JamanTV for Apple TV

A little while back we mentioned the Navizon "virtual GPS" application for the iPhone, which was one of the first commercial third-party applications for the iPhone which depended on the iPhone hacks. Of course, Navizon is now presumably broken along with the rest of the iPhone hacks. It seems that the online international and indie movie rental company Jaman is tempting fate with a forthcoming plugin for the Apple TV that will similarly depend on a hack to be installed.

The guys over at Apple TV Hacks got an interesting sneak peak at the JamanTV player. The Jaman system requires the user to install the Jaman software on their computer (which functions something like iTunes), and then install the JamanTV plugin onto the Apple TV via a patchstick (this is a USB flash drive that patches the Apple TV without requiring you to open the box). The JamanTV player then syncs to the Jaman software on the Mac (or PC). So basically you rent the movies from your Mac, then sync them to the Apple TV for viewing.

It will be interesting to see if Apple allows this kind of commercial hacking. Of course, the mothership has seemed much less persnickety about hacking on the Apple TV than they have about the iPhone. So for anyone who's longed to rent movies over the net to watch on their Apple TV, the Jaman service could be of great interest (provided you're not looking for Hollywood blockbuster type movies).