Hacking The AppleTV For Cash

The AppleTV hacks keep coming. Over the weekend hackers released another plugin for AppleTV which adds support for browsing RSS new feeds via the “Backrow” navigation interface. So far there is support for RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 but not Atom feeds.

The plugin developers also claim to be working on integrating video RSS feeds, noting that AppleTV supports video RSS feeds via iTunes.

While the RSS support is mildly useful (see Gadget Lab for more details), the Holy Grail of AppleTV hacks remains support for external USB storage devices. To that end, AppleTVHacks is offering a $1000 reward to the first person/team who can make it work.

The money will go the first team to submit a verified process and patch, with the following rules:

• Patch must allow a USB hard drive, plugged into the Apple TV???s USB port to act as the default and primary storage for the Apple TV.
• The Apple TV must still boot from the internal drive and cannot use a complete replacement OS (the kernel may be patched, and additional kexts added).
• Patch must allow the media to be accessed as it would be were the internal drive being used (i.e if you couldn???t see their was a USB drive attached you wouldn???t know).
• Patch must be able to be applied without opening the case.
• Patch must be able to be removed (and the Apple TV to original configuration) without opening the case.
• No commercial files can be used asides from those found on the Apple TV or Mac OS X Intel. All others must be freely and legally distributable.
• The process cannot have been previously published, or demonstrated / distributed publicly.

With a successful patch and $1000 you could buy the AppleTV and about 1 terabyte of external drive storage space — now who doesn't want that? For more details check out the AppleTVHacks post.