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Capture MPEG From TiVo
cworley writes: "Andrew
Tridgell devised an ethernet
for the TiVo a few months ago, but decided not to post any of his vide
extraction software, in
fear of a Napster-like backlash against TiVo (some of the legal implications
were directly discussed in a
recent slashdot interview). But, today,
MPEG extraction has been released in the TiVo underground, although rough
around the edges, it allows the user to view TiVo recordings on any PC in the LAN in real time, as well as save the mpeg2 recordings on your PC." Update: 06/07 05:40PM EST by C : As of a few minutes before this update, the thread regarding this software was pulled from the forum in question. From the message: "We wish for this topic to be 100% dead on this site form this point forward. Thank you." As many users have already said in the comments, there are serious implications with the relese of these tools, that TiVo will have to deal with. I am also disappointed, but not surprised, that the forum thread was pulled.
write that script that streams the playboy channel into alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica?
Good point. I almost forgot that all positions on slashdot are made by one person who is unable to form new opinions based on new information.
/. had a retard moderation.
I wish
Take them out of episode format? Are you nuts man? The cliffhanger endings make watching DW much nicer. And I never ever seem to get tired of seeing the trailer and intro credits roll by. To each his own, I suppose. :-)
I've got around 100 VHS tapes filled with DW myself. One day I'll put them into the computer too.
--A fellow fan
There is already a massive effort underway for Dr. Who. Nearly all available who is capped and available in digital formats. See The DW Archive site for more information. P.S. The preferred format is EPISODIC!
Um, you do realize how many people read this site and how many different opinions are represented here, don't you? It's not necessarily the same people posting one thing, then posting the exact opposite later. Your percieved "hypocrisy" is nothing more than short-sighted immaturity on your part.
The instructions are still at the 9thTee URL, only the source/binaries have been moved.
Moved where?
I already capture nightly B5 episodes using firewire and convert them to divx v.3, but this sounds like a more convinient way for me to excersize my Fair Use rights. I would seriously consider buying a TiVo if I'm able to record and playback the content to CDR, especially if I can snip out the commercials using an NLE.
Here's a link to the "real" site. Note posting as AC so no Kharma whoring here. http://www.9thtee.com/ExtractStream.html WTF is this 2 minute delay between posts now!
See:
;)
http://www.stampede.org/~skibum/tivo/
I talked to 9thTee, they only had to remove the files because their ISP was getting slashdotted, and supposedly had "other customers" that needed bandwidth
The instructions are still at the 9thTee URL, only the source/binaries have been moved.
Everything is back up and available. Source, binaries, everything.
http://www.stampede.org/~skibum/tivo/
I don't own a TiVo, but you, sir, are a quivering little pussy.
- A.P.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
All I really want is for Tivo, Replay or, god forbid, Ultimate TV to get it's channel listings and data over ethernet instead of the phone line.
I don't even have a phone line installed at my house. Why should I? I have a cell phone and I have cable internet access. Why should I pay $20/month for a service I would use only for a 2 minute phone call for a VTR to dial up.
Supposedly, Microsoft is planning to support the USB to Ethernet adapters to let me do this, but they want to improve the "quality" of the interface first.
Oh well, maybe someday.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
I wonder how long will it be before Microsoft uses this and DeCSS as an example of how open source "threatens intellectual property"?
What I find *really* interesting is the growing fear of that legal backlash. This Tivo hack doesn't necessarily permit anyting beyond fair use/time shifting/space shifting (IANAL, but come on!), but people are screaming for this hack to be smothered lest the Tivo itself be taken away from us.
In other words - there's unprecedented power in the hands of the individual these days, and the 'content' industries don't like it. The power they have flexed is so intimidating that we're now acting to prevent the release of a new capability that would be in the hands of the individual Tivo owner. A chilling effect, no?
Soon, the MPAA, RIAA, etc. won't need to pay lawyers or defend their abuses of copyright in court. We'll be so afraid of having our rights trampled that we'll trample them ourselves.
TiVo didn't put that connector on there just to be irritating. It's on the PowerPC reference board from IBM that they designed the TiVo around.
Why try to send _decoded_ video over a USB port? It makes much more sense to keep the existing MPEG encoding and then dump it for editing.. (much like this tivo hack is for.. so you don't have to go analog->mpeg->analog->computer->endformat).
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
Well, there is one major restriction for now: IO. Tivos don't have any fancy IO ports on them by default, just a serial port. That leaves three options: Building the ethernet card hack (or buying it) which isn't cheap, physically removing the hard drive and reading it on a computer (no mfs drivers yet, AFAIK), or streaming the sucker over a low-grade serial port (think weeks).
Also, except for a few boxes where you can get a bash prompt without opening it, all these methods void your warranty.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
Well, if the damage is already done, and your tools are so much better than Nick Hull's, why don't you release yours (well, tridge's) now?
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
Naw, your reply was to a different anonymous coward. I didn't want to directly connect my business with my personal opinion. The second person you were replying to has a very important point. Until quite recently copyright law only applied in a meaningful way to companies in the copyright industries who would employ lawyers to interpret and influence its evolution. Now that they need and want it to apply to everyone they plan to extend their industry brokered deals as if it were legitimate public policy, for example the theory that every time a digital copy is loaded into memory there is an actionable copy that requires a license. Ha, try to get that one to pass in the clear light of day. Read Littman's book "Digital Copyright" to see all the sordid details.
Anyhow, buckling under preemptively to every outrageous demand of these robber barons (don't forget the Constitution introduces this topic to encourage the eventual enrichment of the public domain, not its evisceration in back room deals) will do nothing but encourage their rapacity. This is much bigger than just a specific case. Don't forget they already lost this case in "Sony vs Universal Studios" so they are trying to rewrite history by fiat.
Owner of Hogan's heroes sues Tivo. Tivo goes after infringers (or, more likely, goes out of business.)
It turns out that writing computer software is not half as easy as you seem to think.
Under the DMCA, access control doesn't have to be robust encryption; as long as it's a means of making something less readable. If you XOR your new movie with 0xff, you can sue people for illegally decrypting it.
As such, if TiVo deliberately did not reveal the details of the proprietary file system format, which is used for storing (and thereby controlling access to) copyrighted materials, they could be within their rights to sue under the DMCA anybody reverse-engineering it.
well, that's partly what I was talking about. The kind of flesh-eating lawyers wielded like linebackers in the software/content business these days are more than formidable -- they're completely unsurmountable by individuals and small corporations.When is the chilling effect going to sink all the way back to the engineering decisions made at the design stage of product development for these kinds of appliances?
... watching how commodity appliances based on free software evolve and mutate beyond the intentions of their creators. While this is obviously good for the consumer, this kind of activity seems to be broadly percieved as threatening to the producers of these toys. I wonder if the real threat to free software systems in embedded roles is the building legal backlash; eventually the costs of defending engineering choices is going to offset the advantages of choosing free systems to begin with and purely pragmatic people (accountants) will decide that it's not worth the effort and time. Is this what groups like the MPAA, RIAA and the proprietary software houses are counting on?
Well, yes, that's (normally) rather easy to do. Pointless and stupid, but rather easy.
