For me, acquiring new gadgets is painfully easy; offloading old ones is more difficult. The predictable result: a closet, garage, or basement full of aging but not quite obsolete tech. As an Ars reader, you can probably relate.

I recently ran into my first-generation Apple TV during a spelunking expedition into the depths of my home office closet. After upgrading to a second-gen Apple TV last year, I had actually forgotten the old one was in there. The rediscovery piqued my curiosity. Though I have long avoided performing jailbreaks on my Apple products, the old Apple TV gave me a chance to find out what else I could watch on this thing besides iTunes content.

You can actually watch all manner of other content on an old Apple TV if you're willing to tinker. The two most popular software interfaces are a version of Boxee and a version of XBMC, both designed for the original Apple TV. Here, I offer you a chronicle of my own experiences setting up these both solutions, and show you how to do the same.

Preparations

Before watching all those movies you diligently ripped from your own collection, you have to get your electronic mise en place. Here's the minimum list of ingredients:

Original Apple TV with functional hard drive and WiFi

Blank USB stick or drive with at least 512MB of space

A Mac or PC with an Internet connection

The latest version of the ATV USB Creator tool

The ATV USB Creator is an open source project that, luckily for original Apple TV owners, remains alive and well. It lets you create a patchstick from your USB drive, which will then let you replace the Apple TV's existing operating system with a modified version.

Some instructions floating around the Web claim that you also have to download the latest version of the (old) Apple TV operating system, but if you are using the Mac version of the ATV USB Creator, you don't have to take this extra step. The tool (as of publication) can download its own copy of the latest Apple TV operating system, so it's unnecessary to dig up your own copy unless you are specifically aiming to install an older version of the OS.

In order to get the patched version of the OS onto your USB stick, plug the stick into an open USB port and fire up the ATV USB Creator. It will look a lot like this:

Make sure "ATV-Patchstick" is selected in the top left drop-down, then select "XBMC/Boxee for Mac" from the bottom drop-down under "Installation Operations." If the software can see your USB drive, it will show it in the drop-down along the bottom of the window under "USB Target Device." (If it's not seeing the drive, try clicking the refresh button represented by the blue arrows). If you want the tool to automatically download the latest Apple TV OS on its own, don't click the "Choose a DMG" button, but if you have another version of the OS that you've downloaded from somewhere, you can click that button to find the DMG file on your computer.

When done, click the "Create Using ->" button at the bottom of the window, which will then try to put a patched version of the Apple TV OS onto your USB drive.

I say "attempt" because, according to my own experience and to numerous accounts online, this may not work the first time. Or the second time. Or the third and fourth times. I actually had to try five separate times before the tool successfully created a bootable USB stick; apparently it's possible for some USB drives to simply not work with the tool, and the recommended course of action flip flops between "just try again" and "try a different brand of USB stick." For what it's worth, I never tried another stick; mine just failed four times before succeeding.

After a successful patch—you'll know because the ATV USB Creator will tell you it worked—you're ready to defile your first-generation Apple TV.

Installing to your Apple TV

Congratulations! If you're anything like me, you've already wasted an entire day by this point. Still, success feels pretty good, doesn't it? The next major step is to put the modified version of the OS onto your Apple TV. Luckily, it's a relatively straightforward process.

Make sure your Apple TV is off (you'll have to unplug it, since there is no power button), then insert the USB stick into the port on the back of the device. Plug the Apple TV back in and allow it to boot. If the patchstick is successful, you'll see something like this on your screen:

Once the Apple TV claims it's finished with the installation, you'll have to reboot the device. The Apple TV will go through its normal boot video and once it gets to the main menu screen, you'll know for sure whether the installation was successful.

If so, you'll see new menu options across the board. You don't need to mess with most of these unless you want to dive down the rabbit hole of specific configurations or use the Console. But what you should do before proceeding is go into the new Software menu, then go into Settings, and then scroll down to "UpdateBlocker" and turn it on. This will block future Apple TV OS updates from coming down the line and wiping out all your stuff. It's an unlikely scenario, considering that the first-gen Apple TV is unlikely to see updates at this point, but it's the safe thing to do nonetheless.

Once you've done that, you're ready to set up the software. But first, make sure your Apple TV is connected to a WiFi network, because you still have to download the latest version of Boxee and/or XBMC before you can use them.

Go back to the Launcher menu and select Downloads. From there, select either Boxee or XBMC. This makes the Apple TV download the most recent version of either piece of software and install it on your device. You'll have to perform this action again if you want both Boxee and XBMC, but you don't have to (personally, I prefer Boxee.) Please note, however, that while the files are downloading, you shouldn't switch away from the screen—doing so will abort the download and you'll have to start over.

Once you finish downloading your media player software, you can then reboot the Apple TV into that software by going to the Launcher menu and selecting Boxee or XBMC. You don't have to unplug the Apple TV to do this; once you select the software, the device launches it automatically.

Voilà! Now you have Boxee or XBMC, or both, on your original Apple TV. If you have a Boxee login, you can then sign in with your username and password in order to access the various services that Boxee offers.