Error,” copy and paste the following command into the Terminal window and press Enter, then continue.
    • rm ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Step 7: Once connected we will input one command.

• chown -R mobile:mobile /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/

Step 8: Reboot and Enjoy

Congratulations! Not only do you have a safe backup of your XBMC installation, but you can now set up twice as many devices in a quarter of the time.

Read also: Top 10 best XBMC addons for Apple TV 1 and Apple TV 2.

The post How to clone the XBMC installation on Apple TV 1 and Apple TV 2 appeared first on Apple TV Hacks.

Though this article may seem ‘to basic’ for the tech elite that frequent this pages, please note that this article is simply a launching point for our ALL THINGS XBMC series. We will not be breaking down any walls today, but rather shedding light on XBMC in general. We want to take a broad brush and give you all an idea of what XBMC is and does. We will then use this article as a guideline for the pieces to come.

What is XBMC?

XBMC is an award-winning FREE, open source (GPL), software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. XBMC is currently available for Linux, OSX, Windows, iOS, & even Android. XBMC has been designed to be the perfect companion for your Apple TV (1, 2, and someday your 3). Supporting an almost endless range of remote controls, and combined with its beautiful interface and powerful skinning engine, XBMC feels very natural to use from the couch and is the ideal solution for your home theater – multi media center.

Essentially, XBMC offers users the ability to watch personal content, as well as content found on the web, on their Television. It makes itself a central interface for thousands, if not millions, of playable content. It is built with the ability to install add-ons, skins, scripts, and more, all with the purpose of expanding its functionality. The software is, by far, the most feature rich solution on the market. XBMC is only limited by the lack of understanding of its users. This is a situation where the more you know, quickly equates to an unparallelled television experience!

Items We Intend To Cover:

– How to install on Apple TV
– How to navigate & understand XBMC’s menu options
– XBMC’s library: how to add, remove, & customize it’s content
– XBMC scripts? Yes, they are useful!
– How to stream content from the Web within XBMC
– How to install add-ons & repositories
– How to change & customize skins on XBMC
– Using AirPlay & mobile apps with XBMC
– Watching live television on XBMC
– Watching movies on XBMC
– Supercharging your current XBMC installation with XBMC Hub Wizard

Stay tuned for the next tutorial!  In the meantime, you can check out our list of Top 10 best XBMC addons for Apple TV 1 and Apple TV 2.

The post XBMC! So Simple, It’s Hard?! appeared first on Apple TV Hacks.

OpenELEC is not, necessarily, new to the Apple TV scene. What is new is that they have recently released OpenELEC 2.0, a stable version of their software based on XBMC Eden. This gives the Apple TV a strong and stable, standalone, XBMC experience. With it being an Eden build, it even offers your little silver box AirPlay! The team has added a few functionality increases to XBMC and even has a custom group of add ons and services that are made available to OpenELEC users only. These tools alone, make this a project worth looking at! If you are interested, you can find more specific information for this project at openelec.tv. To save you the visit, here are some of the key points made by their team:

What is OpenELEC?

Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center, or OpenELEC for short, is a small Linux distribution built from scratch as a platform to turn your computer into a complete XBMC media center. OpenELEC is designed to make your system boot as fast as possible and the install is so easy that anyone can turn a blank PC into a media machine in less than 15 minutes.

Key Features:

• It’s completely free
• Full install only 80-125MB
• Minimal hardware requirements
• Trivial install onto HDD, SSD, Compact Flash, SD card, pen drive etc
• Optimized builds for Atom, ION, Intel, Fusion etc
• Simple configuration via XBMC
• Plug and Play external storage
• File sharing out of the box

Required?

