Just seen a new channel pop up on my ios 5.3 jb atv2 (spoofed to 6.1) called The Beatles. Anyone else see this new channel?
Yep, I have it. It is a temporary channel celebrating the Beatles 50 anniversary of coming to the States. It has 3 Ed Sullivan shows back to back and links to Beatles Albums in iTunes.
i haven't turned on my atv2 for a while, so i havent got this channel yet.
so i'm wondering:
(1) is there any value on running some type of network traffic sniffer before i do to capture the updating of the atv with this new channel to further our understanding of how it happens
(2) if so, does anyone know what i would need to do (applications, config, etc) to make this happen?
regards,
dave
Interesting idea... wireshark?
What version does the atv runnig?
Unsure of the exact version as I am now on my way to work. It would have been one of the latest available from Apple, if not the latest. Non jail broken too.
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If it's not the lastet it's probably the reason
I think you may have misunderstood my post. I’m not thinking there is a problem of it not updating. I think as soon as i turn my atv on, the new beatles channel will appear. And it is this update activity that might be worth capturing.
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Another interesting tool might be "mitmproxy/mitmdump" -> http://mitmproxy.org
Didn't use it myself yet, but what I saw sure looked promising...
Dschuetz has a follow up post: https://intrepidusgroup.com/insight/2014/02/atv-cert-pinning/
I think you may have misunderstood my post. I’m not thinking there is a problem of it not updating. I think as soon as i turn my atv on, the new beatles channel will appear. And it is this update activity that might be worth capturing.
So you're wondering, how do new apps suddenly appear? That's in the "StoreFront" call.
Basically, at some point as the main Apple TV app starts up (and, I think, periodically as it runs, maybe every hour or something like that) it reaches out to Apple and fetches a file called StoreFront.
This file lists all kinds of useful data, and in particular, lists all the applications that are available for Apple TV. So when they added "The Beatles," they added (basically) the contents of a Vendor bag (merchant name, root URL, icons, channel name, etc.) in a nice little block in this StoreFront file. There's also a "minimum required version" flag, which is why some apps show up on older Apple TVs, and some only on new ones.
So it's not really an update...it's the ATV saying "What channels or apps are available to me?" and Apple returning a list of the apps, their names, icons, and entry URLs.
A real "update" happens through the software update process, where it takes a long while to download that as you wait, then takes even longer to install it, then reboots, etc., etc. That's different.
Most new channels don't need an actual software update, though sometimes they've both happened at the same time (I think the group last June that included HBO, SKY, ESPN, and a couple others came at the same time as a minor OS update, but I can't remember for certain).
However, some channels do have legit minimum versions. A few, like ABC, HBO, PBS, etc., may work (to some degree) on 5.x, but some simply won't run there. I tried to get The Beatles to run on my jailbroken 5.2 device, and it wouldn't work. The root page for the app requires some on-screen formatting / features that simply didn't exist until 6.0 (or, well, at least not until after 5.2 anyway).
Thanks Dschuetz, that's a great explanation. It seems that you've a really good handle on it all.
