Installing XBMC/Boxee on your aTVFlash AppleTV
To install these manually you have to extract the XBMC Launcher and Boxee Launcher from Scott Davilla’s (GitHub - davilla/atvusb-creator: Automatically exported from code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator) homemade patchstick creator. I’m not sure if it’s legal or not, but until someone tells me, I’ve attached a zip of both launchers here: http://www.box.net/shared/ne8dod987k
Now we need to add them to our already aTVFlash-hacked AppleTV.
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Using Cyberduck or WinSCP, copy both “XBMCLauncher.frappliance” and “BoxeeLauncher.frappliance” to your default frontrow location.
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Open Terminal and enter
ssh -1 frontrow@appletv.local-
When prompted enter password “frontrow”
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First, we need to make sure we can write to the OSBoot volume. Type
sudo mount -uw /. It should ask for a password again. Enter “frontrow” -
Now we simply need to move both applications over to our main menu folder.
Type:sudo mv ~/XBMCLauncher.frappliance /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/and press enter
Then Type: sudo mv ~/BoxeeLauncher.frappliance /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/ and press enter. That should get them moved.
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Now we just need to reboot the aTV. Type:
sudo rebootand the appleTV should reboot. When it comes back up you should see both Boxee and XBMC in your main menu. However, they are not yet installed. -
Both are simply install launchers. For each one you have to first go in and press “Update” and tell AppleTV to install them. Once installed they should work as an application. For XBMC you may need to set the resolution to Full Screen.
I went in and added some skins to my XBMC also, like Aeon (which in my opinion, is the sexiest Media UI ever created). To do that you first have to open XBMC so that it creates a director in your Application Support. Then simply FTP into your AppleTV, go to Library -> Application Support -> XBMC and load any skins you’ve downloaded to the “skins” folder. Once in XBMC you can change the skins in the “Appearance” settings section.
Here is a video I made of it working on my AppleTV: