Dreamattic - IT and New Media Network

There have already been some great shots, some howlers, some nice Dutch supporters, and even some North Korean “fans”, but the best of the show is yet to come. And there is finally a way to watch all the games live (!) on your Apple TV: World Cup 2010 app has arrived to Boxee. Find it in the app library, fire up and enjoy. Thanks Univision, thanks Boxee! Sadly, for those of you who don’t live somewhere between the RFK Memorial Stadium and the Home Depot Center, it is US only.

You are trying to boost your pc performance in some less conventional way and then, suddenly, there is only gray smoke what have left from your 1 TB heard drive and your enormous movie collection? Your ‘puppy’ buried your brand new tiny netbook in the garden and you will never find out where? Lost your music and last holidays’ photos? You’re crashed but you recall you had copied it to your Apple TV some time before. Yes, coping files to the Apple TV is making a backup without knowing it. The only question now is how to get it back. Here is what you have to do to recover your priceless media files from your atv.

1. Enable SSH on your Apple TV

(here is how to do it: Enable SSH & AFP on your Apple TV)

Omit this step if your Apple TV runs software v2.2 or later (OS versions older than 2.2 don’t support ssh v2 protocol) or if you have SSH already enabled.

2. Execute the following command:

$> scp -1 -r frontrow@<APPLETV_IP>:/mnt/Media/<media_to_recover>/ /<Destination_local_machine>

example:

$> scp -1 -r frontrow@192.168.27.150:/mnt/Media/Photos/ /tmp/

In this case all the photos stored in Apple TV will be copied to the local directory /tmp/

That’s all. Yes, it’s that simple.

In case you want to recover all the data without specifying any subdirectory use the following command:

$> scp -1 -r frontrow@192.168.27.150:/mnt/Media/ /myAppleTVfullbackup/

NOTE:

• It will work on Mac, Linux as well as on Windows with openSSH.

• The structure of directories and file names on Apple TV is the same like the one used in iPods

Enjoy and good luck!

A simple how-to for those who still haven’t figured out they can move their DVD collection do the atv. “Ripping your personal DVD’s for the AppleTV adds convenience. Selecting them from My Movies is so much simpler than finding and then loading up the DVD,” says Guy and we do agree. Guy recommends using DVD43 for ripping and HandBrake for converting to mp4, but remember there is a lot of other software that can do this job. For those who like to organize their movies with DVDpedia, PARA9 has just released DVDpedia FrontRow and AppleTV plugin 2.0.6 with AppleTV 3.0.1 support.

Read How to add your DVDs to AppleTV

Another great work from Danny! He has published a tutorial explaining how to install transmission (bittorent client) on the Applet TV and run Clutch web-interface to control bittorrent from browsers.

To go through this new tutorial you first need to enable SSH on your Apple TV (check out Danny’s previous tutorial). The new hack is generally based on installing transmission, MAMP web server and Clutch.

It’s then possible to control the Clutch even via the iPhone.

Users had reported some errors but the problem seems to be solved now, after Danny made some corrections. Go to the comments to learn more.

Check it out!

Interesting post at Lifehacker.com by Kevin Purdy, describing a how-to convert an appleTV into a full featured media center thanks to Boxee.

Read more at Cut the Cable For Good with Boxee and Apple TV

XBMC, an open source, cross-platform media center is no installable on Apple TV. XBMC supports a very complete spectrum of of audio and video multimedia file formats and codecs right out-of-the-box.

With the built in features and third party plugins, this really is a flexible media center. You can find out more on how to install XBMC on your Apple TV at this thread on their website.

A USB installer is in the works, but is currently not quite ready. For now you have to do the installation manually.