AppleTV | Add Divx and Xvid Codecs to AppleTV

What you need to have:
- SSH enabled on your Apple TV (I won't get into that just yet but http://wiki.awkwardtv.org is a good start)
- AFP Enabled (see tutorial on this site)

Step One
Make you sure know the ip address of your apple tv. You can find this in your apple tv menus under Settings:Network

Step Two
Go to http://perian.org/ and download the perian component. (You can choose a different codec if you like but this one works well)

Step Three
Once downloaded double click the dmg to mount it. A window will open which displays Perian.prefPane at the top left.

Step Four
Ctrl-Click the Perian.prefPane image and select Show Package Contents.

Step Five
Another window will appear showing the folder Contents. Go into Contents then Resources then Components.

Step Six
You will finally see a file called Perian.zip. Open the folder and you will find a file called Perian.component

Step Seven
Copy this file to your AppleTv via AFP. To connect to your AppleTV via AFP just open a new Finder, select Go:Go To Folder from the menu and then enter afp://appletvipaddress using your appletv's ip address. When asked select frontrow as the volume to mount.

Step Eight
Open a new Terminal window from your osx Applications:Utilities folder.

Step Nine
Type ssh -1 frontrow@youripaddress into the terminal window substituting 'youripaddress' with your apple tv's ip address. Note: the password is frontrow.

Step Ten
Execute the following commands:
sudo mount -uw /
sudo cp -r Perian.component /System/Library/Quicktime/Perian.component
sudo rm -r Perian.component

Step Eleven
To set the permissions execute the following:
sudo chown root:wheel /System/Library/Quicktime/Perian.component
sudo chmod 755 /System/Library/Quicktime/Perian.component

Step Twelve
Finally you can reboot by execute the following:
sudo reboot