I hardly think that the same people who could install napster are going to be able to hack napster, get linux up and running, etc - its too much trouble for your average idiot.
By your logic, the only people who are able to use Napster are those who were able to write their own client from scratch. Sooner or later, one bright guy makes it easy enough for the average idiot. Then the shit hits the fan.
Yeah, I've read it. A bunch of whining and crying about, essentially, nothing.
I was simply stating that it is more difficult to hack your linux-based Tivo appliance, then it is to install the window-based Napster client.
My logic does not allow you to conclude "the only people who are able to use Napster are those who were able to write their own client from scratch."
Let me clarify. You're stating that applying these tools today is beyond the reach of the average idiot. I agree completely. My point is not about the state of things today, but the direction that things are now headed.
My point is that this brings us a step closer to the day when the average idiot will be able to use his TiVo to easily trade video over the 'net. Sure, he may have to recruit a technically oriented buddy to install the ethernet, but the software side could be made every bit as simple as Napster.
t's not pointless and stupid if you want to use this new hack. It doesn't work with the 2.0 version of the software.
I'm sure it will soon.
The thing is that they CAN'T change the codec. All of the encoding/decoding is handled in hardware, and the processor isn't nearly powerful enough to implement a software codec.
More likely they'll just change the software so that it refuses to operate on a modified box.
I can't speak for sorphin, but as someone who knows the "secret handshake" I can tell you what it is that I'm pissed about.
I'm pissed that this is quite likely going to force TiVo to take action against modified boxes. I'm pissed that the modifications I've been enjoying on my TiVos up until now will, in all likelihood, not be possible in the future.
I'm pissed that the next time I buy a 20 hour TiVo, it will probably have to remain a 20 hour TiVo.
I'm pissed that I'll probably have to install a land line again, since running serial PPP over my cable modem probably won't be an option anymore.
And I'm sure that the folks who dropped a hundred bucks to add ethernet are going to be pissed when that little circuit board is rendered useless.
In short, there are plenty of reasons to be disturbed by this that have nothing to do with elitism, exclusivity, or "secret handshakes".
First of all, they're not "my" secrets. I never had a copy of the tools, nor did I really want them. If I had asked nicely, I probably could have gotten ahold of them, but they're certainly not "my" secrets.
And I understood perfectly well what your point was. No need for you to clarify. I was simply pointing out that you are flat out wrong.
I'd be more than happy to explain *why* you're wrong, but since you blindly insist on missing a point that's been spelled out clearly on many occasions, I'd probably just be wasting my breath.
Gotta agree with sorphin on this one. Beneath the cheers of all the people shouting about what a great thing this is, there are a handful of folks who understand the probable ramifications, and are truly dismayed that this software was released.
Sure, it's useful, and a cool thing to be able to do. But having this stuff out there will likely have negative repurcussions that could have been avoided if things had been handled properly.
You can scream your "Information wants to be free" battle cry at the top of your lungs all you want. It doesn't change the reality that the people who own the rights to that information DON'T want it to be free, and will fight to maintain control.
My bet is that the public availability of this software will end up being a lose/lose situation.
Bah... if they really cared they should not have saved the unencrypted stream to disk.
Besides, how does it matter if you extract video from a DirecTiVo rather than a stand-alone TiVo hooked to a DirecTV receiver? It's the same content, and the same copyright holders. Distributing extracted video would be copyright infringement either way.
I'm actually not sure what kind of card goes in there. I might be hopelessly out of date, but I remember that when PCMCIA (I guess they're just called PC Cards now) first came out, there was PCMCIA Type I, Type II and Type III. Each one was roughly 2x as thick as the previous. So Type 1 would be flash RAM and that sort of thing, Type 2 would be video and modems, and Type III would be tiny hard drives. Type III was meant to fit in two Type II slots, which, IIRC, is why all machines came with two stacked in that configuration.
:)
So, I was actually speculating that it might be a Type I PCMCIA card. But now thatI think about it, I'll bet those don't even exist.
-Waldo
My roommate just got digital cable, which came with a really incredible cable box. It's a Scientific-Atlanta Explorer 3100, which comes with a smartcard slot (PCMCIA sized), s-video output, 2 USB slots, 2MB flash memory, 10MB of DRAM, a 54MIPS Sun MicroSparc RISC processor, DES decryption and a damned fast upstream connection. When we first flip to a channel, the video is digitally distorted for a second or so. (You know, like low-quality RealVideo.) This is because it handles video in an MPEG format. So this has got me thinking -- surely there's some way that I can take this native MPEG video format and export it, presumably via USB, to a hard drive or CD burner or something.
So what I'm wondering is if the same good hacking that's enabled MPEG captures from Tivo will permit capturing video from these fancy digital cable boxen.
-Waldo
I have never used tivo, so my quetion is this: :p).
What advantages does it have over having a good tv tuner/capture card and a large hard disk? Surely it cannot be that big of a deal configure the hardware and write an app to encode tv shows to divx, mpeg2... That is what I would do if I wasn't stuck with an old Ixmicro tv card and a dual ppro machine (i need to upgrade
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
Or, you could just use a Terapin device which can record to CD-R
Here's a link to their store
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
I can maybe see students doing this because they're really the only ones with this kind of bandwidth and access to T3's (not to mention spirit, mentality, and time), but joe public... I'm skeptical. A 2 hour MPEG2 file size is several GB. (DVD is 8GB). In practical terms, it would take several hours to download a NTSC show of this size over ADSL. ...unless if you have MPEG4 (or Divx) which (isn't that widely available but...) will compress a full length movie to 700MB... but even then, realistically it can take a while. Also think of the file size, hard drives aren't so cheap that I can waste several gigs for a few movies.
Basically, my point is, this is possible, but not practible enough for it to become widespread.
On your comment about LOTR - you and your friends will have fun but a 52 inch screen isn't a movie theatre... likely they'll all see it on screen anyway.
Piracy is only useful if the cost of savings is greater than the overall cost. TV content is (for all practical purposes) free to receive. Given download times, HD space, and the number of times you'll watch that one particular show .... you have to ask yourself if its really worth it to store that much data locally.
The strange thing about video is that I simply don't have the patience to watch the same show again and again like I would music files. Probably has to do with the fact that I can't do much else if I'm watching TV shows, whereas with music, I'm driving a car, reading a book, surfing the net, doing my dishes...
Bandwidth also is an issue... in fact, I didn't even realize this until I put it down here, but - Music files you can download (albeit painfully) through dial-up. Movie files? full length MPEG2 (DVD) movies are 8 GB!... MPEG4 you can bring a movie down to 700MB. When was the last time you downloaded an entire linux distribution over DSL? Takes a while, doesn't it? Basically, DSL users can spend a couple of hours downloading one movie provided there's a reasonably fast server... but in instances of P2P, who's going to open their bandwidth so that 10's of not hundreds or thousands of people grab their movies? Ok, I may do it from home for about a day just for kicks, but I wouldn't be able to do it from work (where most of us have faster connections).
cuz it's gonna soon as the media finds this, and of course, it hits TiVo... all i can say.. Thanks alot chris.. (cworley).. now the 'vcd kiddies' will strike, piss everyone off, make tivo act, and there goes my hobby.. all i have to say, is if/when tivo acts, you'll see *why* we didn't release the tools we have.. (which, i can tell you work probably better than nickhull's)..
sorphin
Chief #TiVo Elitist
(I don't see how that's offtopic.)
