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More Tivo Hacking
Logik writes: "It appears a bunch of guys over at http://www.geocities.com/tivohack/ have hacked the tivo to add a second hard drive. It appears they run Linux on a 50mhz PowerPC chip. They've even open sourced the kernel." Tons of great ways to void your warranty, and information about the guts. Also talks about how to add disk space.
(Huzzah!) I'm also hearing rumors of MP3 playing on the boxes as well.
The article said that "They've even open sourced the kernel." I would actually be quite surprised if they didn't- after all, the Linux kernel is released under the GPL, which requires all derived works to also be open source. I don't see why Logik stated this fact as if it's nice of them to do that - it's not like they had any other option.
...Would be a modified Linux kernel for the TiVo to mount its media partition via NFS.
Build a 4x60gb raid array on a 100mbit network and you're set...
Or, NFS-mount your friend's server across DSL or something (wonder if the throughput would allow that...). I can see it now, TiVo rings. Probably would be able to watch anything, anytime if it was implemented napster-style...
The gotcha is the TiVo doesn't have ethernet...
Don't sweat the petty things. But do pet the sweaty things.
Will cards with cable TV input capability (such as the Matrox G400TV and ATI all-in-wonder) and the right software make Tivo obsolete? The idea is that you would only need the software to tell the card when and what to record, leave your box on, and it simply records it to an mpeg file on the drive?
Does this software exist now? Or are they holding it back?
Having a TiVo has definitely cured me of not watching much TV. I rarely watched TV before I got one, and now I watch something practically every day because it's just so convenient. I try to exercise while I watch, though, so that it doesn't feel like a total waste of time (getting me into the habit of exercising was certainly not one of the side effects I expected).
TiVo unfortunately won't help with cash problems, though. It would have made them worse if you picked up some TiVo stock awhile back like I did. Apart from that, expect to see the price of TiVo units fall a lot this year as hard drives become cheaper and as Sony comes out with their 60(?) hour version which should push down the other price points.
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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
They also released some utils that they made. I don't think they were required to do that since I don't think they were based on anything else.
This is the 3rd article on this, if you want to post about it, post about the latest things we've done on it. (and i say "we", because i'm one of the people working on various things)..
To quickly cover some things, we have support (for those that dare to do it, support for large disks (over 30 gigs, i'm currently at 108 hours @ a 61 gig for a 2nd drive), ppp/ftp/telnet are now useable, MP3's are NOT playable on the TiVo, and it's not an issue atm, the mpeg decoder does NOT support layer 3. There are other things being worked on that will reveal themselves as time progresses.. I think this whole zdtv thing is probably why this "article" got posted again. if you _really_ want to know what's going on, check out the avs tivo forum (specifically, the underground for "hacking" issues), and a final note, *NO ONE IN OUR GROUP IS TOUCHING SUBSCRIPTION ITEMS*, so personally, if you do, and tivo catches you (and i hope they do).. you were warned.. Now, back to the recycling of old stories. As for the moderators, mark me redundant all you want, I don't really care about "karma" et al, i'm too busy working on TiVo things.
The fool thing also goes mad now and again, pushing all the good stuff off the end of the queue by catching entire Archie Bunker & The Jeffersons marathons, no matter how many thumbs down I give them. Never had this problem with a VCR.
Are you able to sign up for an US based service like DirectTV? If you can sign up for such a service and select a local line up for the service that is equivalent to one available in the US, then I don't see why the TiVo service wouldn't work for you. The catch is that you may end up having to pay long distance charges if your TiVo's nightly calls can't be made locally, but this would be moot if they were to come out with an ethernet model that you could hook into your LAN (which is when I'll trade in my current TiVo).
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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
The most relevant bit of this discussion was a post from one of the Tivo engineers: All our source modifications are available on CD. You may acquire a CD by sending $24.95 to: TiVo, Inc. Attn: Richard Bullwinkle 894 Ross Drive Sunnyvale, CA 94089 We state so in our manual, as required by the GNU Public License.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
As I understand the system, it uses a special partition format on a separate partition (or series thereof) to actually store the video. It's not in any file format, at least not a recognized one, just a long blob of MPEG data. The OS is contained on a primary FAT16 partition. This information was available on a previous link here at /., but I can't find it anywhere. I'll post it as soon as it makes itself apparent.
funny munging
You can get a lot of the functionality of the TiVo with an ATI All-In-Wonder, a reasonably fast celeron box, a wireless keyboard and mouse, and a huge hard drive. Admittedly, the case doesn't look as nice, but I don't mind a tower sitting by the TV that much.
