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Sounds a lot like the CacheCard from SiliconDust for Series1 TiVos, except instead of an SDRAM DIMM it uses an SSD. And the CacheCard doesn't sit between the devices but instead connects to the TiVo motherboard's card-edge connector, provides an Ethernet port, and is designed only to cache a particular 0.5 GiB part of the drive.

But since the SDRAM loses its contents on power off, it does add significant time to test and fill at startup, while the SSD would be ready nearly immediately.

Yeah, I have a mythtv box with an HDHomeRun but I'm living in an apartment building where the over-the-air channels are impossible to tune, and where time warner encrypts all of the hd channels except for the weather ones (they started encrypting basic channels soon after I got my hdhomerun too). I love my mythtv box, but it's useless for HD at the moment.

Many wired adapters work as well, but only needed for the Series2. Series3 already has a port for wired access. Series1 doesn't have features that would use it, but internal cards are available.

For a stand alone digital VCR here is the best solution.

Go here http://justdeals.com/Items/gs_ptv100? and get yourself a series 1 Tivo. $60

Buy a big IDE hard drive from newegg.com $50 - $??

Buy some DIY software from http://www.9thtee.com/tivo-instantcake.htm. $20

The Series 1 Tivo does not require a subscription to work. You can schedule recordings for a channel, time, and duration. So now you have a piece of hardware built just for recording TV without a monthly fee. In the future if you decide to subscribe and get all the cool Tivo features, you can.

The silicondust website is currently having issues. Google cache: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:LJZMm-6NRmkJ: www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomerun+silico ndust.com&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us 9thtee: http://www.9thtee.com/hdhomerun.htm

Actually Krogers and Marsh (grocery chains) already have do-it-all rental kiosks. The only limiting thing is the selection, but with the growth of broadband around here. Even that problem could disappear.

"When you're through watching the movie you toss the DVD. No shortages of the top hits, and the customer never needs to come back to return the DVD and pay a late fee."

What's the difference between "tossing it" and buying it, and how do you enforce that difference?

---
HDHomeRun-Networked Digital HDTV Tuner

http://dvd-create.sourceforge.net/tystudio/tyserve r.shtml

Just need a hacked TiVo to get it up and running. If you don't have a hacked TiVo, see http://www.9thtee.com/tivo-sa1.htm for upgrading your series 1 TiVo.

These guys have the kits and instructions even -my- Dad could follow.

If it is a series 1, the problem is you don't have enough memory. We had the same problem with our dtivo. We added a cachecard and 1gb memory from: http://www.9thtee.com/tivocachecard.htm and everything is now spiffy.

they let you pay a one-time fee (originally $199, then $249, now I think $299) for the LIFETIME of the unit.

It's the LIFETIME of the units that's a big problem that nobody else has emphasized enough.

I bought an original TiVo with the original $199 lifetime. I had no end of modem problems. It looked quite likely that my modem would completely expire long before my "lifetime" plan paid ff for me. Fortunately I switched to DirecTivo and sold the original to a friend with a better phone line (and it's working for him).

There are no end of stories online of people having various hardware problems. There's even a cottage industry that has sprung up because so many modems went bad. Here's one example:

http://www.9thtee.com/tivomodemrepair.htm

There are other hardware problems that have occured from time to time with more recent TiVo models. So, one important aspect of the LIFETIME bet is:

you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

I believe that TIVOs also use PowerPC processors, e.g. IBM PowerPC 403GCX (see http://www.9thtee.com/insidetivo.htm or the picture of the chip at that same page. It also uses an IBM MPEG-2 Decoder chip.

Similar item here.

I purchased a TurboNet card for the inside expansion slot. This gives me true 100mbit access. 900mb in 30 minutes... right.. try 10 minutes with this sucker.

Upgraded the image to 3.0 with the Instant Cake imaging CD. This also includes all the cool tools like tivoweb, tivoftp, etc..

All that remains is to extract the MPEGs to my computer. And that is handled with TyStudio. Its a client/server operation and works very well.

Now see? That wasn't so bad. Oh, on eBay my Series1 was $56 including shipping!