If they can sue you under regular copyright law, then all Tivo and VCR users were already vulnerable. And that just ain't so. This was settled decades ago in the betamax case.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If true, then they can also sue the manufacturers of all VCRs.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This is interesting, because the party that owns the copyright on the encrypted streams, and the party that encrypted (Tivo? Or the Tivo machine?) are different.
The owner of "Hogan's Heroes" can't sue you under DMCA for cracking the encryption, because they broadcast it without encryption. Their content doesn't have a "technological measure that effectively controls access."
Tivo can't sue you under DMCA for cracking their encryption, because they don't own the copyright to the stuff being decrypted.
It's legal.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
For all of the people saying that this will make it easier to pirate video.. I don't really think so.
Our imaginary TiVo pirate will pay $300 or so for the box, $100 for the network interface, $10 a month subscription. Plus he will void his potentially-valuable warranty, and spend hours of time setting up the system. And he'll have to reencode his MPEG's to fix artifact problems. Other technical difficulties will ensue.
All this will give him some of the capabilities he would have had with a $250 Dazzle DV Creator II... except that the DDV2 would actually WORK (valid files, for instance) right off the bat, and provide higher quality video, support for popular codecs like RealMedia.... etc. (Disclaimer: I picked a midrange video capture card at random, I don't own one of these and I'm not endorsing them)
This hack is pretty cool. But it has appeal only for hackers, not pirates. People that have the knowledge, time and motivation to do this trick are not going to seriously bother to spend all day distributing movies over their cable modems. They will have more interesting problems to solve, and much better ways to get respect. And the pir8 skr1p+ |1dd13z types will spend their allowance money on a cheap video capture card that works in Windows, like normal people. In case you [the reader] are clueless or just haven't ever used IRC, allow me to inform you that about 99 percent of the video pirates out there are running a Windows machine.
It will be a sad day if TiVo does not see this and decides to litigate or otherwise be a pain in the ass. Hopefully TiVo will realize (before the "everybody loses" scenario occurs) that actually acting against the community, as opposed to making a little noise for the media, would be pointless and rude. This type of thing can generate publicity which sells units. The more units, the more money. That's what they care about, right?
It doesn't record the encrypted stream, it records the decrypted stream. Decryption happens before it's passed out of the DirecTV "tuner". There's two decryption chips on the mobo.
And yes, it's stored as MPEG2, with some minor modifications for speed improvements, most likely. But yeah, this util will likely work without a lot of modifications on a D-Tivo, which is the whole problem. DTV won't like people being able to pull their streams off the unit.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I thought there was a satellite based tivo that didn't need to encode analog video? If so, it would have perfect MPEG instead of "resampled" video.
I get BBC America on the Dish Network. My cable company totally sucks; for years, even after expanding to digital cable they would not add the Sci Fi Network to their lineup. I changed to Dish Network and have been totally happy with it.
I'm Peggy.
Pardon me, but some of us are above average idiots, thank you very much. Everyone tells me this, so it much be true.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I don't think this is necessarily a good thing. Tivo has flourshied, in part, do to the support of the industry. This has allowed tivo to offer more services at a better price. However, this support has alwasy been based no TIVO not hurting the industry. This is why tivo doens't have a commercial skip. It takes away from advertising that tv networks depend on. I'm sure once tv networks start seeing shows on the net sans ads, things are going to change- TIVO will crack down on the community and a lot of useful stuff will get shut down. No more ethernet hacks, no more shell support, no more non-encrypted mpg data.
--------------------------------------
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in a world without bounderies or fences, who needs Gates anyway?
Will it interface with my DISH, including program guide, and with the new 2.0 garbage on the boxes will I be able to buy one today and hack it to use this software?
:-)
The biggest problem I've got with my DISH, other than the jackassas not allowing me to buy upgraded equipment at decent prices, is that I can't very easily record from it. I've looked at the TIVO features and they really look VERY nice but except for DirecTV I'm not sure how well they work with digital services. If I thought that puppy could be hooked up to work well not only would I buy one, but I'd dump the biggest HD I could find in it, buy a NIC, and buy their lifetime service setup.
In the future I'd want a nice GUI way to interface with a CD-R (I primarily use Windows but do have a Linux box on my network that I seldom use) to easily burn VCDs for my DVD player. I'd LOVE to be able to tell my DISH\Tivo to capture say all of the StarGate episodes I miss and all of the Voyager, and on and on! Hell, I don't even care much about the commercials being on there! Just let me grab all of the shows I want without doing backflips with my stupid crap VCR - I hate that dirt stupid piece of hardware.
This TIVO hack appears to allow all of that except that with the thread having been blasted from the forum I'm now not sure where to get the software for pulling the MPEGs or what sort of hassle burning the VCD will be. That last shouldn't be that big a deal I know since the DiVX folks do it with MPEG from DVDs. Nowhere here have I seen help with that or mirrors of the software. Come on guys, cough it up!
IMO this is GOOD for TIVO - it gets people like myself who have been on the fence to BUY the TIVO box AND their service. So long as TIVO doesn't get stupid and destroy the work people have done to hack them and let's folks who don't want to know the guts completely hack on them they will do well.
Now, where can this software be gotten? Is there a particular model of Tivo that can be most easily packed with HDs? It's been awhile since I researched the Tivo "blessing" but it looks liek it's gotten easier for what little I read today. And someone please tell me that some bright bulb is working on making this whole process somewhat painless so I can buy one and not become a Tivo hardware\software "expert" in order to take advantage of it!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
I had an order in for one of those "hackable" little WEB TV type deals from Circuit City when that all hit. As soon as I received a letter directly from the company stating that THEY would charge my CC if I didn't register their service I not only canceled my backorder but have not shopped at Circuit City since they divulged my info to that company!
Message to TIVO: Don't screw this up, don't pull the rug out from everyone, work WITH the hackers and create more demand for your product! I have money, I WILL spend it on YOUR product IF you don't get stupid like companies that have come before you. Start rewriting BIOS, potting chips, and threatening the hardware hackers and I and others like me will NOT buy YOUR product. Is this message clear enough?!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
You mean it's not legal to hook a VCR to the DirecTV boxes either?! Come on, the only difference here is quality!
Why is it such a big deal that we be allowed to record things we've paid for? I pay DISH a shitload of money per month for those channels and they in turn pay HBO and others - why can I not record that in digital quality legally? Yeah, if I DISTRIBUTE it I'm a dirtbag, fine. Why are YOU and the MPAA and the RIAA all ASSuming that I'll do this? What crap.
I see NOTHING illegal about this and if it'llsupport DISH I want one NOW. I wasn't aware that the Betamax timeshifting lawsuit specified that the consumer must put up with crap quality if they want to record. Did I miss that?!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
For me, it is extremely easy to record shows with the TiVo. Does WinTV-PVR have that functionality? Don't I have do devote a PC to the job at least while I record? Isn't a PC + tuner card more expensive than a TiVo? I don't own a PC by the way... my home machine is a laptop provided by my employer.
