Excellent Hacks to the ReplayTV 4000

Hit the link below to find links to assorted hacks done to the extremely cool ReplayTV 4000 PVR. Thanks to jptsetme for submitting links to hacks like hard drive upgrades, software to download mpegs, edit the guide, and systems under development to automate create of VCDs and DVDs from Replay's. It's exciting seeing so much headway being made so fast, and evidence that this is one heck of a machine. "The Replay hackers at AVS forum have done an amazing job on the new ReplayTV 4000's. You can now do some very cool things with this new PVR.

You can increase recording space (by either replacing the existing drive, or adding an additional one.) This has, of course, been done with Tivos and older Replays in the past. Not only has this hack been adapted for the Replay4000 model (including custom sized photo partitions and preserving existing shows), but Replay has also recently released new software that removes the previous 137G per drive limitation, so you can now turn any ReplayTV4000 into a 320G model with a couple of 160G drives and a PC (Linux, Win2k, XP, or with a Linux boot disk on an x86 box with a good enough BIOS to recognize the drive size.)
http://rtvpatch.sourceforge.net/

But, you might decide you don't need to open the box at all, since you can now offload your shows to your PC and then serve them back to the ReplayTV4000 with your PC masquerading as another ReplayTV4000 on your local network, giving you nearly limitless storage capacity. [Note: this does not use the internet sharing feature, which is so slow over typical broadband as to be practically unusable. This is streaming the show in realtime from your PC back to your Replay4000, using the same mechanism two Replays use to stream shows back and forth over your local network.]

ReplayPC (C/C++, Windows, Linux, Mac. A simple text mode utility for extracting mpg files from ReplayTV4000 PVRs via TCP/IP)
http://replaypc.sourceforge.net/

Replayer (Pure Java. Java GUI utility allows you to extract mpg files from your ReplayTV 4000 to your PC)
http://www.forbesfield.com/replayer.html

Replay Server (built on PHP for Apache. Allows you to serve downloaded shows to a ReplayTV (on your LAN only) from your PC as if your PC was a ReplayTV)
http://206.124.140.12/rtv/

SwapDV (J++, windoze only. Allows you to download shows from your ReplayTV 4000, serve downloaded shows as if your box was a ReplayTV 4000, and edit the "guide" provided by your PC. i.e. capabilities of both Replayer and Replay Server, but only for Windows.)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&a mp;threadid=116035

A number of users are also working on burning shows to VCD, SVCD, XSVCD and DVD, with moderate success.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&a mp;threadid=115338
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&a mp;threadid=106437

Lastly, there has also been a hack developed to remove macrovision from the old Panasonic Showstoppers (effectively transforming them into ReplayTV3xxx machines.)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&a mp;threadid=118170."

Comments

My Wishlist Hack - Canada

[Outlyer]

Ok, I have just one request. Someone hack these things to support Canada. It still boggles the mind that while TIVO supports the UK, they ignore Canada. I mean, it's more than just igloos and hockey up here, eh?

In all seriousness, this is the machine (more so than the TIVO) that seems to be the perfect machine to "fake" guide support on. Unlike the TIVO which dials up and grabs guides from TIVO, the ReplayTV can use your broadband connection. If someone could figure out the host (ideally the hostname) that it connects to, we could trick it into going to a substitute host, grabbing the listing there.

Yeah, I'm simplifying it slightly. For one, who knows what format the data is in. And whether it uses some sort of encryption. However, unlike TIVO, ReplayTV doesn't sell subscriptions, so they'd have no financial interest in protecting the guide format.

(By the way, if anyone can confirm this, my theory about the lack of TIVO and ReplayTV support in Canada is that it's due to the rather strict Canadian privacy laws, and rules around Canadian Content.)

The Replay units are nice, but...

[freebsd guy]

As a proud owner of a Philips DirecTivo unit with TivoNet and (most recently) a ReplayTV 4000, I have had a chance to evaluate both machines and see their relative strengths and weaknesses. The results have been interesting:

• Neither unit forces you to pay for service (with the Tivo, just load 2.5xtreme and turn on "SubTest"). However, the Replay units are sold at a significant markup and the Tivo units are sold below cost. I'm no market analysist, but three guesses which one is better for consumers?
• Tivo can't update the software without notice, unless you're dumb enough to plug the unit into your phone line. Replay requires that you maintain a connection to their servers so they can tamper with your property after purchase.
• The Tivo has a 30 second commercial skip feature too, contrary to popular opinion. SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-3-0-SELECT.
• The Tivo runs Linux, meaning that you can cross-compile anything to run on it, short of MS Office and IE. What can you run on the Replay? Next to nothing.
• The Tivo has a programmer-friendly interface. It has native tcl support and provides easy ways to access the system database, called MFS. Does Replay offer this? I think not.
• The Tivo gets its guide data off the air; the Replay needs to connect to a central server to get it. What happens when Replay goes bankrupt? You got it - no more guide data.

For these reasons and many usability reasons, I will be returning my Replay unit before the 30-day exchange period expires. It's just an overpriced piece of crap.

freebsd guy

Re:The Replay units are nice, but...

[Zaknafein500]

Neither unit forces you to pay for service (with the Tivo, just load 2.5xtreme and turn on "SubTest"). However, the Replay units are sold at a significant markup and the Tivo units are sold below cost. I'm no market analysist, but three guesses which one is better for consumers?