I purchased a TurboNet card for the inside expansion slot. This gives me true 100mbit access. 900mb in 30 minutes... right.. try 10 minutes with this sucker.

Upgraded the image to 3.0 with the Instant Cake imaging CD. This also includes all the cool tools like tivoweb, tivoftp, etc..

All that remains is to extract the MPEGs to my computer. And that is handled with TyStudio. Its a client/server operation and works very well.

Now see? That wasn't so bad. Oh, on eBay my Series1 was $56 including shipping!

Yeah, check out www.9thtee.com for lots of tivo related hacks.

Rob

What are you talking about?

My Sony TiVo has a couple hundred hours of recording capacity thanks to a 2nd hard drive that I added to it. I first put my new harddrive in a desktop computer and booted from one of the Linux boot CDs (I forgot which one, I think Dylan's) to configure it, then slapped it in to my TiVo and it was instantly available.

Adding a hard drive isn't good enough to count as 'hacking' even when it is seamlessly accepted by the interface? Okay, then add an Ethernet card to a 1st generation TiVo. After TiVo released there v3 software you don't even need to install drivers anymore for the most popular of the ethernet addons. What? Yes, you heard me: TiVo added built-in support for hacking your TiVo to have ethernet - even though they didn't announce support for ethernet officially until the Series 2 TiVos came with an external USB port. (There is a version with a built in wireless card too, called the airnet)

I even have a Cache Card in my TiVo. Talk about hack... Not only does it add an ethernet port, but it lets me add 512 megs of ram to cache the TiVo databases (which were large and slow on a tivo upgraded with so much recording capacity).

My TiVo is happily chugging along as expected. It didn't even mind when I added a web server to it, so that I could schedule recordings and modify my to-do list when I'm at work, even though I don't have a Series 2 unit that has that feature built-in.

You might want to check out the TiVo Community Forum (in particular the Upgrade Center and Underground sections) to see what the TiVo community is all about. There are utilities to display caller id info on screen, random pictures, the weather, stock tickers, instant messenger messages, and more. Oh, and before you say TiVo doesn't 'embrace' this community, search the postings - it shouldn't be too hard to find some posts from employees there.

Now if by "doesn't embrace" you mean "lets people trade files with reckless abandon on the internet" then yes, you are right. Everyone on that site 'plays fair'. Threads about decrypting/extracting the video files, hacking subscription information so you don't have to pay to get schedule listing updates, etc aren't allowed. Why bite the hand that feeds you? If we were to do things that got TiVo in trouble they wouldn't keep making sweet hardware for us to love!

What are you talking about?

My Sony TiVo has a couple hundred hours of recording capacity thanks to a 2nd hard drive that I added to it. I first put my new harddrive in a desktop computer and booted from one of the Linux boot CDs (I forgot which one, I think Dylan's) to configure it, then slapped it in to my TiVo and it was instantly available.

Adding a hard drive isn't good enough to count as 'hacking' even when it is seamlessly accepted by the interface? Okay, then add an Ethernet card to a 1st generation TiVo. After TiVo released there v3 software you don't even need to install drivers anymore for the most popular of the ethernet addons. What? Yes, you heard me: TiVo added built-in support for hacking your TiVo to have ethernet - even though they didn't announce support for ethernet officially until the Series 2 TiVos came with an external USB port. (There is a version with a built in wireless card too, called the airnet)

I even have a Cache Card in my TiVo. Talk about hack... Not only does it add an ethernet port, but it lets me add 512 megs of ram to cache the TiVo databases (which were large and slow on a tivo upgraded with so much recording capacity).

My TiVo is happily chugging along as expected. It didn't even mind when I added a web server to it, so that I could schedule recordings and modify my to-do list when I'm at work, even though I don't have a Series 2 unit that has that feature built-in.

You might want to check out the TiVo Community Forum (in particular the Upgrade Center and Underground sections) to see what the TiVo community is all about. There are utilities to display caller id info on screen, random pictures, the weather, stock tickers, instant messenger messages, and more. Oh, and before you say TiVo doesn't 'embrace' this community, search the postings - it shouldn't be too hard to find some posts from employees there.