-Kekoa
Uh, if by "the market justified price", you mean the point at which supply and demand are equal -- the 'efficient' price -- that is the profit-maximizing point!
Did you ever take Intro to Macroeconomics, or are you just talking out your ass here?
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Ick. First 'mudlinging', now this. I really have to spell-check my subject lines... ah well, my point still stands.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Thank you, sir! A voice of reason! We need people like you on slashdot.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Well, yea, it can be done now... hell, I can do it... but it's time consuming and difficult. This makes it automatic. And once it's done... well, it's difficult to reverse. And I'm not talking about people recording the shows using this hack indefinitely... I mean, once they're on your hard drive, or burned to CDR, they're pretty much YOURS. And once they're on the Internet, it's hard to get them off of it.
Besides, yea there's TV rippers out there, but that scene doesn't compare to the movie rip scene... especially because why go through all the trouble of downloading an episode of the Simpsons when it's gonna be on 6pm every day anyway? Perhaps this will increase the speed of deployment and availabilty of TV shows to the point where it becomes a worthwhile scene to be involved in.
And, unlike with movies, syndication will remain popular. It's less trouble to watch the Simpsons at 6pm than it is to go find it on your computer and choose a random episode. Most likely, people will watch the Simpsons more when it's NOT supposed to be on, which is the same as time-shifting, which is legal. Of course, the entertainment industry does lose a lot of control here, hence there's probaby some reason they'll create (if it doesn't already exist) to make this horribly illegal (you know, like 15 years in jail for every episode you "pirate")...
and one step farther back for the entertainment industry.
Over the past... I dunno, say 20 years... the media and entertainment industry has been hyping up and trying to plan the deployment of their ultimate wet dream: on-demand pay per view for everyone and everything. This would mean total control over viewership, programming, and revenue for the entertainment industry... the whole thing about choosing stuff to watch when you want to watch it is just a red herring, cause ultimately you won't have everything at your fingertips at once even if they could provide it that way. It'll just be what they want you to see. Hence, just like today, you might have a choice of when you want to start watching a movie (except you'll have a greater flexibility in choosing the start time), but just like today there will be days when all that's available to watch is "Battlefield Earth" if they so choose to do that. (That's a great scheme, to play one movie all day on a PPV channel no matter how bad it is) That's obviously a bit extreme of a scenario, but I assure you their intentions are not much different from that.
On the other hand, the public does not want pay per view, and on-demand service is not enough compensation to deal with such a nuisance. Furthermore, people want access to EVERYTHING at any time... hey, I wanna watch that old episode of "Growing Pains", get it NOW. I'm in the mood to watch "The Godfather", so bring it to me. Or, perhaps I want to see the Redskins win the Super Bowl in '87 again. And I want to see the best commercials from 1993, just to be nostalgic. This is what people want... and they want it in decent quality, and they don't want to pay a lot to do it. Unfortunately, this would kill broadcast television, the home video market, and the video rental market all at once - hypothetically, anyway. Just like Napster is killing radio, CD sales, and music stores - it's not really, but some people think the potential is there.
This just hastens the massacre on the way. TiVO itself is bad enough... but now people will be distributing those episodes of "Seinfeld" on the Internet for everyone to watch at anytime. It won't make a squat of difference at the moment on ratings, but once people have a taste of something like that, they continue down that path with or without the help of the entertainment industry. So, it's up to them to either provide services that would improve on what's available in the underground, or to die a slow miserable death trying to fight the oncoming rush of things bigger and better.
Of course, I don't support the idea of media being FREE, but then again, if there's not a convenient and practical way to pay for it, I'm not gonna deny myself the enjoyment of what's out there...
Is he a troll? Yes. Does he have a point? Most definitely.
Best Slashdot Co
.. than having a computer with a TV-in port?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
If your cable provider has a digital-cable service, you might have BBC America on it. When my parents returned from overseas, they signed up for digital cable specifically because BBC America was available on it. (They don't care much for Doctor Who, but they've followed EastEnders as much as they could since it premiered in the mid-80s. BBC America is also on digital cable where I live, but I don't watch enough TV to justify the expense, and (dragging this back on-topic) I don't know if a TiVo can control a digital-cable receiver.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
EASY You only have to have enough bandwidth to send the file to one person. That person can then share (AUTOMATICALLY) the file, even while they themselves are downloading it. If more than one person has a file you can download the same file from many people. Very fast.
http://www.eDonkey2000.com
FunOne
FunOne
I have NO PROBLEM getting TiVo to do all these incredibly bizarre things it was never meant to do (like Caller ID, video extraction, or asking me if it should call for chinese takeout).
I'll have an order of whoflungdung, charpet on a stick, and my girlfriend will have an order of Cream of someyoungguy.
now their hardware is hackable and can be used to distribute video around a house (but could it stream video from another computer in the house - say a CD-jukebox all burned with MPEG movies?), so instantly people will forget about earlier ("Ooh, I've lost the functionality to record what I am currently watching" story).
Anyway, so what is the "PCI style" connector on the TiVo? Is it a PCI slot in reverse (connector instead of slot)? If so, then why not just get a PCI ethernet card, so some jiggery with the interface (turn a connector into a 90degree angle slot) and use that?
F*CKING BT-GOATSE.CX-INTERNET threw me off after 10 minutes online and then not let me back on again. 30 redials, all with engaged tone. calm ... calm ... calm ... the glass has done nothing wrong.
time ot buy a TiVo...
I think you'd be well advised to hold of a bit. As others have mentioned this could be a case of "easy come, easy go" - TiVo can (and I imagine will) send your box an "upgrade" that'll stomp the guts out of the hack.
If you're going to buy a Tivo, buy it because it's default operation is of sufficient value, not because of back doors that might get locked. That way you won't get burnt.
In a post at http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/Forum6/HTML/005466 .html
Richard Bullwinkle (TiVolutionary) of TiVo seems to maintain TiVo's continuing attitude of "as long as it doesn't cause us to lose money, we don't care, but don't cause problems for us."
However they supported AVSForum's operator's decisions to remove the post.
For those interested, you can find TiVo enhancement software/news/information at <A HREF="http://pvrhack.sonnik.com/tivo">PVRHack.& lt;/A>
That's a fine solution, I've done it before. The benefit to this method is the data remains digital and there is no generational loss.
A copy of a copy of a copy is obviously going to be poor quality...
A digital copy of a digital copy of a digital copy doesn't suffer this effect.
My only question is, does this work with DirectTivo boxes? I know that the Tivo software does NOT record Direct Tivo streams as mpeg. They save them as the encrypted steam direct from DirectTV. (That's how the Dual Tuners will work once implemented, they record both encryped (One Card to decode) and decyrpt on the fly while you're viewing it)
Interesting idea. Wonder how the networks are gonna handle it. HBO and other good pay network mini-series might have a huge revenue lose if people can just down load it over the internet. Hmmm.....
Myself, I've never gotten a TV tuner card that I could make capture at anything near exceptable quality. It could be just some oddity with my setup though (It's a 900 Mhz duron with 128 meg of RAM by the way). It's not so much as an encoding problem as that the tuner seems incapable of giving me a good image to encode.
