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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."
Obviously I understand the reasons for being against subscription theft, but video extraction seems perfectly legal, and there are already recorders out there that will do it (and a new Panasonic that burns to DVD).
I guess Lessig was right, if each new invention dealing with the media needs to be vetted by incumbent powers in the courts it's really going to kill progress.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Extraction isn't exactly a hack in ReplayTV, is it? I've never touched one of those boxes, but from what I've read, I thought that it's an actual feature. (Albeit one that might soon bite the dust due to the MPAA getting things their way.)
Personally, I thind PVRs are definitely worth hacking - if you don't prefer rolling your own with somethink like VDR, , or FreeVo.
TVs are still the most important medium to distribute information through (with the net gaining ground fast), and I, for one, would like to decide for myself what to do with the information I recorded from TV; I don't want some companies making these decisions for me.
What's wrong with video extraction is that it would expose TiVo to the ReplayTV-like lawsuits from the media industry.
TiVo tries to be all things to all people, being cozy with both the media industy and users who want to control their TVs at the same time. It's quite a tight rope to walk...
>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.
Sounds like this could be a great way for a competitor (hint ReplayTV hint) to put TivO on the coals. And considering that TivO is mostly used by geeks, they might find that this puts them out of business sooner (their massive debt being the thing that will put them out of business later).
Not to mention by the time the book hits the shelves all the "hacks" will probably be patched by TiVo and you're left with basically an obsolete historical look at TiVo hacking. Should be a good book to alert the TiVo management to fixing bugs in their OS that let you hack it. I'm continually amazed that people continue to buy these things with the intent to modify them to do something the company doesn't intend them to do and is adamantly against. Build a MythTV box instead and quit supporting closed source corporations.
I'm not aware of any hacks that allow "subscription theft". I am aware of hacks that allow you to load your own guide data, which makes a tivo subscription reduntant.
I hope loading your own guide data isn't considered "subscription theft" now.
While I understand why TiVo are against people "stealing" subscriptions by, say, using someone elses user ID, what about replacing the TiVo update service altogether?
I wouldn't mind getting a TiVo, but the subscription charges puts me off. I already have a two digital TV guides, one on my computer and one on my digital STB. If I wanted to connect the TiVo to my computer and get program information from there (without the forced ads etc) then what's wrong with that?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You left the part of your message off where you explained why you think this is a bad thing.
Do you think TiVo has some sort of obligation to make all hacks equally easy? Do you think TiVo is obligated to ignore the differences between hacks? Would you be happy if they simply banned all hacks equally?
I mean, you sound like you're awfully upset about something, but what exactly would make you happy that's also practical in the real world? What obligations would you place on TiVo?
(I suspect that once stated in the form of what you're trying to obligate TiVo to do, you'll find that it sounds absurd, especially in light of the fact that you shouldn't treat TiVo specially, all hardware makers should be treated equally. But hey, prove me wrong; it's even possible I might agree with your reasoning if it's thought-out well enough. I just don't know what it is.)
There have always been rumors that TiVo has created the code in order to duplicated ReplayTV's show-sending features, but is holding all of them back until the lawsuits are settled.
If ReplayTV should ever win a lawsuit, TiVo would then be able to instantly roll out the feature without having to have won the legal fight themselves. If ReplayTV loses, they're the ones who have to pay the consequences.
Kinda a smart thing for them to do... staying away from the controversial issues until somebody else sorts them out.
*pssst* (yeah, you, who thinks you know what you're talking about...) You don't have an integrated TiVo, do you?
I've got a whoel room ful of video processing equipment. Even so, there is a big differecne between getting access to the stored satellite stream on an integrated TiVo's hard drives and using pro-level digitizing equipment on the video-out connectors on a TiVo, even with the S-Video connector.
For an integrated TiVo, what you propose includes one D/A-A/D sequence, for a standalone TiVo with no digital feed, there are 2 of those sequences.
