What to do after jailbreaking your atv2

To install new applications on your jailbroken atv2 you will need to use the command line. If you immediately ran away from your computer screaming, please settle down... that sort of behavior is undignified!

To communicate with the atv2 you will need to SSH into the device. This is far easier than it seems. Whenever you read that you need to ssh into a device it just means that we need to use the ssh protocol to talk to the device. This allows us to remotely access the command line which is native to the apple tv.

We will use a few simple commands to automatically install the programs you so keenly desire.

To SSH from windows you will need to download a small program called putty.

Putty SSH client
Click the link above and install the client.

Run the program and input your apple tv's ip address. This can be found by going to settings>network on the atv2 menu system.

Once you have input the ip address simply press enter.

First you will be asked if you want to accept the device security certificate.
Then you will be greeted by a command line asking for a username and password.

The username you should use for installation is: root
The default password for apple products is: alpine

Easy enough so far right?

Once you have logged in we can use the command line to install stuff!

My favorite extension is XBMC

The XBMC media player is an amazing and easily customized front end for your media collection.
To fully utilize the media front end you will need a media server to host all of your files. The creation of which will be discussed in a later post. With it you can produce an amazingly clean and and well polished experience. You will undoubtedly be the envy of your friends and family on movie night!

Lets get installing then, shall we?

Input the following commands into putty: you are allowed to copy and paste!

apt-get install wget

wget -O- http://apt.awkwardtv.org/awkwardtv.pub | apt-key add -

echo "deb http://apt.awkwardtv.org/ stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/awkwardtv.list

echo "deb http://mirrors.xbmc.org/apt/atv2 ./" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xbmc.list

apt-get update

apt-get install org.xbmc.xbmc-atv2

reboot

Assuming you got no error codes, your atv2 should reboot and you will find a new application icon for XBMC on your dashboard!

You can then configure XBMC to your liking from within the program itself using the GUI.

You can add video, music, and picture shares from SMB shares, FTP locations, etc.

XBMC will then scan and scrape your files and add them to your library with automatically downloaded fanart, posters, and plot synopsis.