The ATI can be configured to download to a schedule, it's TV out lets you use the computer to browse/play games, you can play DVDs on it with a DVD drive with great quality, it has MPEG compression accelleration so you don't get old encoding stuff for later, and with the box, you can even play mp3's on your stereo (I center everything in the living room stereo wise).
This combination is much more flexible than the TiVo IMHO. The only downsides are that it doesn't work on linux, so you need windows (not that bad) and it doesn't look as nice as a system component (although if you got a bookshelf PC and pearl-painted it it would look pretty cool). I'm working on a couple things to make it more tivo like, I'd like to have a server so I could program it over the net, automatically record programs of choice, and maybe a client for the palm so that you could configure what to record on the fly.
..don't panic
cc
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yea, i kinda messed up the whole post thing, i did it rather quickly. If i'd have had more time i would've mentioned it was on the Screen Savers (www.thescreensavers.com). Yea, i understand that the linux kernel is open source, and that they should've had it open anyway, but i kinda worded it wrong and left out some info. Sorry about that.. i seen the show, and then had to leave rather quickly so the post took about 30 seconds to write, forgive the little errors in it ;)
well here is your chance to get ahold of a $199 Tivo to hack on....
Web on over to the Tivo Underground AVS Forum for the details:
14hr Tivo for $199 from Circuit City
I would suggest you use your Tivo for a few weeks before you hack it (to break it in).
Take some time to get a feel for it before you "crack the hood" :-) ....
Enjoy!
Ok, so, I don't like commercials. Generally. Does TiVo do anything to commercials, or does it have the ability to discriminate between a TV show and a commercial?
An NPR listener, I am,
-- haaz.
What makes you think it would be more difficult? Its just another IDE or SCSI device right?
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
http://www.avsforum.com/ubb tivo/Forum6/HTML/000012.html
http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/For um6/HTML/004947.html
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I cannot find out what a TiVo even is! The page with the link has a FAQ that points to tivocommunity.com but their FAQ is basically a rephrased slashdot FAQ if you're trying to find out what IMHO stands for or something.
So could some karma whores post a few links or something?
# debian/rules
Here's a link to the actual Tivo FAQ instead of that crap they linked to...
...and I can watch "Survivor" every Wednesday all by myself. :)
I think the *only* reason for this device would be to hack it; after all, there isn't anything decent on TV anymore.
Actually, I need a device that notifies me if there's *ever* anything worth watching on TV. If that happens, I'll drop everything, see what it is, and run back home. Beating the end of the world by about 3 seconds, I'm sure.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
http://www.tivo.com/linux/
The rest of TiVo is userland--they can license in any way they desire, much like the packages included with Linux distributions.
i'll map to your nads if you don't watch out.
For all of us poor sods that were taken in by the glitzier Replay boxes, is there an option to hack?
I am not even sure what OS Replay is running...QNX?
Has anyone tried hacking a replay?
They've even open sourced the kernel.
Linux source is GPL'd right? So if they made modifications they have to open source those modifications. Isn't this statement a little redundant, or am I missing something?
Why is it that whenever a novel device is reported to be able to run Linux in some way or form, some schmuck always says "Man! A Beowulf cluster of these would be sweet!"
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Go to www.ati.com and read about the new Radeon all-in-wonder. Comes with a Tivo-work-alike-superset application.
The TiVo is much more than just a device to dump shows to MPEG. It has a wonderful user interface, very good service to get the latest show info, and lets you rate what you watch and record so it can go find shows that you might like and record them when you aren't watching TV. At only $299 for the 14hour and $399 for the 30 hour, it's hard to build one for that price....if not impossible.
Not to troll or anything, but this was on Slashdot quite a long time ago. I thought it was pretty funny when I saw it on The Screen Savers (ZDTV) last night that they were doing a re-run of Slashdot. (They did the I-Opener hack two or so weeks ago.) But to see this back on Slashdot today is quite an eye opener. Slashdot getting it's news from ZDTV!
disapointing is an understatement!
This whole story should be marked Redundant.......
Tivo Hacking is nothing new, Slashdot it recycling old news articles, man - what is with this place lately?!
A quick search of "Tivo + Hacking" found the following on slashdot (the June 22nd article is nearly a duplicate of this current one) *sigh*:
More Tivo Hacking by CmdrTaco on Friday August 04, @08:45AM EDT
Hacking The Tivo by CmdrTaco on Thursday June 22, @09:37AM EDT
Tivo Hacking? by Cliff on Monday April 24, @09:32AM EDT
I own a Tivo and LOVE it! I did not really truely understand nor appreciate the full benefit and goodness a Tivo can provide until I owned one myself (for nearly a year now). I would not want to watch TV again without it.
