Howto: Apple TV 3, Jailbreak Like Solution Using Plex Connect & Plex Server

So the ATV3 jailbreak remains as far away as ever it seems except for all the frauds out there trying to take your money.

I've stumbled upon a free solution that the fine users and makers of Plex Server have created to work around the issue which is almost as good as jailbreak.  The solution hijacks the Apple Trailer app on the ATV by using DNS to redirect it to fetch data from Plex Server.

This allows you access to all the Plex plugins/transcoding and sharing of your local media in an air play like solution.  So this is basically everything you could want in jailbreak but without having to jailbreak anything though you must run Plex on a computer somewhere in your house while using your ATV.

Enough talking onto the downloads.

First, we'll need to generate a certificate to get it running over SSL since Apple recently switched the trailers channel to https (SSL).

1. Download and install Apple Configurator (it is in the Appstore & available for Windows).
2. Open terminal window, paste the below commands:



openssl req -new -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -out ~/Desktop/trailers.pem -keyout ~/Desktop/trailers.key -x509 -days 7300 -subj "/C=US/CN=trailers.apple.com" openssl x509 -in ~/Desktop/trailers.pem -outform der -out ~/Desktop/trailers.cer && cat ~/Desktop/trailers.key >> ~/Desktop/trailers.pem Now you have three files on your Desktop.  Launch Apple Configurator.  You should now see the below screen.  Click Supervision on the below screen to get the profiles menu.  Click the plus sign to get the create new profile wizard.






Apple Configurator Prepare Screen

3. The Window will change and you will see a profiles form on the window.  Enter "appletv-fix for the name as shown below.
4. 
   



Profiles Window











Now click certificates on the left and click the the configure button.  You'll be prompted to pick a file.  Navigate to your desktop and select "trailers.cer" that we created from the terminal commands earlier.

Click save on the bottom right and your profile will be saved.  We can now transfer the profile to the Apple TV.  This is necessary so your Apple TV can encrypt the content in a manner that the PlexConnect script can decrypt and we'll use the same cert in our PlexConnect configuration later.

Turn supervisor mode off in Apple Configurator and connect your Apple TV to your computer with a mini-usb cable (like the charger for an Android phone).  Ensure your Apple TV has power too or it won't work.

Apple Configurator will change to the below screen when it recognises your Apple TV.



Apple Configurator screen once it recognizes your Apple TV











All you do is click next and it transfers the cert to your Apple TV.  You'll see a green icon appear to indicate success.

We are now done with Apple Configurator and you can disconnect the Apple TV.  Now, we need to get PlexConnect script and configure it to use the cert generated above to connect to the Apple TV.

1. To get this setup going, your going to need to download Plex Server onto your computer.  You can get it HERE.
2. Get PlexConnect using Git on their repository HERE.  You can use this command from the terminal if you have Git installed: git clone https://github.com/iBaa/PlexConnect.git
3. In a terminal, get your machines, IP address: ifconfig -a (or ipconfig on windows)
4. Run PlexConnect using this command: sudo ./PlexConnect.py
5. Shutdown the script immediately.  It has now generated a configuration file for you.
6. Create a folder in the PlexConnect folder called certs.  Move the trailers.cer, trailers.key and trailers.pem files to this folder.  I recommend backing up these files so you have them for later.
7. Open the Settings.cfg file in text editor and edit the line certfile to point to your trailers.pem file above.  It will looks like below.

certfile = ./certs/trailers.pem

8. Run PlexConnect from the terminal again using: sudo ./PlexConnect.py
9. Change your Apple TV DNS from Automatic and enter in your IP address from your machine running PlexConnect (usually in format 192.168.X.X).  Step by step screenshots HERE on how to change DNS.
10. Run the trailer app and Plex should launch.

I recommend also getting the unsupported Plex Plugins HERE and you'll need to put them in the plugins directory of Plex (this depends on where your plex is setup, on OSX, it is ~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins/

This will allow you to install some more plugins.

NOTE: The screenshots and text for cert generation here are taken from the post I followed about it here. I'm putting them all into one guide for simplicity.

Returning to Opera

Well, I'm back on Opera though posting this on Chromium in Linux as the latest Opera Next isn't available for Linux yet.

Opera have switched to the Chromium rendering engine which has massively improved site compatibility for me especially on internal work sites.

What I love about Opera using Chromium rendering engine is that I don't have to put up with Google trying to constantly sync everything I do back to their servers.