Dionysus vs, Socrates! The greatest battle of all time!
all these monopolys getting larger and larger while open source is growing and evolving at its feet, the monopolys are merging and marging into fewer and fewer is this leading up to some new form between socialism and capitalism?
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
See Title.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
I don't think TiVo is mostly worried about being sued by the networks; the time-shifting battle is over, and it's legal. What TiVo is worried about is that their business plan includes partnerships with various TV networks, by which I means investments from those networks (NBC and various cable channels at the moment). They don't want that to dry up. So it's not quite the same as a Napster-like TV tool.
All multimedia should be set free.
I agree. The only property worthy of the name is tangible property. If you cannot put a fence around it or put chains on it or lock it up in some manner, it does not belong to you. Once it is released to the world, it belongs to nobody or to everybody. There are tens of millions of copies of Windows and MS Office being used freely around the world right now and there isn't a damn thing Microsoft can do about it. The Brazillian goverment in now using patented AIDS drugs to cure AIDS victims without sending a cent to the patent holders. Information (ideas, music, software, inventions, writings, etc...) wants to be free. There is no stopping it.
IP laws are unnatural and IP owners must rely on powerful police states to force people to comply. Only big-brother type governments can enforce them. The only way to defeat IP laws is to copy it all and download it all!
You may ask, "What are artists, inventors and programmers going to do for a living?" My answer is that the system must be changed. What is everybody going to do when AI and advanced robotics replace everybody? We need a system based, not on labor, but on everybody being guaranteed an inheritance in the earth, a piece of the pie, an estate if you will. What we do with our piece is up to us. Such a system would ensure a totally free market the way it was supposed to be. No more slavery, no more sucking up to those who exploit us. Real freedom.
Demand Liberty! Nothing less!
I'm not sure why this is a big deal. There are other ways to get high-quality MPEG videos onto your computer than this. For example, Hauppauge has recently come out with a new TV tuner with on-board MPEG2 compression... take a look here. I'll admit it's a cool hack, but it's hardly the only possible source of high-quality video like this. Claiming that this Tivo hack alone will allow a "video napster" is just silly.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized. -AC
This is great to see. First it was mp3's, then DVD's, now TV. When will the industry learn that this is the future. All multimedia should be set free.
These guys can also hack the TiVo to downgrade it back to 1.3.........
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
I was simply stating that it is more difficult to hack your linux-based Tivo appliance, then it is to install the window-based Napster client.
My logic does not allow you to conclude "the only people who are able to use Napster are those who were able to write their own client from scratch."
Furthermore, hacking Tivo in its current incarnation is not within the realm of the idiot who cannot program his vcr. Ironically, maybe thats why he/she has Tivo.
As has been said before, The reason napster was so sucessful was that it enable the average idiot to establish a node on a P2P network and share files.
I hardly think that the same people who could install napster are going to be able to hack napster, get linux up and running, etc - its too much trouble for your average idiot.
As an aside,
"The software is functional, but has limitations that we hope to remove in the future.
Direct viewing can only be done on a Linux PC."
Now all you people who whine about Windows Media, Realmedia, Quicktime, et al. can have your day of glory.
The (valid) concerns some are posting on how Tivo could react to this seem to make the idea of an "open source" PVR box (with some sort of dialup for scheduling data) even more palatable.
--
OliverWillis.Com
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
I seem to recall a thread no more than a day ago where legions of people were going to start class-action lawsuits against a company for not being able to use their product (which they sell for much less than cost) in a manner opposing what the box says is required for full functionality (namely the TiVo service)... but now when someone breaks into the TiVo and figures out how to do something illegal with it, everyone sings it's praises!
I can't stand it anymore. I can't stand this hypocrisy. When someone wants to use the product in an unintended manner and fails (hence full recording capabilities without service), they scream, whine, bitch and moan to the company and every available media outlet possible. They threaten legal action, and promise to make said company's life a living hell until they get what they want. But when someone is successful in getting TiVo to do something that it was designed not to do (hence perfect video extraction), people flock to it.
I have NO PROBLEM getting TiVo to do all these incredibly bizarre things it was never meant to do (like Caller ID, video extraction, or asking me if it should call for chinese takeout). The only problem I have is when people can't make it do something, and they threaten the well-being of the company. TiVo is bar none the GREATEST electronic device I own, and I can't imagine my TV viewing experience without it. So now TiVo will not only have to deal with the legions of imbeciles that want to sue to use their product (again, sold AT A LOSS) without service, but now the legal problems with decoding DirecTV service and digital distribution of said service is going to keep TiVo more than occupied for a long while. And as stated elsewhere in this posting, all the public release of this hack will lead to, is TiVo doing a lot more anti-hacking coding, which makes all of us in the TiVo hacking community much worse off.
(P.S. When I stated this was illegal, I'm referring specifically to the DirecTV combo boxen, for which this is SURELY going to be a major legal problem. Other applications, such as the standalone boxen, present a blurry legal issue that I'm sure this discovery will bring to the forefront.)
Actually, it probably doesn't have to be "free", just "very very cheap". Technology advances have made information very inexpensive. The true market price for hearing a song once is probably tiny fractions of a cent, seeing a movie by one pair of eyeballs less than a dollar.
All of the insanity going on right now is just the result of a huge industry trying to fight the market. Nations will either lose their markets by siding with megacorps or enter a new renaissance.
----------------
Overheard: "Aww, why'd you go and install Windows on a perfectly good machine?"
Actually, they would. The 'TiVo Underground' isn't a real underground, it's one of those prettied-up disney-style undergrounds, open to the public and just one of many topic sections on the AVS Forums area for TiVo.
AVS Forum had been subsidized by TiVo, accepts advertising from TiVo (the last ad TiVo purchase from AVS was in January of this year), and is linked to from the official TiVo, Inc. web site. TiVo has employees who answer support questions on the AVS web site.
AVS may have a nice red banner at the top of every page reading 'PLEASE TAKE NOTE THAT THIS SITE IS NOT OPERATED BY TiVo, Inc.', and David Bott has stated that TiVo did not request that they remove the information or censor the site, AVS chose self-censorship without direct threats.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
As AVS forum has banned the topic entirely from their site, I have set up a tempoary Yahoo Group for technical issues relating to video and audio extraction.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Usnet posts are also being deleted !!!!! I posted to rec.video.desktop and a few minutes received an e-mail that my post had been deleted!!!!! This must be some serious news that certain people don't want to get out..... I've got news for them.......too late...its out...... heyday
************* www.phonecow.com www.handerazone.com
Combine this with a Big Ugly Dish grabbing wild feeds, and you have a simple, relatively cheap way of grabbing high-quality (up to 700-line resolution, I believe) programs for later viewing (and, yes, for distribution, for those of you of that mindset). It'd make it worlds easier to make VCDs in much higher quality, and with no commercials (example: a copy of the Voyager finale which was taken from the satellite feed was turned directly into an MPEG and is being distributed as a set of DVD-quality VCDs on the internet; I can't imagine that was easy or quick with the current generation of PCs, unless the poster had access to a hardware MPEG recorder, which haven't been that cheap).