Now if by "doesn't embrace" you mean "lets people trade files with reckless abandon on the internet" then yes, you are right. Everyone on that site 'plays fair'. Threads about decrypting/extracting the video files, hacking subscription information so you don't have to pay to get schedule listing updates, etc aren't allowed. Why bite the hand that feeds you? If we were to do things that got TiVo in trouble they wouldn't keep making sweet hardware for us to love!

You can download with Tivo and burn straight to SVCD or Divx for much cheaper than homebrew. Look into TurboNet and TivoWeb.

Not having to dedicate a power sucking ($$$) PC to catch tv shows is nice too.

Is there such a thing out there with assembly not required? I just can't stand the idea of paying a monthly fee for a relatively simple device masquerading as a service.

Get a Series 1 TiVo off of ebay. Put in a network card and don't subscribe to the TiVo service. You might want to find a 1.3 version of the OS as, IIRC, it doesn't nag you about the lack of service.

Once properly hacked you can telnet to your TiVo and purge the keystroke logs! (in /var/log, where else!?) Not to mention the other nifty capabilities, like web-based control and Video Extraction...

You can use an external modem with your Tivo. Not sure if this works during setup. I may find out myself since I am using an external modem myself. Also you can get your modem repaired here.

TiVo hacking faq on drive locking
Unlock program for Quantum TiVo hard drive

Supposedly the QUnlock.exe program will permanently unlock the drive, but then again it could be some kind of TiVo "locking" and not the hard drive password locking we're talking about.

Isn't this basically how you go about 'resizing' your drive in Tivo? Take out the original, pop it into a Linux box, dd to another drive...and put back into the Tivo?

Yeah, that's how it used to be done. The current method uses Tiger's MFSTools 2.0 CD to copy the streams from the old drive(s) to new MFS partitions on the new drive(s). Which is like copying all the files from one drive to another with a tool that knows the filesystem.

dd doesn't care about filesystems or partition tables for that matter. It just copies from one file to another, except that it does it in chunks of a specified (or default) block size typically used in filesystems.

Outfit your Tivo with the AirNET card. Your Tivo will get the updates when the vehicle is parked in your garage via wifi.

Well, a simple Google search finds this product, (blurb from site: "The TurboNETTM Ethernet Adapter Card allows you to hook your TiVo up to your network. This allows daily updates over broadband instead of the telephone, easier hacking, TiVoWEB, etc.") although I'm sure there are other ways to accomplish the task of avoiding the need for a phone line.

I've been looking to get a G4 rather than a G5 because of the large number of drive bays available in the G4 case (video editing). Could it be that the power supply doesn't have enough power to spin up all the drives in your system simultaneously?

If this is the case, TiVo hackers came up with a device to allow some of their units with less powerful hard drives to spin up two drives separately: the PTVupgrade SmartStart Power Supply Protector.

I have not used this device myself yet in a TiVo or Mac, so I can offer no testimonial, but the design concept is sound, and I've heard no complaints about it on TiVo-related forums.

Of course, you should first determine if it is the drives' load at spin-up that's causing your startup problems.

>- No install of Linux, software, libraries

Run that by me again, I seem to be misunderstanding...

>- no install of cards

uhhhuhhh...

>- Customer support if you cant figure out how to plug it into your TV (the truely braindead)

And RedHat doesn't offer any?

>- Comes with all the cables

So does a computer with a TV Capture board pre-installed...

You can buy a computer setup already for the brain-dead. I never really did get the TiVO thing... especially the monthly subscription deal. Blech!

I just replaced my modem with the turbonet card from 9thtee and patched it into my dsl-linked home network. Worked on the first try, and no more worries about modem frying. The whole install process took less than 10 minutes. Cost was ~$70 - less than what an external modem kit is going for, and no soldering is required.

I run Xbox Media Player to play my videos (MPG, AVI, etc), audio (an impressive number of codecs supported), and shoutcast streams. It also can function as a slideshow for your pictures. XBMP is a great application and is only getting better. XBMP will play the files from your server (via a number of different cross-platform protocols).

