SOmeone apparently has hacked and released a 200MB torrent that essentially gives you the workings of the AppleTV. I haven't tried this "backrow" thingy yet but I might give it a shot to see what is does on my mini.

Jerry C.

Note to mods: I am not condoning use of illegally sourced software or pointing out how to find it, just passing along an development that many would find interesting.

I highly doubt it will run on anything but an AppleTV, at least not without some serious hacking which has not been done yet.

-Sean

Why run Apple TV OS on other hardware? Its optimized for the aTV. The modding will allow for an inexpensive "micro" Mac when the AppleTV OS gets its "improvements". Any nice software features will be rolled into Leopard and the new Mac Mini, whatever it is. It's notworth the time and effort (yet) to get the thing running on regular Mac hardware. Plus it's probably against the License Agreement. Not that modding an aTV isn't, either--but that's another story.

Yeah, I don't get the need, in practice, to run ATV's OS on anything else. What are you going to do, spend $700 on a Mac Mini, or $2k on a big Mac, and then install a "one-trick pony" limited software, over your full-fledged OS X. Even if you can do it, the question remains: WHY?!?

I sure hope Apple doesn't limit the "hackability" of ATV. I didn't even consider getting one, but seeing what people are doing with it, I am getting very, very interested. If they can get it to stream Video_ts, and talk to my "other" system, it would make a hell of an extender, and Apple will end up with my greenies, instead of those (uglier) X people:-) And I am sure I am not the only one thinking this....

What are you going to do, spend $700 on a Mac Mini, or $2k on a big Mac, and then install a "one-trick pony" limited software, over your full-fledged OS X. Even if you can do it, the question remains: WHY?!?
More RAM, more horsepower, and more drives would be a few.

I think a new version of Frontrow in 10.5 is gonna take most of its look and feel from the ATV anyway, or at least I hope it would. Backrow's interface just seems smoother and slicker to me. This may just be new Apple product envy as I really like the superior versatility of my current core duo mini but if people didn't revel in making computers and OS's do things they originally weren't intended to do, well we wouldn't have a forum here now would we ;)

-Jerry C.