Apple sent an alert out to AppleTV users on the 7th advising those who downloaded AppleTV 3.0 to go get 3.01 right away. If you don’t use aTV Flash do it. If you use aTV Flash, wait a few for the update advisory from aTV Flash as the 3.01 update will likely break your aTV Flash install

The folks at FireCore have updated aTVflash to work with version 3.0 of AppleTV. The upgrade is uneventful except if you have set up an external iTunes storage. That part was not all that smooth.

Here’s the sequence I went through, if you don’t have external storage ignore those steps.

1. Close iTunes on the machine managing the AppleTV
2. Switch from external to internal iTunes storage under the Maintenance menu.
3. Enable AppleTV updates under the maintenance menu
4. Check for AppleTV updates and install them. Let the AppleTV go through the reboot cycle.
5. Boot the AppleTV from the aTVflash USB stick you created using aTVFlash 4.0 and let it update.
6. Unplug the stick and reboot the AppleTV
7. Go to the Maintenance | Settings menu and run the Smart Installer as in the past to activate the AppleTV services including the USB port
8. Reboot the AppleTV with the external drive connected if you use one.
9. From Maintenance switch the location of the iTunes library to the external drive.
10. Launch iTunes on the controlling machine.

According to the aTVflash forums, no data will be lost from the external drive and nothing will need recopying except files that were changed on the internal drive. It did not work that way for me. First AppleTV kept itself busy rewriting all the files from it’s internal store that were already on the external drive. Then when I launched iTunes I discovered I had to resync all my movies to the external drive attached to the AppleTV. That took a long time. iTunes finally shows all the content again but I now have 130GB of OTHER on the external disk. Not a showstopper but annoying. I hope the FireCore people update their instructions.

In a prior post I mentioned the very useful aTVflash toolset for the Apple TV. Some might say that the Apple TV isn’t really that hot as a media server and prefer to use Plex or something like it on a Mac Mini.

aTVflash was recently updated to allow you to move the iTunes library on the Apple TV to an external disk attached to the USB port on the Apple TV. Wait a minute you say, that USB port is disabled. Not with aTV Flash it isn’t.

One of my frustrations with the AppleTV was the 160GB drive. I keep my music, TV shows and movies in my regular iTunes library that is stored on my Drobo. Unfortunately I was having to constantly edit which movies were on the AppleTV because of disk space limitations.

Not any more. I attached an external drive case with a fast WD Caviar Green 1.5TB drive via the USB2 port and then used the aTVflash function to move the library. It took a bit of time to move everything but once done I could sync all my movies to the AppleTV and still have over 1TB of free space. No performance hits, no jitter and it acts as a backup copy of my iTunes library because I can always SSL into the system via the aTVflash capability.

So if you like the idea of the Apple TV as a media server, especially if you want to use Handbrake to make hard disk copies of your purchased and self created DVDs, using aTVflash makes it easy. And lastly, aTVflash does not void the Apple TV warranty.

I am giving the credit for finding this to Don McAllister of the awesome Screencasts Online. i subscribe to his excellent service and watched the episode on the aTV Flash and AppleTV.

I love my AppleTV. I’ve used Handbrake to put movies on it, watch TV shows I’ve bought from the iTunes store and use it everyday to watch the video podcasts I subscribe to. There are some things the AppleTV cannot readily do such as view different video formats, browse the web, run apps, you get the picture as it were.

You purchase the aTV Flash code and download to your Mac or Windows PC. Then you run the installer. It builds a bootable disk image on a USB stick that you supply. i used a 1Gb stick that was lying around and it was partitioned and set up automatically. The installer sets the stick as an OSBoot device.

You plug the stick into your AppleTV and restart it. The AppleTV boots from the stick which is running a small version of Linux that installs the aTV Flash code on the AppleTV. Takes less than a minute and when prompted, unplug the stick and restart the AppleTV. It will reboot a couple of times and come back up as your AppleTV, but with a ton of additional features.

Your AppleTV will now have support for most all media types including WMV, RMVB, DivX, Xvid and AVI. You’ll be able to place ripped DVDs on the internal drive, and even connect an external USB drive because the formerly braindead USB port now works. You can even connect a USB keyboard and mouse. You’ll be able to install apps and set up things like RSS feeds. A number of other apps come with the installer that you can selectively install.

Best of all, your Apple warranty remains intact as do all the original AppleTV functions.

I only completed the install today but already am getting even more value from my proven AppleTV.

Head over to http://www.atvflash.com for more info and to purchase your own copy.