I’m going to have fun with this over the weekend. I really like how its a plugin rather than overwriting the frontrow UI.
(via boxee blog » xbmc/boxee on Apple TV)
as we were just starting to work on boxee the first version of Apple TV came out.
it looked great, the boot video was amazing, but then it lacked some basic stuff (video format limitation, ability to connect to multiple sources, streaming of photos, connectivity to other Internet services, etc.). so we stuck to our Mac Minis, which are more expensive but don’t make you live in a closed garden.when Scott Davilla told us he is working on getting xbmc/boxee to run on Apple TV we got really excited. we dusted off the Apple TV units..
earlier today Scott released the USB flash drive creator for the AppleTV, which makes it relatively easy to get your Apple TV to run xbmc/boxee.
it adds a new menu option to your Apple TV that enables the user to launch boxee (as well as keep on using the Frontrow stuff). once you run boxee on Apple TV you can do stuff like play almost any video format, get a much richer experience of browsing your media library, listen to music from last.fm, send recommendations to friends, and more. you get the full boxee experience.
how to install boxee on your Apple TV:
- download the ATVUSB-Creator from http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/
- insert a “bootable” USB drive into your Mac (Windows and Linux versions coming soon)
- run the ATVUSB-Creator and select which plug-ins you’d like to install
- remove the USB drive and plug it into your Apple TV
- power on your Apple TV and the patchstick will run the ATV bootloader
- after the bootloader finishes, remove it and restart your Apple TV
- it now has options for Boxee / XBMC on the main menu
- click on Boxee, then select update (this will download boxee from the Internet)
- once boxee is done installing, restart your Apple TV
- click “Boxee”, then select “Boxee” in the sub-menu to start boxee.