This is absurd (so, I agree with you): Open source causing things to be used for unintended purposes is not a plauge!
This IS innovation, this IS evolution... Open Source just does it at a faster rate than we've seen before.
When man started using his opposible thumb for holding a pencil and writing... did god set a court date for IP violation!!!
When did building atop existing ideas become wrong? (i.e. what date was the DMCA passed?)
Note that Borin' Orin Hatch is no longer in charge of the Senate Judiciary commitee!!!
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
The owners of the AVS forum won't allow further posting of mpeg extraction questions. Given that the message will be deleted in 48 hours, I thought it might be good to post it somewhere where the record will remain:
4 98 .html
U lt raBoard.pl?Action=ShowBoard&Board=tivohacks&Idle=& Sort=&Order=&Session=
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/Forum6/HTML/005
Ok...I will try to make this a plain as I can.
After thinking this over and going through all this for the last 48 hours I would like to respectfully request the following. My reasons are also given.
1) I request their be NO LINKS to any extraction software on this site including NO LINKS to others sites that do nothing but offer the software for download. This does not include other hacking sites. But don't care to see just a post that does nothing but point to a site that offers nothing but the download. (I think you know what I mean.) The data extraction it is still a gray area to me and thus I care not to even take the chance at getting anyone upset. (Thanks for all the letters trying to help me understand it.)
2) I request their be NO POSTS on hacking the channel guide, the subscription service, or any other area that would cost revenue loss to any company. This I know really has been taboo and I thank you for that.
I really do not care about hardware hacks at all, or even the software ones, for it seems that no company that I have read about is upset by this. Just please, nothing that can effect a bottom line of any company, in any way. That is what starts to raise issues in my head.
You see, if we want TiVo (or other companies) to read and post on the site, then I need to take care that some lines are not crossed that will make them not want to be here or link to this site any longer. I for one like them here and I also think they like being here for the customers. I like that they choose to link to this site from theirs and feel proud they choose myself and this site for this purpose. Very Proud Indeed!!!
So, I respectfully ask that the above now be followed from this point forward and hope you can understand why. I have received a lot of mail that has been informative, helpful, and sometimes down right rude. But hey...People are people and we all have our own thoughts on different matters. That is what make us...well...us.
I thank you for your time and understanding in this matter. I am not stopping the talk of hacking, just trying to protect this site from the touchy areas. I think most of the underground community here enjoy the chats and the learning that take place here...I would like to protect that and still have the trust of the companies evolved.
Please, this is not up for debate for I feel good about this. Not to be rude, but I will not reply to posts or e-mail on this, for I am quite tired after all this. This post will be closed within 48 hours.
Respectfully
Submitted,
David Bott
Note:
The TiVoNet questions might be moving to:
http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
>Big difference here, the DirecTiVo units store the pure, original, never-converted-to-analog, mpeg2
Agreed. The MPAA will go nuts if DVD quality bootlegs are marketed or distributed.
My point is: the problem occurs if someone distributes. DirecTV/MPAA is not going to take people to court who view the extracted mpegs on their computer, or make VCD's for personal use, ore any other "fair use" application... They're only concerned about distribution.
TiVo can keep it's hackers and DirectTV/MPAA happy at the same time by spying. It's easier to implement (than shutting hacking down entirely), and harder for the hackers to detect, and the only ones that will care are those very few with distribution in mind.
TiVo can, for example, randomly pepper the mpegs with your encrypted serial number -- no effect to video quality, impossible to differentiate from mpeg data. If a bootleg mpeg is being distributed with your serial number... you're busted.
I can think of many ways for them to implement similar schemes. Low overhead (for their CPU) and impossible to detect.
If they clobber the hack altogether, then you immediately realize it, download your backup, and you're back in business. Then, sombody will hack the program guide... which is illegal because it is encrypted... and TiVo will loose the revenue stream they've been enjoying from their hackers.
Which method do you think TiVo & DireTV will prefer?
It's a no-brainer...
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
I changed my mind. That hinking doesn't make sense.
Tivo as Napster doesn't fit. They are not the medium of exchange, they're the capture device.
There are a lot of capture devices, including Hauppauge's PVR which also captures mpeg. Nobody's going after them.
TiVo loves it's hackers. They bring in money... not much but they need all they can get.
DirectTV's DSS hackers steal service, TiVo's hackers pay for service -- I don't think TiVo want's to change that arrangement and make it hostile.
If DirectTV has a problem with DirectTiVo's (which the ethernet hardware and software don't work on, anyway), then I think TiVo will be able to convince them there's more value in "spying" on their customers (which is legal by the DirecTiVo eula) than there is in shutting them down.
Shut the hackers down, and they'll find a way around the service altogether, and still be extracting mpegs.
Spy on the hackers, and you'll be able to pinpoint who's distributing MPEGS from DirecTiVo's -- if anyone does.
Plus, there is no DMCA-style encryption for the MPAA to claim "beyond fair use".
I've changed my mind from that post.
Logically, this will be a win-win situation.
Look how many folks responded in slashdot that they're going to buy a TiVo today!
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
Nah, you can still read the text from the article here:c tion=reply&forum=TiVo+Underground&number=6&topic=0 05438.cgi&TopicSubject=Otto+Re:+Nag+Screens
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbcgitivo/postings.cgi?a
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I still have to put together my TivoNet, however, I'd suggest looking into the Broadcast Project for Linux. There are many tools and utils included, some specifically for straming in a format Windows will like.
As far as copying video off of the thing goes I bought an analog video to firewire (digital video in case you didn't know) converter. I just stream the feed off of my Tivo through the converter and into my laptop. I also picked up an 80 gig firewire harddrive. All togeather I can save about 6 hours of video to later convert to whatever format I want. I only have the one computer (that's working) so I haven't thought about trying to send the video accross a network.
...the service.
What makes TiVo fabulous isn't the hardware. The hardware is clearly pretty basic. What makes it fabulous is the service. Because you have two weeks of program guide data in the machine, you can do really cool things with it like pick out all the things you want recorded for the next few weeks and schedule them, find out what conflicts, and conveniently work around conflicts by recording other showings. Or pick out all the shows with your favorite actor, or whatever.
Sure, you can easily build similar hardware for yourself. I suppose even creating the software wouldn't be too painful, given a small group of dedicated people.
But where are you going to get the detailed programming data for free?
True, inside a PC is a lousy environment for a receiver. Things like grounding and case RF-tightness matter. If you're receiving over-the-air signals, an external RF preamp (one of those things that goes on an outside TV antenna) can be a big help.
In any case, it's legal to record broadcast TV. That was settled long ago.
You're not missing much Dr. Who by not having BBCAmerica. They just show Robot (1st Tom Baker, the beginning of season 12) through, I believe, The Robots of Death (next to last story of season 14). Over and over and over and over again.
Fuck 'im up, Tim! His views are invalid! -Pirate Corp$
What, me worry?
I just had this post rejected and got a message saying I must wait 2 minutes between posts. So much for free speech here. 1 minute is reasonable, but the 2 minute time is TOO LONG, both my posts were legitimate. Can we cut it back to one minute for those with karma >= 25? Well, I'll wait tand try it again...
