aTV Flash voluntarily pulled until further notice

Ah, bugger. Just days after Apple Core began offering its aTV Flash on a foolproof USB stick, the outfit has officially pulled the software. Apparently there have been a few "questions arising regarding the fair use of a particular file present on the aTV Flash, and conflicting opinions as to whether or not it falls under the fair use category." In order to keep itself off of the hot seat, it has "proactively" (and voluntarily) discontinued offering the product "until further notice." Not all hope is lost, however, as Apple Core is currently working with the party in question to resolve the dilemma, and it should be keeping us all in the loop as discussions progress. Oh, and in case you're curious -- all current orders were canceled and refunded.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[Tobby @ May 30th 2008 12:31PM]

You do not need aTV flash.
With this easy to use tutorial every noob can open his AppleTV:
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/comments.php?enid=791

[Callaway @ May 30th 2008 1:33PM]

Yes, the iclarified tutorials are great. The problem is Apple took down the Apple TV 1.1 Updater. The link on the tutorial results in a 404. I found it via torrent, don't know what others have done or are doing.

[Gregg @ May 30th 2008 12:31PM]

Good! Shame on them marketing someone elses free work for $60!

[kurt.tappe @ May 30th 2008 3:41PM]

$60 is hardly making a huge profit. What they did, as Leo Laporte said on TWiT, is take something that you could do yourself in many hours of work and make it easy. Plug & play. Time is money. It's well worth $60 to many people to not have to track down all the bits that aTV combined and get them working smoothly. In fact, Leo tried it and screwed up his AppleTV, so it's quite possible to try and fail to get this "free" stuff working on your own. aTV charged for success and ease, not software.

[Rob @ May 30th 2008 12:31PM]

Oh please, cut the pc wording.
Apple, and its team of hyenas lawyers, came after them. So, they'd have to give in to their threats. As a result, big gorilla wins, and little monkey loses.

[Rob P @ May 30th 2008 12:59PM]

Everyone likes Diddy Kong better than Donkey Kong.

And I don't think anyone likes Kiddy Kong... hence him not appearing in any other games after DKC3.

Schweet. Rob on Rob crime.

[Rob Pereira @ May 30th 2008 1:07PM]

Care to make it a threesome?

[Rob @ May 30th 2008 1:48PM]

I love threesomes. But not with a bunch of dudes though. One guy, two girls. Now that's a threesome.

[Jutzuro @ May 30th 2008 12:36PM]

func Apple

[Greg @ May 30th 2008 2:13PM]

how dare you!

Honestly though, the only thing keeping me from apple computers is the fact that they go after anything that tries to tie into their crap. The more crap that is made for your stuff the more widely accepted your computers will be....note how MS got so big, and don't blame anyone except apple for this. I was a big apple fanboy untill I saw how much freedom I had on a PC. Sure, I feel dirty using it but at least I have the freedom to do anything I want.

[macserv @ Jun 1st 2008 3:26AM]

They have to; they do not have a choice. Apple absolutely must go after anything that even slightly has a hint of infringing upon their copyrights, trademarks, and intellectual property. The one time they don't, that sets a precedent which can be cited by the next, more serious violator.

If Apple shows so much as a chink in their legal armor, it could take a long time to undo the collateral damage. Does this make them look like dicks? Yes. Do they have any other option? Again, no.

Don't judge the company by the actions of their lawyers. Apple has to play that game. Judge them by their products themselves. There are plenty of nits there to pick.

[Dr Zoidberg @ May 30th 2008 12:39PM]

it looks like a swiss army knife

[Zak @ May 30th 2008 1:41PM]

That's the Perian logo.

http://perian.org/

[Dr Zoidberg @ May 30th 2008 1:14PM]

it looks like a swissarmy knife

[Dr Zoidberg @ May 30th 2008 1:23PM]

ahh bugger!

[Hugo @ May 30th 2008 12:47PM]

"Ah, Bugger"?

Python fans, eh?!

[ZeroCorpse @ May 30th 2008 12:46PM]

Good for them, backing down and choosing not to make a profit off of someone else's work.
Now if only a certain "open computer" manufacturer would have the same act of conscience. . .

[Juaquin @ May 30th 2008 12:51PM]

In some ways you're right - they are using work other people did. But what they are also doing is making it easy to do (via a nice little control panel on a flash drive that does it all for you with a few clicks), and you could argue that you're paying the $60 for the convenience of having it all tied together with a nice bow, saving you the trouble of all the hacking by hand.

Think of it like iPhone jailbreaking - a few hackers found out how to do it but it was ridiculously complicated, then others took their work and made simple one-click tools out of them. It's just how hacking works.

[Distortedloop @ May 30th 2008 5:08PM]

@Juaquin - But those iPhone jailbreakers aren't charging you for the easier tools, let alone exorbitant price for that matter.

I don't have too much issue with charging a small fee to make something easier/convenient, but the $60 price tag seemed pretty high for a $5 USB and a few terminal shell scripts.

There's a site out there that gives you 5 years of updates to their version of the patchstick for only $15 as long as your willing to provide the USB stick and type a command line entry.

The problem with any of these distributions is that they're using Copyrighted material from Apple, which the hackers who came up with the stuff in the first place are unwilling (wisely) to do.

