Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
-----
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 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.
cc
http://tivohack.sourceforge.net/
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
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.
http://www.avsforum.com/ubb tivo/Forum6/HTML/000012.html
http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/For um6/HTML/004947.html
----
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.
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
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.
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!
--
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.
I think the *only* reason for this device would be to hack it; after all, there isn't anything decent on TV anymore. ...and I can watch "Survivor" every Wednesday all by myself. :)
:-)
Oh, come on. Surely it's worth $300 to be able to watch every episode of the Simpsons that's on on every channel every day, right?
I'm not kidding, either. It is worth it.
--
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?
There's more subtle things about the TiVo service that people don't necessarily know.
TiVo is random access. Those with VCRs are somewhat inured to the fact that they have to fast forward and rewind. With a TiVo, you have immediate access to the start of a show. Any show. You can delete them in any order.
What if the same episode is shown twice in one week? TiVo knows (having tagged each episode as unique) and records one. We see this with Xena all the time (now that we have TiVo, Rick is watching Xena again).
What if the show moves? On a VCR, you'd have to reprogram it. TiVo will still record the show (but there may be conflicts if you wanted to record two shows at once). Note that last-minute moves it won't know about, but if it's a scheduled move, it will.
For years, I wanted interactive television listings while surfing. Even when I had Primestar, I didn't have that. TiVo gives me that, even on an antenna-only connection.
ObDisclaimer: I work for TiVo.
_Deirdre
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)?
Interesting question. I'll have to look at the chip specs to see if it is even possible. This might require different microcode or different controll settings. I'll get back to ya. :-)
Currently I've seen no software that does what the Tivo Does. Which is; Obtain a TV-Guide like listing, Record shows that you tell it to record, Record shows similar to what you like by genre, thespian, director, etc.
I agree that the TV-tuner card will obsolete the Tivo in the long haul. Conversely we'll need to see some well developed agent-ware designed for the cards, as well as get our heads out of the one-box-one-function frame of mind the average consumer is renowned for.
As for the TV box, what i do with my Tivo is, use the dump to tape function to archive stuff to my 'set-top-box' (piii/256MB-RAM/75GB EIDE/500mhz/haupage-win-tv/100mbps ether/dvd-ram/winbloze98) and write it to dvd-ram in playable format(avi/mpg/asf), or squirt it up the lan to my Sun Ultra-1 w/ 500GB array for future viewing purposes. This process is far from being automated.
Thanks for the info on 'hacking the tivo' 30hours of "crap quality video" or 9 hours of tolerable quality is just not enough space for somone who catches a weeks worth of science fiction and news every saturday...
This communication is secured using Rot-26 Encryption Algorithm, Unauthorized decryption will be subject to laughter.
These hacks are fun for the people who do them.
Why? The best reason of them all because I can.
So could some karma whores post a few links or something?
:-)
:-)
I'm not a karma whore, but I'll post an explanation anyway (I don't know of any links).
A TiVo is basically a set-top box which downloads TV listings every night (at 3 am by default) and then records shows it thinks you'll like (or that you've told it to record). For example, if you tell it to record the Simpsons every night, it might realize that you like that type of show and start recording Futurama and Family Guy as well. You can give it a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down for each show it records, and it uses your ratings to judge what shows to record in the future.
It's also useful for watching live TV, because it'll tell you a brief explanation of what episode of each show is on, so you can know if you've seen it and not have to wait to find out (and maybe even go out and do something better
I've fallen in love with these things - it's damn nice to be able to be out all evening and get home and be able to watch 3 episodes of the Simpsons and an episode of X-Files before bed
--
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?
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.
There is a similiarity between Oracle using a raw partition and MFS, in that MFS is a filesystem built entirely in user space. It has a daemon (MfsDaemon) that controls access to it, other programs connect to this to access things. As far as the kernel though, no. MFS is entirely user space. The only thing that might be kernel related at all is the MFS daemon knows how to talk to their modified IDE drivers (which are released under the GPL) to prioritize it's reads/writes higher than the normal OS read/writes on the ext2 partitions. That's one reason why the video doesn't skip when it's doing housekeeping on it's database. The fs/mfs/* files in their kernel release are really a red herring. The engineers at Tivo a while back tried to make MFS mountable like any file system by basically hacking the NFS client to be a MFS client. But they decided it was going to be a royal pain and gave up. That mfs kernel client isn't compiled into the kernel on the Tivo, and in fact, is incomplete and won't compile at all.
TiVo is random access. Those with VCRs are somewhat inured to the fact that they have to fast forward and rewind. With a TiVo, you have immediate access to the start of a show. Any show. You can delete them in any order.
:-)
But since it uses a hard drive, I didn't feel it was necessary to point this out
What if the same episode is shown twice in one week? TiVo knows (having tagged each episode as unique) and records one. We see this with Xena all the time (now that we have TiVo, Rick is watching Xena again).
This I didn't know. That's phat.
ObDisclaimer: I work for TiVo.
LOL.
--