AppleCore LLC is selling a USB drive that will reflash your Apple TV and add a number of interesting features to the Apple TV:
Key Features:
- Play most video formats (DivX, Xvid, AVI, WMV, RMVB + more)
- Play DVD files WITHOUT converting them
- Sync, organize and watch non-iTunes video files
- Browse the web with a Safari based web browser
- Rent & watch Hi-Def movies from Jaman.com
- Stream media from UPnP(v1) media servers
- View local weather forecasts
- View RSS Feeds
- Enable SSH access
- All original Apple TV features remain intact
- And much, much more…
Dubbed aTV Flash, the software is an amalgam of most of the current hacks available for Apple TV in an easy-to-use package. It costs $59.95 as someone who has tried — and failed — to reflash his Apple TV I can assure you it’s a fairly small price to pay if you don’t have the time to dig through the AwkwardTV wiki to figure all these things out yourself.
But the developers that made the software that were included in the patchstick were not compensated.
Is it fair?
That’s open source for you. Legally they are charging you for the hardware device. I’m sure all the require documents for those apps are there.
Opensource is the other future.