Control AppleTV with terminal or web? Is there any way to control an Apple TV 1st gen either through terminal connection or a web interface (ideally using a REST interface)?

By "control" I mean don't mean "control everything".  One example use-case would be: Give the ATV a MP3 stream URL and have it play. 

If some kind of "hacking" or plugin is involved, that's ok!
No, there is no such interface available for the default ATV2 shell, however you could install XBMC (jailbreaking required) and use XBMC API to control it. 

If you really want to control the default interface (now called AppleTV.app), you have two possible routes (both beyond the scope of this site and question):


Reverse engineer the protocol used in the remote app.
Reverse engineer the AppleTV.app and use some way (mobilesubstrate) to inject hooks for functions or whole network interface.