I have a turbonet card from 9thtee installed on my series 1 DirecTivo (Philips DSR 6000). The Tivo is an excellent PVR. While some try and replace some of its functionality with a PC, I think that the Tivo just has a much better interface. By using software such as Tystudio (beta 2) or MFS_FTP, it is possible to pull down MPEG or M2V/M2A elemental streams. You can use this to create a MTV video juke box, archive movies to your HD, or burn DVDs. And yes... you do get the full bitstream available to the DirecTV -- no signal degradation + 5.1 sound. etc.

And just for the record, the TurboNet mod for a series 1 Tivo costs $70, and is available here. It's no harder to install than a PCI card-- you open the case, plug it in, and drill a hole (or just cram it through one of the vents like i did) for the cable to stick out. As the parent poster mentioned, the current version of the Tivo software already contains the drivers needed to support it, so you no longer have to do any monkeying with the config files or removing the hard drive.

The series 2's just take a little $20 USB ethernet adapter, and away you go!

...with your DirecTiVo. It lets you hook up your TiVo to an Ethernet connection and download updates through that. Check it out.

The cost ($70) is probably less than two months of POTS service. If that's the only reason you have a landline, I'd say buying a TurboNET is the way to go.

How many add-ons does it have to have? Or how many more add-ons does it have to have? There's a TON out there already, from TiVo and from the hacking community.

mp3 and ogg decoding?

There's an addon available (for cost) that does mp3, but not ogg.

programmable from any computer?

The same addon as the mp3 ability does that, too. Or you can use the free, community-provided tool, that's been around for awhile.

hackable?

There is plenty of that going on .

How about a pop3 client? Or perhaps AIM on your TiVo? What about caller id? Plenty of other stuff, too.

Personally, I'm glad that they don't slap a recordable DVD drive in there. That would just jack the cost of the hardware. If it is that important, just throw the TiVo on your network and hit google for tivo video extraction. With the tools available, it is fairly trivial to extract the MPEG streams to your PC and record them to DVD, plus you get the benefit of using whatever video editing software you want (to do things like cut the commercials, etc), and whatever DVD recording software you like. If the functionality were on the TiVo, I'd doubt that you'd get much more than save to DVD, with no editing possible.

I'll keep my TiVo1 series box until DTV gets on the ball. When I can get these new features I'll buy two TiVo2 boxes!

Even then, I'm not so sure that HMO makes the upgrade to Series 2 worthwhile. I have a standalone Series 1 TiVo, and I don't plan on upgrading. My TiVo is connected to my network, and I've been ripping/archiving shows from it for nearly two years now. The software to enable this keeps getting better all the time...TyStudio is especially slick. Once it's set up, a few clicks are all it takes to extract an MPEG stream that you can burn directly to DVD or transcode to a lower bitrate for SVCD. (Info on transcoding/editing TiVo video is available here, but it's not yet been updated for TyStudio.) Remote scheduling is handled through TivoWeb, so that's covered...that's really the only HMO feature I'd find useful, as I have only one TiVo (making "multi-room viewing," as they've defined it, useless) and my DVD player plays MP3 CDs.

Maybe HMO is a bit easier to set up for the drooling masses, but you can still do more with a Series 1 TiVo...and it doesn't cost you anything (other than the cost of a NIC for your TiVo, and even that is cheaper than HMO).

You can get an ethernet card (wireless to) for tivo. Go here for tivo ethernet drivers already in the 3.0 software. Just plug it up, run an ethernet cable to a dhcp router/switch whatever, and change the dial in to something like #401.

I can't wait for somebody to come up with a hack that will trick the TiVo into streaming video to computers instead of other TiVo's using this. That would probably prompt me to buy a TiVo Series 2.

I'm still thinking about putting one of these into my TiVo and trying to stream video via samba or whatnot. I really want to be able to watch shows that I've recorded over WiFi via my laptop and burn VCD's for archive purposes.

All I wanted was to dump the crappy built-in modem that has died twice in 3 years and use my internet link to get the guide information.

All I wanted was to dump the crappy built-in modem that has died twice in 3 years and use my internet link to get the guide information.