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I don't get why these people were so worried. I mean, did they think people would be afraid if people could (oh my gosh) record television shows? Oh The horror!
Seriously, hundreds of millions of people around the world already have the ability to permanently store video... it's called a VCR. I mean, fuck I can get then tapes for ten dollars nowadays.
I can't believe that a place calling itself 'the TiVo underground' would voluntarily pull stuff, without any threatening letters, and ban the discussion of said tool on their site. I mean, what the fuck.
Recording television shows. Oh, the horror!
(By the way, seriously cool hardware hack! I am sexualy aroused.)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
In an earlier post, I speculated that with the recent software upgrade that affected non-subscribers, quite a few people who had beforehand, left TiVo somewhat alone, would start the hacking for real. Looks like this is the case. And before (I haven't read any of the slashdot posts, yet) people start saying how this will bring down TiVo, and its wrong, etc, I would like to present two possible interpretations of this.
h tm is something much more
deadly.
From their site:
"Watch and record your TV shows with instant replay and program pause. Burn your
favorite TV shows onto CD-ROM and play them on your home DVD player Includes hi-performance
hardware MPEG2 encoder."
Let TiVo point at that if they encounter any legal troubles regarding what
people are doing with the hardware. I for one, look forward to implementing
this and any other interesting hacks that evolve for this piece of hardware
that I own in its entirety.
One, its self-protection. We can't rely on any company to hold our best interests at heart. Note that I am not saying companies are evil, (tho I think they are, to a certain degree) but that a company is like any other organism. They have their best interests at heart, first and foremost, or they will not be around for long. If TiVo does something inane or goes out of business, there are gonna be a lot of people with dead TiVos. This way, we have a backup plan, that will allow continued use of our TiVo.
Two, I really don't think this will bring down TiVo. If any of the big players, ie, DirectTV, MPAA, etc (possibly even the RIAA, I have recorded some digital music from my cable provider onto my tivo, the jazz music channels and the like) come after TiVo about this, all they would have to do is point to some of the video cards out there that explicitly state that they allow you to capture live tv and record to CDR. I quote from the forum below: "I mean http://www.hauppauge.com/html/wintvpvr_datasheet.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
Well, lets Remember Data's word on The Next Generation : TV died as an entertainment form in the 21th century ....
May be true.
Unless of course they allow us to download what we want from official sites...
--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Partly agree. The thing that makes this so attractive is the TiVo _service_ that automates the recording of the shows. I've been mumbling everytime I see a TiVo ad that I'd run out and get one if there was a way to burn DVDs out of the thing. If I could set it to record all of the episodes of my shows and then easily transfer them to DVD (sans commercials), that would be something _really_ worth having.
Determined pirate? No. Fat, lazy coder guy who wants to watch what he wants, when he wants for years and years? Ubetcha!
---
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
They closed that down pretty quick! Previous post's links still work, though!
Big difference here, the DirecTiVo units store the pure, original, never-converted-to-analog, mpeg2 files that are recorded on it... A truly beautiful thing, and if hacked DirecTV would be in direct trouble from then networks, the RIAA, and everyone else under the sun...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Tivo Community have shutdown the thread because its going to screw up the relationship between the hackers and Tivo (which was good until now - oops!)
Anyway - the link for the software is here at 9th Tee.
Have fun!-Rob
"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero." --Anonymous
"Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
SCREW BBCAmerica. I want Channel Four on the Dish.
"Population 1,656"
256M ram - $40
"Population 1,656"
I think if TiVo got rid of the subscription model and went to a model fueled by hardware sales they'd have the best shot of becoming the ubiquitous device of this decade -- but with MS gunning at them and their continuing missteps, it's hard to see them becoming a widespread success. I'm still waiting to see what becomes of the vaporous but potential TiVo-killer Nokia Media Terminal. By the time these devices reach third generation, they'll be great--but I hate having to wait it out in the meantime!!
To me this would ben and Ideal feature of the TivO and I now envy those with this toy.
It's amazing to think we have go so long with out any kind of high quality digital broadcast video for you computer screen. It seems to me that HDTV would be a huge success. There are far more computer monitors in the world than there are TV sets with a video system worth a crap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
----
This is a reposting of cworley/s comment on the TIVO discussion board.
***
Here's the scenario:
The code is released, TiVoNets/TiVo's sell like mad.
DirectTV gets wind, and tells TiVo to "shut them down".
TiVo complies: nightly dialin's delete files that aren't supposed to be there, add software that changes the MFS, add encryption to the MFS data (making any hacking illegal).
This drives the hackers underground. The honeymoon is over. TiVo treats its hackes like DirectTV treats DSS hackers.
The TiVo hackers subvert and make the program guide free.
TiVo looses it's revenue stream.
Everybody looses.
***
Until we find away to make information "free", without removing all incentives to make the content in the first place, these technologies will continue to be surpressed in the legal system. Simply saying "screw 'em" achieves nothing except to make the guy saying it feel all cool and defiant.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
MG
Randomly distributing Karma whenever possible.
now people will be distributing those episodes of "Seinfeld" on the Internet for everyone to watch at anytime
Um, you missed it. That was posted a few weeks ago on a.b.m. It's already being done... people with video cards and digital satellite "tape" the show onto their computer, encode it (VCD & DivX) and then post it. It's really nice, since I now have a copy of shows that will never be shown on TV, and can't be bought.
ObTopic: all this hack does right now is make it easier for the geeks to do geeky things. Some people use video cards and PCs, others will use TiVo and the hack. Only difference is this (depending on how easy it is to implement) could get widespread. And even if they do [encrypt|delete|workaround] the hack, the people with the video cards will still be out there. I leave the morality of this to the reader.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Check out some of the other posts. The Hauppage has a hardware MPEG2 encoder.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Um, there is no ethernet adapter for the DirecTV combo boxen - apparently no space to put one in. Or there aren't enough of them to make it worthwhile.
So this isn't a DirecTV issue...yet.
Now this, unlike the previous TiVo story, should have been put in the Upgrades category!
sulli
RTFJ.
A big congradulations to all the people in the Tivo underground forum. They are true hackers and have done some really cool stuff to the little PPC linux box.
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
I also have about 100 tapes, about a quarter of which are store bought... most of Tom Baker (only missing that one silly episode with the big man-eating plant -- the second one, with k9 & romana), most (if not all, I haven't done inventory in a while) of Peter Davidson (kinda/snakedance rules!), about half of Jon Pertwee (karate master / scientist extroidainere), a good chunk of Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. I wish there was more Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell episodes to be found, though. I hardly have any of those very early ones.
I have been thinking about taking them out of episode format because that's how I was introduced to Doctor Who, age 10 in 1982. My local PBS station, WTTW Chicago used to play episodes in their entirety, every sunday night. Some of the tapes in my collection are from that period. I guess it's just a question of nostalga.
Well, your fingers weave quick minarets; Speak in secret alphabets;
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
My Dr. Who collection thanks Mr. Andrew Tridgell. Now I can precisely edit those separate half-hour episodes into complete episodes. This rocks!
Well, your fingers weave quick minarets; Speak in secret alphabets;
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
No more slavery, no more sucking up to those who exploit us. Real freedom.
Demand Liberty! Nothing less!