I also get Speed Dial feature in Opera which is brilliant and nothing on any other browser compares and it is now even further enhanced by supporting folders.

I also think the Stash tab is a cool way to store bookmarks that I don't want to permanently keep though I do miss Opera Link bookmark syncing.

The Discover tab is quite cool too for when you have a few minutes to spare at work to catch up on the latest news.

I didn't intend this to be a complete review of the browsers features but I guess it is a bit bare bones at the moment in Opera Next since they have to completely rewrite the browsers features.  Here is hoping it continues to improve and Opera sticks around for a long time to come to bring me the browser I always end up returning to.

Jobsbridge stealing real jobs...

This is good evidence of Jobsbridge actually taking jobs out of the economy.

Primary school job on jobsbridge, screenshot taken just now of this. What a disgrace.

This highlights lack of funding for schools that they have to resort to this and that Jobsbridge is taking these jobs out of the economy.

Many more examples available on the Jobsbridge site on a regular basis.

It is shocking that media don't highlight this more to get this scheme at least reformed and that the government have let this exploitation of the scheme go on since Jobsbridge has pretty much started.

Anything to get the unemployment numbers down it seems.

Jobsbridge Primary School Job

Moving from Opera to Firefox

I'm a long term Opera user and advocate to be honest but sometimes you got to change when you hit too many problems using something.

I have had a lot of stability issues with Opera in work and at home so I migrated to Firefox again and new versions like nice (a lot of features borrowed from Opera I might add).

However, one thing Firefox lacks out of the box still is speed dial.  It has gone down the annoying Chrome route of trying to work out your most visited sites and the only way I found to lock my own to it is to bookmark a page and track it to a slot which is clumsy.

It also doesn't expand in numbers like Opera so I'm restricted in how many I can have.  I looked at some extensions but they don't support bookmark sync.  Anyone know any better ones?

I think I'll just continue using Firefox as my main concern is a browser that doesn't crash then hopefully Opera will become usable again in a few months time and I can switch back.

The Witcher : Enhanced Edition through Steam on Mac OSX

Okay, this game uses wine wrappers to get itself going and seems like a fragile port though I guess it does work (eventually).

I bought it through the Steam sale and it refused to launch after downloading.

Here are the steps I followed to get it to work and the versions I'm using at the time of writing this that are working.

I'm on Mac OSX 10.8.2 and using the WineSkin Winery Engine version WS9Wine1.5.16 (previously had WS9Wine1.5.14 but this didn't work).  Wrapper version Wineskin-2.5.8

Instructions taken from reddit below (I'll copy and paste them here in case this reddit gets archived or something but cheers to WhiteMouse on reddit for the steps):
http://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/related/s2bqz/howto_update_the_witcher_enhanced_edition_engine/

Bluestack for Mac Install Apps

Hey,

So Bluestack for Mac is out but seems to be limited to only a few select apps with no market place.

Well I worked out how to get GoLauncher on it, very easily which basically breaks you free to do whatever you want like a regular android device.

How do you do this?  Simple, launch the twitter app on it, find a weblink and click it.  This will open the browser on the device as Twitter uses the built in browser.

Click the Url in the title and you can change it to go to a new URL.  So go to Google and type Opera appstore into Google or go to below URL basically:
GO Launcher EX 3.17

Once downloaded, pull down notification bar and tap it then tap install and open.  You may notice, it looks a little funny.

What I did was change it to use the Nexus Live wallpaper, this doesn't appear correctly but gets rid of the wallpaper looking incorrect in the background and the Nexus one thought not appearing correctly, does fill the screen properly.

Next, go into the menu for Go Launcher and into preferences, set it to vertical (disable keyboard) for orientation and change it to display 4X4 icons.

Go into menu and find settings, there are two side by side.  Hit the one with the default Android icon (not the one with the default settings icon).

Now tap change app size and select tablet for Go Launcher and tap done and exit out.  tap the bluestack icon at the bottom (which functions as the home button) and a menu will appear asking which launcher you wish to use.  Select always use this one and tap Go Launcher and your done.

Update 1: Upon restarting it, the Nexus live wallpaper actually worked properly for me so 100% success.  From here I used, the browser icon in Go Launcher to launch stock browser, got an apk for Opera mini and installed it.  Once you start that, it comes with speedial shortcut to Opera app store for other apps.