1. Mac, or Linux, computer
2. USB Stick,with at least 1 Gig of memory (to be on the safe side)
3. Apple TV 1
4. Remote Control
5. 10-20 minutes

STEP 1:
Connect the USB key to your machine, then open your Terminal app (For Mac it is located in /Applications/Utilities) and cut/paste the following commands to download the AppleTV SwissArmyKnife USB creator script for Mac OS X:

• curl -O https://chewitt.openelec.tv/atv_swissarmyknife_osx.sh
• chmod +x atv_swissarmyknife_osx.sh
• sudo ./atv_swissarmyknife_osx.sh

STEP 2:

The script will ask you confirm the /dev/disk# for the USB Drive. It runs with root privileges so please be careful with your selection! You will see a list of all current drives available on your machine… so simply look for the name and size of your thumb drive. Once the target device has been confirmed the script will repartition the USB Stick, download files needed to boot the AppleTV (11MB) and then install them to the thumb drive. It should take no more than a couple of minutes to complete, at best.


PLEASE NOTE: If you choose the wrong drive, you could accidentally delete important content. Make sure you read the list of available devices carefully. Mine, for example was a 2 GIG drive that I named UMOUCH-ATVH. Once I knew the drive, I entered “/dev/disk2” and hit Enter. You are then prompted to confirm the election… type in “Y” for yes. When complete, your output will match the image below:.STEP 3:
Power the AppleTV OFF and then connect the USB Stick to the single USB port, between the Ethernet port and the Power Cable on the back of your device.

STEP 4:
Power the AppleTV ON (Plug it in). After 10-15 seconds you should see the Grey/Blue OpenELEC logo on the screen, then the “SwissArmyKnife script” will start and confirm the current keyword function. The default keyword is “install”. This is where the device will download the OpenELEC software from the OpenELEC website.

STEP 5:
Before anything destructive is done, the installer will pause for roughly 30 seconds, and display a warning message; this ensures you enough time for you to power the AppleTV off (remove the power cable) before anything is changed. After the 30 second wait the installer continues. 

What is Happening  (advanced):

Once it completes, a message will be displayed telling you it is safe to remove the USB key and reboot.

That’s It! If you followed the steps correctly, you should have XBMC running as your standalone operating system! If you had any troubles with the process, openELEC has a great source for troubleshooting any, and all, issues: Troubleshooting USB Key Creation & Opperating System!

The post Give Your Apple TV 1 New Life With OpenElec 2.0 (installing XBMC) appeared first on Apple TV Hacks.

XBMC

NOTE: the following HOW-TO requires you to have Jailbroken ATV2 version 4.1 or 4.2.1.

Here is how to jailbreak your ATV2:
How to jailbreak Apple TV 2 on iOS 4.2.1 with Seas0nPass
How-To: Jailbreak Apple TV 2G on iOS 4.2.1 with PwnageTool

Installing XBMC

Step 1 (accessing the Apple TV): in the Terminal application on your Mac, enter the following:

ssh root@AppleTV.local

or

$ ssh root@<your ATV2 IP adress>

if AppleTV.local doesn’t work (find your atv IP address in Settings ->General -> Network).

Use “alpine” as your password if you haven’t changed it already.

• If you named your Apple TV something other than “AppleTV” then you need to replace the text above.
• The first time you do this, it might take a few moments to establish a connection.

Step 2: Paste the following code into Terminal (line by line; hit Enter after each line)

$ echo “deb https://mirrors.xbmc.org/apt/atv2 ./” > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xbmc.list

$ apt-get update

$ apt-get install org.xbmc.xbmc-atv2

After XBMC is successfully installed, Frontrow (ATV2 home screen) will restart and you will see XBMC in it.

Here is how to get XBMC if you have already installed aTV Flash or nitoTV:

• aTV Flash: download XBMC via Maintenance –> Manage Extras.
• nitoTV: install the latest nitoTV to auto-install XBMC

You may also want to read
XBMC for Apple TV 2 now available
How to Install Plex on Apple TV 2G
AirFlick Streams Non-iTunes Data to Apple TV 2 (video)

The post How to install XBMC on Apple TV 2 appeared first on Apple TV Hacks.