Onwards and Downwards

The Apple TV phenomenon is a typical thing in my experience, it stems from corporate greed I suppose and an unwillingness, particularly by companies like Apple, to allow users to tinker with their products.

The original Apple TV, or ATV1 was quite a big, silver unit, produced around 2007 and allowed users to connect to their online iTunes account and stream content. I just googled it and the ATV1 was originally called iTV by Apple, was announced in September 2006 and started shipping in March 2007. It was not a true standalone device until 2008 (as it needed to attach to a PC running iTunes to load authorized content) but a software update cut the umbilical so it could stream directly from the account and at the same time oddly made the onboard hard drive redundant.

Apple and iTunes, one big annoyance for a lot of people, Apple like their profits and they like to operate a walled garden with their media, so the ATV1 had access to Apple media, and nothing else.

Technically gifted people did not like that, so they found ways to replace the operating system on the unit, to make it more useful, and Apple did not like that, so when they developed the ATV2 or 2nd Gen Apple TV, they closed off some loopholes in the hardware.

Yet, the tech community found a way into the new variant, call it what you will, hacking, jailbreaking or revitilizing, the wizards out there found a way in to improve the capability of the device, and in doing so, affected Apples profits in some small way.

In less than 18 months Apple introduced the "new and improved" third generation device and you guessed it, removed the back door that allowed the community to modify the gizmo and as far as I know, this third generation device has not been successfully hacked, Apple introduced their fourth generation device in 2015 and phased out the previous units.

If you cruise eBay you will see that the ATV1 sells for buttons, and the ATV3 can achieve $50 plus or minus a tenner. Yet the ATV2 is a sought after device, capable of being hacked and with the ability to stream at 1080P at a pinch, but run cool and happy at 720P (the ATV1 gets so hot that it can be used as a space heater when streaming video) so the ATV2 is still selling for around $200

As I had an attached PC to my TV setup, I did not need a hacked ATV2 to run XBMC so I sold the ATV2 for a few hundred bucks and went and bought a new ATV3 from London Drugs for $89 plus taxes.

I have no intention of buying the ATV4 but I may buy an ATV1 at some point in the future.

Just to keep the house warm.