All I wanted was to dump the crappy built-in modem that has died twice in 3 years and use my internet link to get the guide information.

Ok, I'll bite. Why are you still using the modem? TurboNet cards have been out forever. They are extremely easy to install.

They mean a network card on the TiVo, not the Mac.

However, I'd still say get a tivo (if you have a satelite, it's your only real choice since you can record 2 shows at once) and then spend $100 on one of the dazzle capture/dvd creation station, then you can just burn from the tivo (or any svideo/rca source) to vcd or dvd's that can be viewed in most dvd players.

Why bother with the losses you'll get from digital-to-analog-to-digital conversion? Get a NIC for your TiVo and rip the streams directly from it. To make SVCDs, you'll need to reencode, but if you tweak your TiVo's recording settings a bit, you could make DVDs with a combination of some rough editing (remove GOPs that are entirely within the bounds of commercial breaks) and taking advantage of DVD playback-control methods to eliminate what's left of the commercials.

(Some say that you can make similar tweaks to make SVCDs without reencoding. However, TMPGEnc is a much better low-to-medium-bitrate MPEG-2 encoder than the hardware encoder used in a TiVo. At the higher bitrates used for DVDs, the hardware encoder should be adequate.)

(Only works on a series one Tivo, so I guess you won't we able to use it with all this new Rendevouz stuff)

The only person at home who uses my home phone line is Tivo, everything else goes through the network connection or cell. So when a friend told me about some easy hardware mods, one of them is plug 'n go, I had to buy one. Check out 9th tee . They have a whole bunch of hardware upgrades for the Tivo including a wireless 802.11b ethernet card based on the prism chipset.

The ISA ethernet card is plug 'n go if you're using Tivo software 3.0.x or later and have a first gen Tivo. The 802.11b wireless card is not quite as easy to install, but 9th tee has links to instructions.

-Runz

The only person at home who uses my home phone line is Tivo, everything else goes through the network connection or cell. So when a friend told me about some easy hardware mods, one of them is plug 'n go, I had to buy one. Check out 9th tee . They have a whole bunch of hardware upgrades for the Tivo including a wireless 802.11b ethernet card based on the prism chipset.

The ISA ethernet card is plug 'n go if you're using Tivo software 3.0.x or later and have a first gen Tivo. The 802.11b wireless card is not quite as easy to install, but 9th tee has links to instructions.

-Runz

The only person at home who uses my home phone line is Tivo, everything else goes through the network connection or cell. So when a friend told me about some easy hardware mods, one of them is plug 'n go, I had to buy one. Check out 9th tee . They have a whole bunch of hardware upgrades for the Tivo including a wireless 802.11b ethernet card based on the prism chipset.

The ISA ethernet card is plug 'n go if you're using Tivo software 3.0.x or later and have a first gen Tivo. The 802.11b wireless card is not quite as easy to install, but 9th tee has links to instructions.

-Runz

This is Tivo's new service agreement in PDF, and here is Google's copy of Tivo's service agreement converted to HTML.

Unfortunately I'm unable to dig up the agreement I originally signed on for to comparision, but the following are changes from the previous agreement:

2. The TiVo Service. The basic TiVo service consists of program guide information and the following features: ... Season Pass... WishList... Smart Recording... TiVo Suggestions... Parental Controls.

This is fairly subtle, but the previous agreement basically just said that service consisted of program guide information. Nothing else. The other features were implicitly part of the unit you purchased. Sure, the features weren't terribly useful without guide information, but if you could find another way to provide guide data those feature would work. Now they're claiming that if you fail to pay you have no rights at all these features which are entirely managed within the unit.

3. Changes to Your TiVo Service. TiVo may, at its discretion and from time to time change, add or remove features and functionality of the TiVo Service or the TiVo DVR (when the TiVo DVR access TiVo's servers) without notice. If you are dissatisfied with any such changes to the TiVo Service, you may immediately cancel your subscription as provided in section 13 ("Termination of Service").