[Chrisvanren @ May 30th 2008 1:20PM]

Ok that Swiss Army knife is the Perian Codec pack logo for all you PC users.

[BlowURmindBowel @ May 30th 2008 1:23PM]

I still think they should have called it DD-wrTV

[Onetrack @ May 30th 2008 1:43PM]

hmm.. good thing the ATV flash key is easily downloaded from the usual places.

[Froggy @ May 30th 2008 1:56PM]

the soft should show up on demonoid or piratebay shortly.

[David @ May 30th 2008 2:17PM]

Yeah. I'm lazy. I bought this.

I guess I got lucky. My order was shipped a few days ago and should be waiting for me in my mailbox right now, assuming the USPS tracking info is correct.

[Neil @ May 30th 2008 2:48PM]

I bought this too, mine had shipped before i heard this news, but I am wondering if we wil get the year's freed updates now? i bet not! so i might try and get my money refunded..!

[jslemp1 @ May 31st 2008 9:30AM]

Neil or Others,

I was one of those that got locked out. If anyone is willing to sell theirs I need one.

Thanks

[Distortedloop @ May 31st 2008 4:46PM]

AppleTv is turning out to be one of the worst purchases I've ever made. $299 for the original unit, $100 for a hard drive upgrade, hacking to give it more functionality like playing video files, browsing the network, and now some want a web browser on the thing.

For $200 more I could have just bought a refurbished Mac Mini, and been done with it. I could play downloaded .mkv (see footnote) files right off the internet without waiting the hour or two it takes my Quad Core Mac Pro to convert them to a format that's playable on the aTV. Web browser built in, blah blah blah.

I'm on the verge of just buying a Mini at this point and forgetting all this hacking and converting garbage. Too bad the CPU's not upgradable.

footnote: yes, yes, with Perian my hacked aTV can play mkv files, but only if they're low complexity, otherwise it just stutters to death if it even plays at all. Tried this morning to watch a 720p mkv of Battlestar Galactica and the aTV choked on it.

[Chris @ Jun 6th 2008 3:50PM]

Disorted Loop

Is it only .mkv files that don't playback well on your aTV? I'm interested in getting one but not if i can't play the full 720P that aTV claims it can.

My Mac Mini can playback all my 720P files just fine, it can even play 1080P to a degree. But in very "complex" scenes the framerate drops to 10FPS.

The reason i'd like to get an aTV is to have a very portable device to go from upstairs to downstairs. I had having to shut down and disconnect my mini all the time.

Speaking of which, how do you "shutdown" the aTV? can you just unplug it at anytime? do you actually have to wait for a shutdown and a startup?

[Frustrated @ Jun 1st 2008 12:57AM]

I was one of the "lucky" ones to get the ATV Flash drive shipped to me. Unfortunately, after installing it, all is not well. For some reason, now every time I try to watch a movie, listen to music, or pretty much do anything, the ATV just reboots and I get the Apple logo (equivalent to blue screen of death I suppose). I'm in the process of starting the entire process from scratch for the second time :(

[CiscoTM @ Jun 2nd 2008 8:53AM]

GoTo ATV4Windows.com they sell a similar software that is still available!

[jeezus @ Jun 3rd 2008 4:31AM]

meh, stupid to pay for something you can do for free, with not much more trouble.

[Chris @ Jun 6th 2008 3:37PM]

Hey, you guys should go back to the site.

Turns out it had nothing to do with Apple, instead they have a new business model.

"Bring your own flash drive" and simply download the NEW version 3.0!

It's said to work with AppleTV Take Two ver. 2.0.2

[Dave @ Jun 14th 2008 2:39AM]

I just went to their site and downloaded the easy install guide which had a link to some software, which I am now getting. Is this all you need?

[Dave @ Jun 14th 2008 3:02AM]

Im a dumbass, never mind :)

[James @ Jul 5th 2008 10:39AM]

I paid and got a copy of this software. It installed as advertised onto my USB flash drive (3 steps or so)... very easy. Unplugged ATV, plugged in USB, replugged ATV.. voila, done.

Now I've got SSH, SCP, ATVFiles, MediaCloud, NitoTV, JAMAN, Sapphire and Couch Surfer - in addition to Perian and all the codecs.

Everything works fine. No crashes related to ATVFlash AFAIK - though without a comparison of doing the installs myself I'll never know.

I've had 2 crashes total so far... once when trying to load a Video_TS file via Nito (I've since read that this doesn't work so well as yet for Take 2) and once when after having installed MediaTomb (UPNP server) on my MacBook I was browsing files and restarted MediaTomb (which is known to crash the Finder).

SO as far as the ATVFlash install goes... all works as expected.

It was worth $40 for me to get things kickstarted as I wanted to be sure AppleTV is the right device for what I want - so I can return it if needed within Apple's 3 week return period. I didn't want to do a bunch of Yak Shaving (learning how to install on ATV) before I could test out MediaTomb. $40 saved me many hours of reading/learning... so good value in my book. Whether or not I've crippled myself in the process... don't know yet, but if I run in to issues I'll likely take the time to reinstall everything from scratch myself.