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TiVo and Rendezvous
An anonymous reader writes "Just found this press release on the Apple web site. Time to upgrade the TiVo?" Looks way excellent. Right now I have an old iBook sitting on top of the TV, and it streams MP3s via AirPort from the server. But it would be so much better to just listen to the MP3s through the TiVo instead ... and have access to my iPhoto albums too? Sweet. But I would still want it to be wireless: Josuah writes "Alex King has set up his TiVo 2 to download its meta information over his 802.11b network, instead of the landline. He's got step-by-step instructions up." I'd probably want to use 802.11g though ... lots of data, this is.
Can I broadcast whatever I want to my neighbor's TiVO? Can my neighbor watch my slideshows w/out me knowing?
This may open the door for simple pirate TV stations using 802.11, TiVos, and Macs.
t'nera semordnilap
No, you cannot do this because what Tivo and Rendezvous does is automatically give the Tivo access to your media on your computer with absolutely 0 set up at all. If your computer is simply powered on and attached to your network and running OS X 10.2 or later it will be completely automatic. That means, you'll be able to just buy a Mac and a Tivo and have nothing to configure.
nothing to configure... That means something to some people.
Does security mean anything to anyone anymore? What are the security implications of Rendezvous?
The press release is very specific about streaming music and photos to and from the TiVo. It says nothing about remote viewing of shows. Every TiVo hacker wishes something like this was "built-in." However, it appears that television executives have more sway with TiVo than their customers.
Throw some technology together and get some interesting integration. Surprisingly, there is no mention of iPod in the announcement. Wouldn't it be nice to have a wireless connection to your iPod and stream that way too? Walk around the house or apartment with an almost infinite selection of streamed songs from your desktop or laptop. Eliminates the need for larger and larger storage on the iPod, at least while you are in range of the transmitter.
;-) If this is already being done, post some references here. I'd be interested to learn more about it.
Speaking of this idea, how many people know about the Dr. Bott iPod Connection Kit w/ FM Wireles Transmitter? Not the same thing, of course, but it still should get you thinking about other ways to extend and expand your devices. And, while I am off on a tangent here, wouldn't it be interesting to get RSS feeds on our various wireless web devices?
How to Download YouTube Videos
I just did this the other night. I use a WAP11 in bridge mode to get wireless connectivity to my home theater. I just popped in a TurboNet card in the TiVo and I was set. Enabling telnet, FTP, and Web took 15 minutes.
The problem is, 802.11b is sloooooow for pulling off video. An hour of video on a TiVo may be 2.8GB. When pulling vid over wireless it takes a LONG time... I usually either do it over night or just plug in to the switch behind the HT and get it off directly.
For those wanting to do this check out TiVoApp. It's pretty much a one step vid extraction tool that'll dump anything in Now Showing to an mpeg file.
> And unlike Tivo hacking, I haven't read of anyone successfully modifying their ReplayTVs to do this, either.
That's because there's no hacking required on your ReplayTV box itself. ReplayTVs identify themselves "securely" to each other when requesting shows, and if you can impersonate a legitimate ReplayTV unit successfully, a unit will simply stream content to you. That's what the show grabbing software for the ReplayTV does, and it actually requires much less work than the Tivo.
Actually, and in all seriousness, it's like AppleTalk for IP. AppleTalk was great, but had problems, not the least of which being that it was proprietary. Windows networking-- Network Neighborhood and all that-- was a horrible copy of AppleTalk. Now here comes Rendezvous, which combines the ease of use and convenience of AppleTalk with the goodness of IP without having to suck.
Gonna change the world, man.
Here's just one example of why Rendezvous is cool. Safari has Rendezvous support built-in. I have a friend who works for a company that builds web applications; their apps run on Apache, and they have dozens and dozens of development servers in their lab, all with names like SVR-LAB-01-A-342 and stuff like that. Keeping track of which server is running what, and on what ports, is a nightmare. So I set him up with mod_rendezvous yesterday. Now everybody who uses Safari (which is like half the damn company already) gets a nice list of all the currently running servers on his bookmarks screen. All you have to do is pick the one you want.
I'll say it again. Rendezvous is gonna change the world.
I write in my journal
You are touching a very good point: a large percentage of contributors to Slashdot seem to be almost illiterate. It can be argued (as many do) that spelling doesn't matter, as long as they can code. Well, maybe. Still, I take far more seriously any statements coming from persons who have a decent command of grammar and spelling, implicitly assuming a greater capability to form ideas and understand concepts than that of their semi-literate peers, for whom the world seems to consist of little more than Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and computers.