Buy one (*buy from a place that has a money back guarantee - I think Tivo may have a 30 day MBG) and see for yourself.
For those of you who want to know more about Tivo go here:
http://www.tivo.com/
and here:
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbcgitivo/Ultimate.cgi
You will find alot more useful information at these places than on /. [And that includes HACKING it]
Enjoy!
If you read the stuff these guys are not "Breaking in" but upgrading their Tivo whatnots. This as far as I can tell only voids their warrantys. So what are you talking about? BTW Hacker is being used here in its orignal sense. What you call hackers are really crackers.
Windows runs?
sure, strap the case to your back, get a REALLY BIG battery, and find a convenient high school track... there ya go!
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
how far are we from not needing the service?
What you propose is probably possible, but if you are getting program information from a separate source you would have to throw away the TiVo user interface completely. Most of the TiVo interface is built around the TV program's metadata (ie: actors, genre, when the program was made), which ClickTV may not be able to provide. Even if they could, it's not clear that you could easily map it (and maintain that map) to whatever TiVo's internal format is. So I would bet that you would have to abandon the TiVo's software and UI almost entirely, and substitute your own.
That would be a shame, because (1) TiVo designed an outstanding UI, and (2) most of the benefit of using TiVo (I've had one for a few months now) is in the interface and the TiVo service beyond the schedule information. Once it notices that you watch a lot of, e.g., Science Fiction shows, it starts recording other ones you might like in any free space it has. It makes suggestions based on what you've watched of other stuff you might like. It reminds you of recording conflicts when you schedule them, and does reasonably good priortization if you give it lots to record. Plus, it is a work in progress: it has an extremely active user community (check out the AVS Forum TiVo discussion group) that TiVo actually pays attention to, and it shows in the design. So if you are looking to hack it just to have a digital VCR, I'd wait, or get Replay instead (assuming *it* works in Canada). If you are interested in hacking it to avoid paying for the service, you'll be avoiding (IMHO) exactly what makes the device worth owning in the first place
The TiVo people want you buying hardware from them, not building it yourself,
Actually, the TiVo people have little reason to care about this. They don't sell hardware, they simply license their software and system specs to other manufacturers.
Phillips and Sony, now those are the folks have reason to be miffed about this. Although, it's hard to feel sympathy for them, especially after the "Upgrade Program" that Phillips had for awhile. It basically consisted of adding 15 GB of disk to your TiVo for a mere $300. (15 GB of disk was retailing for around $100 at the time.)
Well, that's good to hear.. At least we all now know exactly why it was that Sky never DID get the timeshift planner working. Making sure we all had to go out and buy the TiVo box! I for one don't really care too much (but it would have been nice to be able to time shift for the couple of years in between!), I would have bought the TiVo anyway! In fact, gimme two, no three!
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If you can add more disk space I can't imagine it would be that much harder to add a CD-RW as well.. That would be pretty handy.
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
With all this hacking, is it possible yet to grab the MPEG files the TIVO generates? Or are the drives unreadable on typical systems? Is anyone making a Linux hack to support the TIVO file system if it is not the norm?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
mod this up
Disclaimer: I work for Sky but not on the Tivo project and am speaking for myself, not for them.
I can't see this affecting the launch of Tivo by Sky. They're very unlikely to care about anyone hacking the box - it's very much a minority pursuit and will obviously invalidate the guarantee. If you modify the disks and the kernel on your Tivo, you're on your own. Sky is pretty excited about Tivo and isn't likely to let something like this delay the launch. I seriously doubt that Sky management have even heard about these Tivo hacks.
HH
You can get a secret ReplayTV information screen by entering:
411 Zones
on your remote. The most interesting thing is the list of recognized drives at the bottom of the screen. Of course, it lists the Quantum drive as disk 1, but disks 2 through 4 aren't there. It seems the software is completely ready to handle upto 3 more drives.
This makes me wonder if there's another secret menu that will make it reformat secondary drives?
The sad thing though, is that while hacking the Tivo represents the classical definition of hacking (i.e. making hardware do something useful it wasn't necessarily intended to do), it will be reported, and seen by the media as, the new version of hacking (i.e. evil, criminal, breaking and entering type activity). The TiVo people want you buying hardware from them, not building it yourself, so they're going to use the 'h' word in its negative conotation when they report this...
Here are some other Tivo releated links. I bought one a couple of months ago, but returned it because of the $9.95/mo charge for their TV guide service that's needed to have it record without being very painful. That's just too much for that little functionality.