Given the helpful definitions of features in the previous section, TiVo is clearly reserving the right to remove Season Passes, WishList, Smart Recording, TiVo Suggestions, Parental Controls and other functionality. Sure, it seems unlikely that they'll take such features away, but why are they asking for the right to? Those are specifically the features they advertised the Tivo as having, and the reason I bought mine.

But I can terminate the service if I don't like it? Given the new changes, my Tivo effectively becomes a giant paperweight. And (checking Section 13), my lifetime subscription that I paid for before this change will not be refunded in any way, so I'm especially S.O.L..

10. Using the TiVo Service. ... you agree not to tamper with or otherwise modify the TiVo DVR.

The rest of the section is pretty reasonable, but this little clause is unreasonable. I purchased my Tivo specifically because they were very open and had a "You void your warrantee, and we won't support you, but feel free to hack on your Tivo" policy. I wanted to support that behavior. This effectively reverses the decision. No more hard drive expansion hacks. To heck with that.

11. Advertising and Promotions. ... In order to send such content, you agree that Tivo may tune your Tivo DVR to a particular channel at a particular time.

In practice it looks like they only use this to record the silly promos I see on my main menu. That I don't mind. What I do mind is that this implies that they can preempt my normal recording to record their ads. That I object to. I doubt they ever will preempt my programming, but why not state as much in the policy?

12. Definition of Product Lifetime Subscription. ... Of course, hardware products don't last forever and their lifespan will vary.

When I purchased a lifetime subscription, I understood that the lifetime in question was for the unit, not me. I figured it just meant that if the system failed I'd need to pay to get it repaired. This working left me fearing that they may claim that once a Tivo experiences any failure that they can claim that its lifetime is over and cancel the service. Since my Tivo actually experienced a modem failure nine months into its life, this seems like a real risk to me. (On a related note, it looks like Tivo modems are fragile, thus products like this one. Get your Tivo on a phone line surge supressor!)

I brought up all of these complaints to Tivo support when I became aware of them. I got a form letter back that failed to address the issues I brought up. Feh.

It doesn't look like they've allowed for updated Tivo over broadband yet. I dropped my land line for a cell phone and broadband (had the cellphone already anyway). Tivo looks great, but is un-usable.

This is like the 5th highly rated comment in this article that is just plain wrong.

If you have a standalone TiVo (series 1), you can buy cards that fit in your TiVo and give you an ethernet port. Or you can buy the AirTivo device, and have WiFi connection instead!

If you have a standalone Series 2 TiVo, you can buy a USB device that plugs into the port and gives you an ethernet port. You could also buy a wireless AP and connect it to this port to give you wireless connectivity as well.

In either case, if you bought compatible hardware, you simply punch in a special code instead of a dialup phone number into the TiVo menu, and your TiVo will use your existing LAN connection to the net to download all its data each night. No software hacking required.

The TiVo forums refer to this as "broadband un-support," because while it works great in the TiVo, it is not yet officially supported.

I've used it for well over a year now, back when you used to have to muck with the software to get it to work.

Visit 9thtee for the necessary addons.

The second generation TiVo has been around for quite some time (months even), and it does not have broadband support. Unless they'll be selling hardware upgrades (which is doubtful considering the warranty situation), you'll probably have to get a third generation TiVo.

Wrong. TiVo 2 comes with USB ports. These are meant for addons. There are plenty of USB-Ethernet solutions available. In fact, TiVo 2 comes with (albeit somewhat hidden) support for these devices already. You can change your telephone dialup # to a special code, and TiVo will use the USB/Ethernet connection to download program guide data and system updates (and to update the clock).

Presumably these new addons would utilize this broadband over USB technology.

Of course, that's not to stop you from getting the Turbonet Ethernet Adapter Board [9thtee.com] for your TiVo from The 9th Tee [9thtee.com].

It's amazing that you linked to 9th tee's turbonet product, and yet completely missed the USB/Ethernet stuff I was just talking about for TiVo 2's.

Wrong!
Get a USB ethernet adapter...there are quite a few models that are "unofficially" supported by TiVo's "OS".

Right on the same site you linked too...lol:
http://www.9thtee.com/tivousbethernet.htm