I wonder if the sorry state of the software industry, with its BSODs, buggy applications, poor designs, missed deadlines, in part reflects the fact that so many involved in that endeavor are - well, practically illiterate?
It won't change nothing if it's proprietary and doesn't play nice with other OS's (Windows included).
;)
Fortunately it ISN'T PROPRIETARY! It is an open standard that is also called zeroconf. Apple has also released source code.
Why isn't there an open source package that just makes it easy to share folders/files/printers across all platforms? Like Samba, but without being a cloned MS tech?
Grab Apple's code and get working
Obscure tools and a couple of weekends of hacking? You really have *no* idea what you are talking about.
p ://www.virtual4k.com/files/rcc.htmc c.net/replayremote/
Try 5 minutes, and knowing the ip of your replaytv. ReplayPC, DVarchive, etc, etc, are very stable and usable products. And for those of you with ReplayTV 5xxx boxes:
http://www.pcphotovideo.com/ReplayPage.htm
htt
http://www.id
Now tell me that it takes weekends of hacking. I mean really, if you don't know what you are talking about, keep your mouth shut. It is certainly better than making thousands of people dumber for the experience of listening to your uneducated drivel.
I've got two TiVos, series 2 standalones, had two series 1 boxes before these. Honestly, I'm not trying to start a flame war, but I've been tempted to get a Replay for the show-sharing capability. I have a fast broadband connection 1.5Mbps upload speed, so I actually could send the files to friends fairly quickly.
The one thing holding me back, is that compared to the TiVo devices, it's harder to tell what Replay is going to record. TiVo has the priority season pass list and the ToDo list, and I purposefully have a lot of conflicts set up in my list, so that if Fear Factor is a re-run, it'll record Antiques Roadshow, or if there's a conflict with the Sunday night episode of Oz, TiVo will grab the Tuesday night episode.
From everything I've read, Replay seems to be hit-or-miss about which show it will record, and there's no easy way to see what it is going to choose exactly. That, to me, is the only reason I haven't jumped on Replay. I have a TV with component connnections, and I know Replay offers that as an option on one of their models.
I'd also miss the Suggestions that TiVo records too, but I could live without those. I couldn't deal with ambiguity in the program scheduling though...
Am I wrong, or is there a way to manage this?
Thanks!
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
Find out what this Rendezvous is and copy it!
If I understand correctly, when Rendezvous was first announced, everyone said that Microsoft's Universal Plug 'n' Play (UPnP) has all the same features, is TCP/IP based, etc., and had been out for a while already. The differences that I know of are: 1) Microsoft didn't hire the ZEROCONF guy, so it's not an IETF standard 2) One additional features was a remote root hack, solved a couple of months ago. 3) I haven't heard of anyone using it. Including Microsoft Windows XP filesharing.
The key similarity is that (IIRC) Open Source. Free as in BSD-type-License.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Mind giving websites for references? I look at some of the various TiVo hacking sites every now and again, but last time I didn't see a way to easily transport shows between TiVos, or store them off on a PC. Everyone seemed more interested in burning to S-VCD, which I couldn't care less about.
If I could move shows between my two TiVos then it'd be really cool. Have plenty of spare drive space and computers to act as an intermediary too.
Sounds like you want a ReplayTV, then. Using a niftly little utility called 'ReplayPC' (see sourceforge for details) and your out-of-the-box LAN-enabled ReplayTV 5xxx series, you can download shows recorded in DVD-compliant MPEG2 streams, edit them with the vid editor of your choice, and burn them to DVD. Lots of folks do this already.
:)
You can also upgrade Replay hard drives without hacing to "bless" them.
Basically for $99 one can order a TiVo SW upgrade (secured with public/private keys) to allow your TiVo to stream mp3s, jpegs (incl. ones from Corbis), be remotely administered from a personal account on TiVo's website, and get some extra promo material. One can then get the upgrade for addt'l TiVos in the household at half-price and be able to stream shows between TiVos on the same account.
All of this due in April, software for enabling the local mp3 & jpeg streaming to be available then, you can sign up to be notified when avaliable. Presumably these apps and the TiVos will use Rendezvous to find eachother.
So: Extra cost paid upfront, secured software, able to share but only with other extra-package TiVos on the same account and not with the general 'net population. Oh yeah, and LinkSys is the preferred networking hw vendor.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.