Photos of what is inside Tivo:
http://www.9thtee.com/InsideTiVo.htm
Downloadable Linux kernel from the Tivo site:
http://www.tivo.com/linux/
Does anybody know if the TiVO can support digital audio either input or output?
I have a nice 5.1 setup at home and I get digital from my cable box. I hate giving that up when I use VHS and I was wondering if the Tivo does it better
I don't know about you, but my changes and adjustments will be sent back to TiVo. Heck, all the modifications are out in the open so who's to say TiVo cannot wire them into their next update?
Adding a drive to your TiVo voids your warantee, so TiVo shouldn't care as long as you don't bug them when your TiVo melts. The drive(s) you add are not the same type in there from the factory. I don't know of many IDE drives that can take the kind of continuous use the TiVo throws at it. I would have gone with SCSI, but I understand the cost reasons for IDE. (Personally, I give the TiVo drive about two years.) And what happens when the power randomly goes out or I just unplug it (there's no reset button, power switch, or "halt" button)?
Actually, many of us are using the same type drives that come from the factory. Contrary to popular belief, Tivo isn't using custom drives. Pop a Quantum lct.10 30 gig in (which is what the newer 30 hour units come with stock) and it'll show up as having Quickview and Tivo extensions. The Tivo just knows how to turn them on.
Actually, they are anything but first. We figured out how to add the disk at the end of June.
I thought we all read about this months ago. BREAKING NEWS! TIVO HACKED TODAY! .....right
These hacks are fun for the people who do them.
Why? The best reason of them all because I can.
A jaz hooked to the sucker would be great.
I stand at the television and knock. He who finds the remote and watches Letterman shall find nothing better to tape.
Ignorence is blis.
I live in Canada where you can't buy a TiVo, and even if you could you couldn't get the service. I really love the TiVo concept -- never searching for a blank tape when you want to record something, never waiting around to find the start of a show. And that doesn't even mention what the service gets you -- automatic recording of your favourite shows without having to even know when they're on.
But unfortunately I can't buy a TiVo or get the service here. But maybe soon that won't matter. I can easily buy one in the US and bring it over. I'm pretty sure you can use it as a fancy VCR even if you don't have the service. I've considered doing this already. The main sticking point is the service.
Last time I talked to the TiVo rep who frequents all the discussion groups he said they had no plans to move into Canada. If they did I'd worry that a TiVo I bought in the US and brought over wouldn't work with the Canadian service once they introduce it here, but as it stands I guess that's not an issue.
So I might just go get one of these babies soon. But I wonder -- if you can get a BASH prompt on these things, modify the hard drive, and do everything else these guys currently do, how far are we from not needing the service? Ideally I'd like to exchange the modem in the box for an Ethernet card, add the TiVo to my home LAN, and let it use ClickTV for listings.
Now am I dreaming? Anybody think this is easy? Anybody think it's impossible?
Lets just pray all this doesn't push back the release of the TiVo that is being released for Sky digital satellite in the UK. Of course, once it has been released, we'll have all this again as all us brits sit and hack the box! Now, lets get nat, ipf and routing going on it, and it can be our house router as well :)
OK, let's clear this up once and for all. The TiVo is NOT a good platform to try to turn into an MP3 player.
All of the MPEG work that the TiVo does is handled by dedicated chips. The decoder is an IBM CS22. A quick look at this page lets us know that it will decode layers 1 and 2, but not three. So, playing MP3's through the decoder chip is out.
So, how about doing it in software? Well, the processor in the box is a PowerPC G03GCX. Taking a quick glance at this document tells us that it is capable of running at 50, 66, or 80 MHz. Hmm... so which is it? Browsing through the log files on the TiVo itself informs us that the kernel is detecting the processor running at 53 MHz (on my box). Not quite the sort of horsepower you want for decoding MP3's.
Really, if you want a dedicated MP3 player, building one from a cheap leftover Pentium 200 box would be a much simpler solution, and give you a much better end result.
This issue was hashed over repetitively a year ago; head to the Deja site and read through the blathering about "how that price is too high" if you find that a useful use of your time.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
TiVo was originally announced with firewire support, but they removed it to save $30. I would have been more interested in buying a TiVo or ReplayTV with firewire.
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>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
The ZDTV show "The Screen Savers" did a segment on this very subject last night. The writeup will be at thier site today sometime. I know the Screen Savers folks are Slashdot readers, since half their daily pool seem to come from /. , I'm sure they will get a kick out of being first for once.
Does the TiVo run a straight forward linux implementation, or have they modified various GPLed drivers and applications for their own use?
/. before?
Shouldn't they be publishing the code they build on top of GPLed code? Or has this been hashed and rehashed to death on
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on