Mac OS on Apple TV

Hello,
I have an Apple TV with a 140 gb HD. I tried converting movies so that the aTV would be able to play them, but that just takes to much time. After half a year I installed BOXEE and XBMC on it, but then I had streaming problems. What I want to do now is install Mac OS 10 on it. My question is whether or not the aTV is able to run Mac OS and play 1080p movies (from its HD) and whether it will be able to download torrentz etc.

Thank you in advance,
MBKTEL

im gonna jump in here and say

1. most likely it will be too underpowered

2. its most likely illegal (breaks the EULA)

It is already running a stripped down version of Tiger and as Rob pointed out its too underpowered to run a full OS a Mac Mini would be better suited.

mbktel said:

Hello,
I have an Apple TV with a 140 gb HD. I tried converting movies so that the aTV would be able to play them, but that just takes to much time. After half a year I installed BOXEE and XBMC on it, but then I had streaming problems. What I want to do now is install Mac OS 10 on it. My question is whether or not the aTV is able to run Mac OS and play 1080p movies (from its HD) and whether it will be able to download torrentz etc.

Thank you in advance,
MBKTEL

Click to expand...

Having had the original ATV and using a Patchstick to add extra functionality, I'm of the solid opinion that the ATV is a steaming pile of poo. Adequate for SD content and low bitrate HD perhaps, but as others have said, it already does run on Tiger and is badly underpowered.

Your best bet with the original ATV is to replace the Airport wireless card with a Broadcom Crystal HD decoder (see link below). This little gem adds hardware decoding for h.264 encoded files and reportedly will play 1080p content buttery smooth on the ATV. I have not used it myself, I should say. I actually have the ATV2 now and am very satisfied with it. It won't do high bitrate 1080p, but it handles high quality 720p content just fine, and the streaming is far smoother and less glitchy than my experiences with Plex on a Mac mini serving as an HTPC.
1080p Coming to Apple TV