iOS Applications Running At 720p On Apple TV

Developers are getting closer to letting you use iOS applications on Apple TV.

Yesterday, we reported on how developers Steve Troughton-Smith and TheMudKip were joining forces to bring iOS application functionality to the Apple TV - a Wi-Fi entertainment system for your television set by Apple that can now be jailbroken untethered with the new seas0npass. The project was to let you use iOS applications natively on the Apple TV like they were meant to be there in the first place and to try and spike Apple's interest into making an App Store for the Apple TV. As you can see from our last article, the mirroring appearance was a little sketchy.


As shown in the image above, the developers working on this porting process are able to run iOS applications in 720p on the Apple TV - which is much more attractive than looking at it in a little window which was in yesterday's article. In case you didn't know, 720p has to do with video quality, resolution, and things of that sort. The higher the 'p' the more preferred it is. 1080p is the highest that Apple has managed to squeeze into their devices to far and it's available on the iPhone 4S's camera. These 720p applications mean that they can fill the whole TV screen. This of course is a more desirable effect because instead of looking at a small window on a huge screen, it's more spread out.

This has been done by completely re-writing SpringBoard to work in their favor. With the ability to run applications on an Apple TV at full screen - you can actually do a lot with it, but due to the fact that this process is only being tested and not commercially available for jailbreakers yet, we probably won't see anything done with it until other developers get hands-on with it. It opens the door for jailbreak developers to actually write 720p applications for the Apple TV itself. This meaning that we won't need to port over from one iOS device over the Apple TV to use it. That is the ultimate goal of this project; to spike Apple's interest in an App Store of 720p applications for the Apple TV - as Steve Troughton-Smith said, "Remember how the unofficial iPhone apps back in ’07 forced Apple’s hand in creating an App Store? I’d like AppleTV to get the same treatment."

They've even managed to make iOS applications run side-by-side on the same screen:

 We will continue to update you on the progress of the Apple TV application porting project. What are your thoughts about running iOS applications on your Apple TV in 720p? Share in the comments.

Sources: 9to5Mac