Plex, the popular Mac-based and iOS media solution has been successfully ported to a jailbroken Apple TV 2G.

I have been playing around with Jailbreak for the new ATV and put together a Tech-Demo that brings the first Plex Client to the new Apple TV. You can get a rough Idea by watching this video.

Known Issues
The Software so far is nothing more than a proof of concept, which isn’t tested at all. However there are some known issues:

• “Local Servers” screen does only update when you press the up or down button on your remote
• Larger Sections timeout while they are loaded and do never show up
• Only Video playback is working (no music files, no images, no App-Management)

Instructions on how to install are posted on the Plex forums (or below) and your Apple TV 2G must be jailbroken using the latest version of PwnageTool.

Prepare the Media Server
Before you install the actual plugin you need to prepare the Plex Media Server (it needed some tweaks before it would talk to the ATV). Since those changes are considered ‘beta’, you need to tell your PMS to download beta plug-ins, by enetering the following URL in a Safari running on the same machine as the media server:http://localhost:324…s/set?AS_BETA=1

After that start Plex and check for updates in the PlexOnline section.

Enable a higher Quality (optional)
This part is optional, but if you feel like experimenting a lot, you might want to install a testing built of ffmpeg, that enables higher bitrates for the (currently) highest available quality (which is the only quality your ATV will use). This will also increase the image quality on other iOS devices, however you will need a potent Mac for the encoding! So If you still feel like installing use the following two commands in a Terminal on the Mac running your Media Server:

curl http://ambertation.de/downloads/PLEX/ffmpeg > ~/Downloads/ffmpeg
cp ~/Downloads/ffmpeg ~/Library/Application Support/Plex/Plex Media Server.app/Contents/Resources/

If you not use this, the plugin will still work, but the image-quality might not be on par with what you expect.

Install the Plugin
First off: you need to Jailbreak your Apple TV. A nice little instruction can be found on awkwardtv.org. I suggest you use the Pawnage method. For the sake of the following instruction I assume thet the IP-Address of your ATV is 169.10.11.12, and that you can log in using ssh.

• Start your ATV and log in to your ATV using ssh

  ssh root@169.10.11.12

  It will ask you for your password, which (if you did not change the default) is alpine. (I strongly suggest you change the password using the passwd command!!!)

• In that ssh session, you need to add new cydia sources using

  echo "deb http://apt.awkwardtv.org ./" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/awkwardtv.list
  echo "deb http://www.ambertation.de ./downloads/PLEX/" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plex.list

• Now update your cydia database using

  apt-get update

• Install the plugins (and its dependencies like beigelist by DHowett) with

  apt-get install plex-client-plugin

• Restart the GUI and hope that it comes back

  killall Lowtide

  If the UI does not come up again, you probably have to restore your ATV!

That is it. You should see the PLEX menu item now. If you experience any problems (which you almost certainly will  ) just report back here. But remember the ATV is just a hobby 

Updating the Plugin
Once in a while I might release an updated version for the plugin, so once in a while you might want to check for updates and install them. Here is how that will work:

• Start your ATV and log in to your ATV using ssh

  ssh root@169.10.11.12

• In that ssh session enter

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

If you successfully installed Plex on your jailbroken Apple TV, let us know in the comments.

[via 9to5mac]