Hey, William Wallace, why don't you just set the remote down, and back slowly away from your TV set...
"And like that
No, I don't own a TiVo or a ReplayTV device, I work for either company, and I don't know the features of either product. I've just seen to many posts talking about how ReplayTV is cooler because it doesn't have a subscription fee. At least TiVo offers a choice.
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
If you haven't seen SnapStream, check it out.
I guess it's probably lower quality than what this functionality on the Tivo can deliver, but as another poster said - it's not like no-one saw this coming.
I'm glad people like SnapStream will keep doing this stuff on commodity PC hardware -- at the very least it will keep the pressure on embedded people like Tivo to keep the features coming.
This is the niftiest crap I've seen in a while...
time ot buy a TiVo before the *insert four letter acronym for television industry, ala mpaa, riaa* gets ahold of this and shits chickens...somthing tells me it'll be alot easier to find the newest southpark episode now...
Guttermouth is a really good band.
I've done some more checking, Hauppage has a real sweet card with built-in MPEG2 hardware compression and a IR remote, but it's Windows only (not a problem for me, but people get religious about it around here, and they way Bill is going lord only knows when he'll hard code watermark recognition into the OS). Anyway, my point is, rather than play these silly games with them over how I can use my hardware, and pay them for the privilege, why not just cut them out of the loop?
--Dave Rickey
1) A commodity-grade CPU and mobo, like a 400 Celeron (or equivalent Duron, I don't care). About $100.
2) A TV In/Out card that also contained a tuner (support having two tuning circuits, but lets assume only one for now). STB lists one at $129.
3) A network card (many of the most promising software expansions of the system would be dependant on transparent access to the internet). $20, max.
4) A hard drive. Maybe use some dockable approach? Anyway, you can get a 20 gig retail for $100.
5) A case and 200W power supply. $30 if you use a standard PC mini-tower.
Seems like that would be it. What are we talking, maybe $380 in parts (most of that for the Tuner cards)? And you could probably get most of that stuff cheaper.
Why not? Compared to an entire operating system that is ported to just about every platform in the freaking world, this is a trivial problem. Just Keep It Simple, Stupid, don't attach all the freaking bells and whistles to the hardware, make that as simple as possible and then use software to leverage that capability.
People don't want yet another game console that is also a TiVo, nor do they want a really complicated system that requires them to learn how to code C.
Most non-geeks can't figure out why open source is anything they should give a damn about, and couldn't care less if big media is locking them out of things they never even knew were possible. But put a Open Source turnkey TV recording device in their hands without any built-in crippleware, and god help the poor bastard that tries to take it away after they've gotten used to what it can do.
--Dave Rickey
This will spur the wholescale adoption of product placement advertizing as a replacement for treditional advertising (which can be easily segmented and editied out of media broadcasts). Here's an Interesting Paper on Product Placement giving a pretty good synopsis of the business case for it. The issue that is not explored in detail in this paper is the advantage to production companies that if, for example, I record an episode of seinfeld, on my TiVo, then skip the ads, I still see Jerry Seinfeld holding and drinking a Yoohoo chocolate drink. This is all fine and good, but that is one advertising slot which can never be re-sold when the show is in re-runs (ie: NOW).
Well, Not so. Enter Virtual Product Placement. This advertising methodology is described as: And suddenly it really doesn't matter if end users can easily skip over 30 seconds ob a broadcast which was taken up by a treditional ad which the viewer has no interest in seeing, because the real ad is built into the entertainment program the viewer has chosen to watch. This solves the economic problem of allowing users to edit television content in realtime, which would otherwise effect potential advertising revenues.
The use of PVRs like TiVo and especially modified PVRs like is duscussed in the aboce
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
avsforum.com has this posted now:
Due to recent postings on another site that linked back here, we needed to close down for sometime to save the server processes.
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LOL
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Damn right! Also TV Gold.
Well I'm in Cincinnati, and I see your Audi hauling ass, I'm gonna smack into it so I can sue you and get a Tivo myself. The net is way better, but I can't turn my back on the TV. 30 hours of TV? Thats a lot of Discovery Science.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Aside from the fact you can do pretty much the same thing with a VCR, if you've got a PC with a video capture card, you can use software like this to setup a streaming video server in your basement (there's another that's actually a streaming video server with a web interface, but I can't find the link): http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Product_Profile.jsp? p=WinDVR
If that's not illegal, how could pulling the video off of your Tivo be illegal?
Who ever said paks could spell, anyway?
I'm thinking of running out and buying 20-30 tivo units. Then I'll wait for a hack that allows the use of alternate guides. Once that happens, I will incorporate both hacks into the boxes I bought and sell them at a $100 markup.
Anyone think this is a good idea? Should I buy now, before they alter the hardware so that I can't?
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
People have already proposed this in a number of ways. They also lump in digital cable/satellite decoding too, since that's just another type of MPEG2 feed to deal with. There was a discussion a while back on the hypothetical Borg Box. The ill-fated Indrema had all those capabilities and more. And the vaporous Nokia Media Terminal looks promising.
But in all these cases they were including hardware encoding/decoding for MPEG2, since that's the only appropriate codec for real-time encoding of high quality video, which costs buck$. A celeron 400 wouldn't be up to the job. This drives the cost well above $300, more than most people would be willing to pay for such a device. That's why Tivo is sold at a loss, which is made up by the subscription service. (I know, in the long run it costs more, but people are shortsighted when it comes to buying stuff and companies like to keep their hands in your pockets).
Even if you had a personal TV device that did everything tivo did, and were hooked up to a free TV listing service, you still have to get your TV from somewhere. The digital cable and satellite providers reeeeeeeeally don't want you copying and distributing their pristine feeds. Those satellites weren't cheap, and you're damn right they want their money, probably worse than most. If such devices did become available, we'd have a serious encryption war on our hands in no time, just like with DirecTV. Such a device would be unusable much of the time, which is hardly good enough for the casual user.
cryptochrome---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
This is obviously a great example for Microsoft to use in it's "Linux is cancer that eats away other's intellectual property" campaign.
Because TiVo decided to use Linux, they were "forced" to release the source, allowing malicious hackers to figure out all their trade secrets and steal the intellectual property of television networks and producers on a mass scale.
Oooh, I'm trembling.
Not like no one saw this coming; same thing happened with the Nomad Jukebox quite awhile ago. This might actually convince me to go out and get one of these things, if I could start an archive of all the, say, Simpsons episodes.
That'd be worth the price of admission.
Besides, a video capture card is cheaper than a TiVo and easier to program, too. Why would a determined pirate bother with hacking a TiVo?
When are all of us fans going to create the definitive Dr. Who video site?
Where are our Region 1 DVD's? Where's the new series? Where's BBC America on my local cable provider?
(p.s. looking for tapes or MPEGs or ANYTHING! Get in touch) :)
Why wasn't this taken to the forum at http://www.linux-hacker.net? They had no problem with hacking Netpliance into extinction.
Let the games begin.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Ok... now it's out there and the fuss will (hopefully) die down. I'm looking for a Windows MPEG2 viewer that will either accept piped input, or has source code enough to be able to interface with netcat. Lets get this compatible with Windows for the masses.