This is innaccurate. In fact, if you follow the instructions above, you are stealing TiVo service. TiVo requires a subscription, either 9.95/monthly or 249/product lifetime. The sole purpose of 2.5xtreme (this has been debated, but no one is going to change my mine) is to facilitate the theft of TiVo service and of DirecTV.

Re:The Replay units are nice, but...

[ncc74656]

The Tivo has a 30 second commercial skip feature too, contrary to popular opinion. SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-3-0-SELECT.

This also is deceptive. You are just fast forwarding for 30 secs.

Wrong. There is a backdoor code (given by the original poster) that enables 30-second skip. I've tried it; it works. I found high-speed scanning at medium speed works better for me, though...there's no correction for overshoot with 30-second skip.

Where the original poster was wrong was in saying that TiVo gets its guide info over-the-air. Since there's no TV station that provides this service, that's impossible. TiVo phones home for its guide info, just as ReplayTV presumably does.

Ah, then there is sharing of the shows (URL).

[Tide]

Lest us not forget the site that lets all of us ReplayTV 4000 users find new 'friends' to share shows with. With over 100 members and 1200 shows, its not a bad place to start to find that lost episode of The Tick.

Planet Replay

Internet Sharing

[imuffin]

I really like the internet sharing feature of this box. I understand that a lot of people have capped upstream bandwidth from home, and that because of this it would take forever to send a show to someone... But hopefully these draconian restrictions will be lifted... When we all have decent broadband, which might happen in the not-so-distant future, this will be a really cool feature.

Now:
Me: Dude, I missed Futurama last night! Can you capture it, encode it, and then put it on your server so I can grab it?
Friend: "I guess..."

The Future:
Me: "Dude, I missed Futurama last night!"
Friend: "No problem... " hits a couple of buttons.. "You'll have it in an hour."

We are trying to do this, wanna help?

[fons]

http://davedina.apestaart.org

With a couple of friends we are trying to make a linux based home entertainment system. Eventually we want te be able to:
- play mp3's and serve them on our lan. (works)
- have a nifty audio database with webinterface (almost works)
- serve a webcam (works)
- play dvd's (works)
- rip dvd's (kinda works)
- play divx-cd's (works)
- watch tv (works) and decode pay-tv :-) (almost works)
- record from tv (works, but no automated TV-guide)
- serve recorded DVD's and TV-shows on lan (works)
- burn recorded stuff onto cd's
- play games (works)
- create a nice interface so we can control it with a normal and simpel remote.

We can still use some help. If you're interested go to our site, read the faq and download what we already have.

Re:Why not simply use your PC?

[Lumpy]

Sure you can with a anemic little computer (Pentium MMX 266) and a crappy ol' bttv tuner card.

Go and download Nupple-video and follow his tips on there to heppily converth the Nupplevideo output to mpeg2 files then buy yourself a nice Hollywood+ mpeg playback card. Now add crontab, mplayer, and spice it with the at daemon to make it easier, bake at 350 with your favorite Linux distro (I choose Slackware 8.0 for it's low fat high quality ingredients) and you have a basic PVR that will gladly play it's video onto your Television without any silly content viewing protection, statistic collection and selling, or government spyware... that eye on the Tivo... I know it's watching me!

it's nothing like a tivo, no FF rewind, pause, or all theo other fluff, but you can make a nice web control panel , point, click, watch Invader Zim!

no it's not easy, no it wont be pretty, no it's not DVD quality with 6.1 surround.. but who cares. it's free, open, and cooler than a Tivo.

Re:Fantastic

[KernelHappy]

If I recall, HDTV is 1.5 Gbps uncompressed</snip>

Uncompressed NTSC video (720x480) would use about 237mbit/second (720x480x24x29.97 (drop frame)), but we don't record that uncompressed. Instead we compress it before we transmit or store it digitally and in the case of DSS/Tivo combo boxes the units store the compressed stream exactly as it is received. IIRC most HDTV programs are broadcast using a 18Mbit/sec stream. This isn't exactly tiny but in a day of 160GB harddrives its manageable. In fact DV uses a M-JPEG like codec that consumes about 25Mbit/sec for standard NTSC video and current consumer PC technologies are up to the task of handling it. Storing an exact copy of a HDTV broadcast is quite acheivable given current consumer level equipment.

So the problem is political rather than technological. Media companies view the move to HDTV and digital video in general as their chance to correct the "mistakes" they made with previous copiable formats. These companies do not want their content to fall under the previous fair use controls and they are draging their feet while they frantically search for a way to control every aspect of their content even if it impinges on the consumers fair use ability. This is evident in the vast array of manuevers going on behind the scenes to get DRM in place before the consumer HDTV explosion happens.

Late in the game, hardware manufacturers jumped to using encrypted streams over IEEE1394 (Firewire/i.Link) to the display device. So if you purchased a HDTV decoder 1-2 years ago there is the possibility/probability you may not be able to use whatever the standard format of choice for recording content is without buying a new decoder or additional hardware.

The simple fact is that the powerhouses behind the scenes don't want us timeshifting their prescious HDTV content until they can control every aspect of how we use it.