I’ve been streaming a lot of http://Live.Twit.TV when I get home from work in the afternoon and after recently discovering Boxee for the Mac and all of the great geek content on Revision3.com, which is built right into Boxee, I have been thinking about buying an Apple TV.

The idea was to install a browser on the device for streaming Live.Twit.TV + have Boxee to see other stuff.  After a few Google searches on browsers + Apple TV, I finally bit the bullet on Friday and bought the device from WalMart at $228.

I got it all set up, and then set out to hack the hell out of it, as it doesn’t come with a browser.  I know, how stupid is that?  First I had to enable SSH via a patch stick creator http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator Once done, I used a program called FUGU, http://www.freemacware.com/fugu to FTP the "couch surfer" program.  Then a variety of command line keyboard mashes and all of the sudden "couch surfer" appeared in the Apple TV menu.

Unfortunately, it never actually loaded anything.  It would either go to a black screen where nothing was shown, or it would cause the Apple TV to reboot itself.  I tried several versions of the program and eventually even tried installing Firefox. Nothing worked.  After 3 days of reading blog posts and how-to’s I finally got fed up and decided I was going to try http://www.aTVFlash.com, who has a $50 USB stick that is guaranteed to not only install the browser, but Boxee and a few other things.

Now before I dish out $50 on something that who knows if it will work, I “found” a version of the patch stick program on the internet.  I “tried it out” with the intention of, providing it worked, actually purchasing from the website the USB stick.  Now the “found” patch stick program did indeed work, installed Boxee and XBMC, and the couch server browser!

So I was almost on my way….except after this patch stick was applied, the Apple TV’s menu became somewhat flakey, unresponsive, AND it would cause the Apple TV to reboot itself.  This concerned me greatly.  The final nail in the coffin for my Apple TV experience came when I fired up the Couch Surfer web browser the patch stick had installed. I headed over to http://live.twit.tv, which uses a flash player to stream video of Leo Laporte, and saw a blue Lego block in place of where the video stream should have been.

Upon further research, there appears to be a OS X 10.4 Tiger only “framework” called CoreAudioKit.Framework that is required in order to enable flash on the Apple TV.  You can’t use the Leopard version from your installed Leopard OS, you can’t use the Leopard install CD to grab the files…you have to have a Tiger disk and depending on which conflicting blog post you read, you may actually have to have Tiger installed in order to get the proper coreaudiokit.framework files to Fugu over to the Apple TV. 

It was at this point that I began an hours long search for the CoreAudioKit.framework files on the internet, which didn’t net me any results.  I even tried my Leopard version of the file, for giggles, to no avail.  I failed, was unable to get Flash installed and then I had what the religious folks call a “coming to Jesus” moment….

I had spent 4 days straight reading countless blog posts and how tos trying to install a browser.  I had “patched” the Apple TV repeatedly to get SSH enabled, Boxee to work, XBMC to work, Couch Surfer installed, Flash Installed and all I got out of this entire experience was a very angry 4 days, a browser that didn’t do the one thing I wanted it to do, no way (aside from buying a copy of Mac OS X Tiger 10.4, a 4-year-old OS by the way) to get Flash installed, and a jacked up Apple TV menu that was ½ the time unresponsive and would cause the Apple TV to reboot itself for no reason repeatedly.

Bottom line is that I reset the Apple TV to the factory settings last night, packaged it back up in its original packaging, located the receipt and Wal-Mart bag from my Friday purchase, and placed it upon the shelf near the door to take back at my earliest convenience.  Consequently, I hooked up an XP based laptop to my TV using an s-video cable and an audio cable going from the laptop to my TV and was streaming Live.Twit.TV in full screen glory on my 50” Sony 2 minutes later.  Granted, there’s not a Boxee for Windows available for download yet, but I can live with viewing Boxee on my Macbook for a while.