it may look like he is a taking a toke, but it’s actually a USB stick in dave’s hand. dave shot this quick how-to video showing how to upgrade your Apple TV to run xbmc/boxee.

let us know if you’re having trouble installing or running boxee on your Apple TV. you can also visit our forum http://forum.boxee.tv for more help.

Apple released an update to Apple TV last night.

the USB Creator still works, so users who have not installed xbmc/boxee on their Apple TV can just follow the standard process.

if you already had xbmc/boxee installed you’ll need to boot from the patchstick again (following the same steps, starting with #4). the good news it that your profile and settings of xbmc/boxee are all kept, so you just login and get back your good old boxee experience.

been a crazy 24hrs.. thank you all for your support and enthusiasm.

we just uploaded a new version of boxee for Apple TV (v3383).

what we fixed:

• no need to disable the Apple TV screensaver
• back button (i.e. Menu) on the remote reacts faster and works in all screens
• the bittorrent download manager is now working

if you already installed boxee on your Apple TV then should select “Update” under the boxee menu, restart your Apple TV and you’re good to go.

btw, Scott Davilla just posted this short video intro to xbmc/boxee on Apple TV

as we were just starting to work on boxee the first version of Apple TV came out.
it looked great, the boot video was amazing, but then it lacked some basic stuff (video format limitation, ability to connect to multiple sources, streaming of photos, connectivity to other Internet services, etc.). so we stuck to our Mac Minis, which are more expensive but don’t make you live in a closed garden.

when Scott Davilla told us he is working on getting xbmc/boxee to run on Apple TV we got really excited. we dusted off the Apple TV units..

earlier today Scott released the USB flash drive creator for the AppleTV, which makes it relatively easy to get your Apple TV to run xbmc/boxee.

it adds a new menu option to your Apple TV that enables the user to launch boxee (as well as keep on using the Frontrow stuff). once you run boxee on Apple TV you can do stuff like play almost any video format, get a much richer experience of browsing your media library, listen to music from last.fm, send recommendations to friends, and more. you get the full boxee experience.

how to install boxee on your Apple TV:

1. download the ATVUSB-Creator from http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/
2. insert a “bootable” USB drive into your Mac (Windows and Linux versions coming soon)
3. run the ATVUSB-Creator and select which plug-ins you’d like to install
4. remove the USB drive and plug it into your Apple TV
5. power on your Apple TV and the patchstick will run the ATV bootloader
6. after the bootloader finishes, remove it and restart your Apple TV
7. it now has options for Boxee / XBMC on the main menu
8. click on Boxee, then select update (this will download boxee from the Internet)
9. once boxee is done installing, restart your Apple TV
10. disable your Apple TV screensaver (set it to ‘never’)
11. click “Boxee”, then select “Boxee” in the sub-menu to start boxee.

update from Gidon Coussin:

try to disable the default Apple TV screen saver. it may cause xbmc/boxee to freeze (or more accurately lose control of the remote)

update from Scott Davilla:

Quick Help

1) if the sha1 checksum fails, then the download of 2Z694-5428-3.dmg failed and you need to delete it from the downloads folder.

2) WARNING DO NOT RUN THE USB PATCHSTICK TWICE, there is an error that will require a AppleTV Factory Restore to fix if you run the PATCHSTICK twice. Much apologies if this has happened and a new version is on it’s way up. Once again, DO NOT RUN a patchstick made from atvusb-creator-1.0.0.b1.tar.gz TWICE.

3) And take the spaces out of the name of the folder name in atvusb-creator-1.0.b2.tar.gz