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TiVo Hacking Book to be Released
weaknees writes "Wired News
reports that O'Reilly press has book in the works loaded with TiVo Hacks. The
author, an MIT guy, is collecting
100 hacks for TiVo, but is shying away from the most controversial hacks.... The
brief article points out that the most avid TiVo hackers seem intent on respecting
TiVo's interest in having hackers stay away from things like subscription theft
and video extraction."
Seems O'Reilly are publishing a series of these. I heartily recommend their Linux Server Hacks book, btw. There is a Google one too - anyone care to comment on that?
"If that bond gets broken, you can say goodbye to backdoors, 30 second skips, etc."
There is no reason at all to get worried over video extration. More and more will say goodbye to Tivo (unless they can hack and put back in the 30 second skips!)
On ReplayTV (with the 4000 and up models), there is a feature allowing you to send shows to other units, and another to stream video to another unit. Because the send show feature can go to any unit over the Internet, this is one feature that they're being sued over.
The hack portion of it is a bit of software you run on a computer that emulates the ReplayTV protocol, allowing you to send shows to and from a PC. This allows you to burn archival copies, as well as to effectively use the PC's hard drive for additional show storage. Running that software would be considered a "hack" as it was independently developed and not officially supported by ReplayTV.
You aren't very familiar with Tivo. They not only don't close hacking loopholes, but seem to even encourage them.
:)
For instance, a hardware hacker created a NIC card for the first generation Tivo that allows you to telnet in and schedule recordings and do other things. TiVo included his driver in the latest release of the software that is automatically pushed to all Tivos, so that by changing the dialing prefix in the Tivo software it will use the NIC to obtain guide data (rather than the analog modem that is built in).
Furthermore, building a box that does the equivalent of the Tivo will cost in excess of $600 dollars (keep in mind that Tivo does high-quality buffering of all video, so it requires high-quality real time compression). A VIA CPU and an all-in-wonder TV tuner won't work.
You can get a lifetime subscription Tivo for hundreds less than building a Myth TV or FreeVo box.
Of course if building the box and fiddling with scripts is most of the fun, the FreeVo/MythTV box is the better deal
There is a problem with video extraction in that it represents another battlefield in Big Media's attempt to turn back the clock to the days before Betamax. I wish Tivo would fight them on this but (1) Big Media owns pieces of Tivo and (2) we all can see what fighting Big Media did to Replay. I can hardly criticize Tivo for not wanting to commit suicide.
This isn't entirely correct. SonicBlue was being sued over two features: Internet Video Sharing and Commercial Advance. IVS is a distinct feature from in-home sharing, running at a much slower speed and utilizing a custom DNS like service to locate remote replaytvs. It also creates a local copy of the file. Streaming doesn't create a local copy and occurs at full speed (obviously). DVArchive, a popular program, acts just like a ReplayTV, so it's capable of both receiving shows (which are saved rather than played), and streaming the saved shows back to the actualy ReplayTV. AFAIK, the streaming functionality has never been in question.
Tivo never "took away" subscription free boxes from anyone. They stopped selling them. No one who bought a subscription free tivo had it taken away from them.
Likewise, no one who bought a lifetime subscription Tivo had it revoked.
I'm sure MythTv is easy enough to use - that wasn't the issue. The issue is cost. It is more expensive to build a MythTv box with PVR performance similar to a Tivo, even if you factor in a lifetime subscription for the Tivo.
The Tivo isn't exactly a black-box either. If Tivo goes out of business there will be quite a few alternative ways to get guide data.
Just wondering ... what digital tv guides are out there as alternatives?
:-)
Well, TV Guide has one and, IIRC, there was a script or something already out there to extract the info from their page and dump it into your TiVO.
It has been a while since I researched any of this, so I am sure I have missed plenty of info in this recollection. I suggest Googling for info freshness
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I agree... For those of you who don't know how to do this you can look here...
o stid=205706#post205706
http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p
Tivo 2 ppl...
S-P-S-3-0-S (1.3, also 2.5, not 2.0 or 2.01) - Toggles 30 second skip mode. This turns the Skip to End button into a 30 second skip button. This was removed in 2.0x, but added back in 2.5.
Patches for the S2 EEPROM/PROM were released last November. For those without a way to reprogram the PROM, a version of (two-kernel) monte has also been released. With monte-mips, you can reload any kernel you want by launching it from one of their "secure" kernels with known vulnerabilities. So there are numerous ways to get into the box. It's just these ways aren't as user-friendly as before.
Raffi isn't a tivo hacker, nor has he released any software for the tivo. His only contribution has been a book about the tivo, but to say that he wrote the book himself is also misleading. He solicited other people from the tivo community (including myself) to write sections for him.
In other words, he hasn't done anything and the drafts of the book don't look too promising.
- MbM