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TiVo Hacking Book to be Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the fun-stuff-to-read dept.

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."

10 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Video extraction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "away from things like subscription theft and video extraction"

    What is wrong with video extraction? No doubt this book will be bypassed for web sites, and possibly other books that don't overlook this important and entirely reasonable "hack".

    1. Re:Video Extraction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The unspoken(?) deal is that if the Tivo hackers don't mess with video extraction/stealing services, Tivo will continue to be lenient and less restrictive with their box. If that bond gets broken, you can say goodbye to backdoors, 30 second skips, etc.

    2. Re:Video Extraction? by phillymjs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And unlike bypassing subscriptions, it's not something that is going to cost TiVo money, so I don't see why they would be concerned by it.

      It could cost TiVo plenty, if the greedy-bastard "content producers" sued them. If TiVo weren't so afraid of those litigious dinosaurs, ethernet would've been standard on the Series 1 boxes, and there would be TiVo-sanctioned/produced software that let you pull any recording off the TiVo with a mouse click or two, and put it on your computer's hard drive in an easily-editable format. Computer companies would probably be selling their own branded TiVos, and would be fighting tooth and nail to develop the best software with which to extract and manipulate the video. Frankly, I think easy recording extraction directly into iMovie or iDVD is the missing link from the Home Media Option that TiVo has cooked up with Apple.

      You wonder why video extraction is verboten, you can thank people like Jack "The VCR is the Boston Strangler" Valenti and Jamie "Going to the bathroom during commercials is stealing" Kellner-- and their lawyers.

      ~Philly

    3. Re:Video extraction? by the_2nd_coming · · Score: 2, Insightful

      the good thing is that Tivo supports "out-to-vcr" out of the box....soooooo all you need is to have a dvd recorder and you can put the vidoe out to that rather than a tape(though if the show ot movie were that important that you want to archive it rather than time shift it a VHS tape should be fine)

      --



      I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
  2. Video Extraction? by crow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I thought video extraction was one of the most popular hacks, not something people made an effort to stay away from. Certainly in the ReplayTV crowd, video extraction is one of the most popular hacks, right up there with drive upgrades.

    And unlike bypassing subscriptions, it's not something that is going to cost TiVo money, so I don't see why they would be concerned by it.

  3. Leading hackers into what they want by LostCluster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    TiVo seems to have a dual-faced plan for dealing with hackers. The hacks that they want to let happen seem to be too easy, while they make the hacks they don't want to happen hard. As a result, the hackers who take the path of least resistance get all the credit, the hackers who go into the marked red zones get shunned.

    In most single-drive models TiVo just happens to provide a perfect mounting point for that second drive... in network-less models they just happen to provide a slot in which an add-on card can be installed... when you give you TiVo Internet access, they just happen to have left their data server exposed to the 'net and let you do your "daily call" that way... for some reason they just happen to use modems that support Caller ID decoding... and let's not forget all of the "cheat code" hacks you can do with your remote control...

    But when you stray into the areas that threaten TiVo's business model, subscription theft and video extraction from the box, things stop getting so easy. In fact, TiVo starts actively programming to break such hacks in required updates if they are ever found to exist. These people are also shunned by the main TiVo-hacking community, so even if they discover something there's nobody who cares.

    The result is that TiVo controls their hackers by letting them improve their units, but only in the way that TiVo has appoved. This strategy makes them appear hacker-friendly, when really there are two hacks that they specifcally forbid. By letting the hackers have the little things, they seem to have found the most effective way of preventing hackers from going after the big things...

    1. Re:Leading hackers into what they want by LostCluster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You left the part of your message off where you explained why you think this is a bad thing.

      I didn't leave that part out... I don't think this is a bad thing.

      This is the opposite of the model most business are using when it comes to hacking their products, which is a simple "zero tolerance" plan for hacks of all kinds. TiVo is welcoming most forms of hacking, so long as the hackers agree to stay out of the troublemaking zones. Most TiVo hackers are playing by those rules willingly, so everybody's happy.

      Compared with Microsoft's policy towards hacking the Xbox, TiVo seems to be having much greater success by keeping the hackers busy with something else...

  4. TiVo and Video Extraction--a matter of time? by weaknees · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would TiVo possibly be opposed to (or be less than neutral about) video extraction? It doesn't have any negative impact on their business model... with one critical exception: Legal fees!

    ReplayTV was sunk because they were sued repeatedly, and TiVo hardly wants to spend its precious money on lawyers! Larry Lessig may be a great professor and scholar, and he might like little guys who want to publish copywritten books, but I don't see him supporting TiVo when they get sued by every media giant under the sun.

    If and when the courts catch up with the this technology, and if the decisions come down like the betamax decision did, then I'm sure TiVo will be more than willing to add features and DVD recorders into the mix... but if they decided to be at the forefront, they'd get slaughtered.

    It is for this reason that the larger tivo upgrade companies don't rock this boat... TiVo was brilliant to embrace (or at least not shun) the hacker community with respect to adding hours, and even built many nifty features that empowered the hackers to do cool stuff.... and we in turn respect that by not doing thinks to get them into legal hot water.

    --
    TiVo Upgrades
  5. Re:Question. by LostCluster · · Score: 2, Insightful

    TiVo welcomes hacks that take the unit in a direction that they want to go... they sponsor the tivocommunity.com message boards where people can freely discuss hacks such as adding a bigger hard drive or a caller ID display feature.

    However, any hack that bypasses the need for a subscription or allows for video extraction is in a marked no-man's-zone. TiVo intentionally breaks these hacks, and doesn't allow discussion of these on the message board they sponsor.

    In short, they encurage hackers to play within their bounds, but also leave plenty of room within the bounds to still have fun.

  6. Just buy one... by phillymjs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...because unless you don't value your time at all, buying is much cheaper.

    Buy the cheapest one you can find on eBay, get the lifetime subscription if it's not already included, hack/mod as desired. Or don't. It will work right out of the box, no dicking around with it necessary.

    I bought a 20 hour Series 1 TiVo on eBay in January of '02. I put a 120GB drive in it the day it arrived and paid for the lifetime subscription, and a couple months ago finally decided to add ethernet so I could extract recordings for archival purposes. The TiVo has worked flawlessly the entire time I've had it. I have not had to think about it at all, and IMHO that is the mark of a good system.

    ~Philly