I bought a Sony PSP when they first came out (and recently replaced it after breaking it). I was excited about the possibilities of a portable machine with excellent video capabilities, gaming, music, and wifi. This is a device that could have, with the right software, allowed me to carry around TV shows, music, podcasts, and more. With the wifi, anything was possible.

The hacking community also got interested in what the PSP could do. They released all manner of things, like a PDF browser (handy for reading eBooks); an online radio streamer; and emulators to allow you to play Gameboy or SNES games on your PSP - a process that is known as ‘homebrew’.

Which is where Sony got upset. Oblivious to the fact that only a minority of hackers were playing with the device, they repeatedly stopped the hacks working: using firmware updates that all new PSP games had to have. Wanted the latest games? Say goodbye to your hacks. It all stems from the fact that Sony makes the majority of its cash on games, not on the console (for which I’d imagine, like the XBox 360, they lose money). So, Sony desperately wants to kill homebrew.

Eighteen months on from the launch of the PSP, the unit is slumping alarmingly. - down 72% year-on-year. The amount of games available for the device appears to be slowing dramatically. To this outsider, at least, the PSP is dying a death.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. The new Apple TV is out: which plays a small amount of video, tied-in to Apple’s iTunes walled garden. For those of us in the UK, the Apple TV offers little: there are precious little films or TV shows available on iTunes (the US ones staying within the US, not being available elsewhere). But there’s no denying that it’s a nice object, and has possibilities.

Many possibilities, in fact. Because the hacking community have been busy - within only a week or so of the device finally shipping, some hackers have been busy and the system can now handle xVid, one of the most prevalent video codecs on BitTorrent. Let’s reiterate that: The Apple TV can now play pirate videos from the internet.

Now at present it’s a horrid hack (involving opening the Apple TV up and removing the hard-drive); and the processes currently required to play stuff are so convoluted that it’s frankly a pretty pointless exercise at the moment. But, as forum user ‘plasticbugs’ says: “There goes Apple’s business model”. (If we think Apple’s business model for the Apple TV Is based around the same model as Sony, which I doubt).

Hackers have also upgraded the Apple TV’s harddrive, too - enabling much more video to be stored on the unit than just 40gb.

Apple’s products have already been the target of hackers before: anyone with an iPod can run iPod Linux on their devices - so more applications can run on your little iPod than you thought possible… even a familiar shoot-em-up. Apple’s made no attempt to stop homebrew for the iPod.

There’s no doubt that homebrew has the capability of driving more sales of the Apple TV. The question is whether Apple acts to stop homebrew for it - particularly when Hollywood’s about.

Interesting times.

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