The life of a jailbroken second-gen Apple TV just keeps getting better. First there was weather. OK! But soon, thanks to a software suite called aTV Flash, your ATV will be able to browse the web and play Last.fm radio.
Fire Core's hoping to roll out the beta for aTV Flash within the next two weeks, and as these videos show, it'll mark a nice step forward for less-than-official second-gen Apple TV functionality. Couch Surfer Pro, the suite's web browser, seems to be running pretty smoothly already (with a nice big cursor for laid-back-in-the-couch viewing), and the team is working on ironing out support for a few more plugins before the release.
The first beta will aslo have a nice Last.fm radio player, complete with animated slideshows.
Fire Core says that their third major goal, support for additional video codecs, is coming along more slowly but steadily nonetheless:
Not surprisingly this has turned out to be no trivial task - because of this we've teamed up with a few outside developers to move things along a bit more quickly. We'll have more info as things progress but unfortunately this probably won't make it into the initial beta version. The end goal however remains the same - robust support for non-itunes media (including DVD files).
Between projects like these and the somewhat surprisingly wide swath of video that can be streamed from iOS devices via AirPlay, the $99 AppleTV is looking like a more versatile big screen companion than ever. [Fire Core via 9 to 5 Mac]