Today we begin posting blogger tryout posts chosen from amongst the best submitted in response to our new blogger call out. We received a solid amount of responses from all over the country...and beyond, like this one from UK blogger, Scott Fyfe. Tell us what you think!

030111ChiRho.jpg So, you've got the little black hockey puck of dreams. You bought it hoping it would liberate you from your cable bill and finally get all those shiny 720p versions of your movies onto your big screen. But what? You need to have a computer with iTunes open to watch them all?!? Well that sucks. Worry not, thanks to the jailbreaking community we have an alternative to offer, which we personally spent fiddling with the last few days getting set-up just the way we want it.

Here's what you'll need:

030111GreenPois0n1.jpg

  1. Get your Apple TV plugged into power and set-up where it’s going to live. We'll explain why later.
  2. Download and open the Greenpois0n application. It should come up asking if you’re jailbreaking an Apple TV; say yes.
  3. Plug the AppleTV into your computer with the micro-USB cable.
  4. Follow Greenpois0n’s instructions. Make sure you have the remote to hand and are prepared to follow its instructions to the second!
  5. Once it’s done and the Apple TV is restarting, DON’T UNPLUG IT FROM THE POWER. We made that mistake and when done, the Apple TV reverts back to an un-jailbroken state. Best just to jailbreak it while it’s in the place it’ll live.
  6. Now you can “Inject Software” from the new Greenpois0n menu on your Apple TV. Once installation is completed, there should be a new nitoTV menu option. Select “Software Install” and download and install XBMC from the list.
  7. Now you should have XBMC as a new menu option on the Apple TV. Open it up.
  8. Go to Video and “Add source”. Go to Browse. You should now see a variety of ways of finding media on your network. I have my media hard drive (called MEDIA) plugged into my Airport Extreme router, so how I added it as a source was by selecting “Windows network (SMB)”, going into WORKGROUP, then my router and then the MEDIA hard drive.
  9. Once you’ve got the folder you want to add as a source, click OK. Back in the “Add Video Source” window, name the source whatever you want and hit OK again. Now you can set-up scraper settings for this source if you want. Once you’ve done all that, you should see your source pop up in the list.
  10. Now you can watch the videos on your NAS - through XBMC - on your Apple TV. Finally, no need to have a computer on.

Of course you don’t get the simple and smooth experience of the Apple TV OS, or the integration with your iTunes library. But it does mean that you can finally use the Apple TV as a dedicated media watching device.

Post and photos by Scott Fyfe.