If you want quality, you don't use analog cables. If you want to quickly burn DVD or SVCD, you get rid of the analog steps.
I don't know why Tivo is concerned with video extraction on the Standalone (normal) Tivos since the signal is being endoded digitally from an analog signal inside the Tivo. So it isn't a perfect digital copy and is exactly what you can do with a PC with a TV tuner/Video In/MPEG encoder card.
However, the DirecTivos (DirecTV/Tivo combo boxes) store the digital signal straight off the satellite. Therefore you are getting a high quality pure digital signal encoded for you by DirecTV and therefore I can see why DirecTV is concerned about it with respect to the DMCA.
The steps to extract video is almost exactly the same for both Tivos and DirecTivos, so you can't talk about doing it for one without pretty much telling you how to do it for the other. Therefore it is a forboden topic on the most popular Tivo hacking site www.tivocommunity.com and often someone asks why it is forbidden to talk about extraction there quite often. Bottom line is that the owners of that forum (AVS Forum) don't want to get in trouble so they don't allow it.
Actually the caller-id pins from the modem aren't connected in the Series 1 standalone Tivos (the Tivo most people have). It would actually take some soldering to get it to work for those models. It does work most of the time in most of the Series 1 DirecTivo models.
Also, the "slot" that is avaliable on Series 1's isn't really a slot. It's this male PCI-looking ISA connector on the corner of the motherboard used for testing. The fact that Tivo hackers got ethernet cards to work with that thing that actually fit inside the Tivos was truly a major hack and I have a feeling the people at Tivo were pretty surprised when that was unveiled.
Tivo did, however, encourage the ethernet hacks. In the case of the Turbonet card, they even invited the hacker who created it (Jafa) to Tivo HQ to make sure that a proper driver for the Turbonet card made it into the next Tivo software release.
Your point about Tivo supporting certain hacks while discouraging others is still valid, then. Personally, though, I would rather a company allow some hacking and not allow other hacking rather than trying to sue everyone who opened their boxes and tried to fiddle with them.
Video extraction is something they will not talk about? How lame! Might as well change the name from TiVo hacking to TiVo case mods, would be more honest even though it likely wouldn't sell as well.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This is slightly off topic but still: I live in Pakistan and have been wanting a tivo/replaytv for a long while now. The thing which has stopped me from ordering it from amazon is the fact that it needs to be activated. Now, I don't think it is possible to activate from outside the US/Canada. I know they don't work if they are not activited. Secondly,the tivo program guide is not valid outside the us anyways so i don't need their service. So: Is it possible to just buy the tivo and program it manually? Will it run without the activation? Any hacks to use to without activation?
Funny. I just bought a 14 hour TiVo at a garage sale for 10 bucks. Plus with all the hard drives I have around here it would only cost me the price of the subscription. You should just bump up the storage space and sell it on eBay. Those people will pay good money for 100+ hours of recording time, and the lifetime subscription. I say a 50+ hour TiVo with lifetime going to 420, just the other day.
Stealing subscriptions is one thing, I certainly don't endorse that. Bypassing subscriptions is something else. Just because I might have bought a TiVo, I don't owe TiVo a monthly fee for the rest of my life, or need to pay them a lifetime fee when their lifetime might be much shorter than mine. Who cares if it reduces TiVo's revenue - If I own the box I believe I should be able to bypass the subscription system and simply tell TiVo when and what channel to record. Any "hack" book that censors itself to not provide such information isn't worth squat.
Sure, if there's a last minute program change, I could miss the show. Same thing happens with a VCR; I can get over it. But I find the complete reliance on a subscription the most offensive part of TiVo, and would not consider one unless I could hack past it, either to avoid the costs or to know the hardware will still be of use if the company folds.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This book is useless! Do people know that most of the TiVo hacks can only be done to the Series 1 units, which are basically unsupported by TiVo Inc.? Series 1 units can't connect to the Internet (officially), they will not receive the new 4.0 software update, they don't have USB ports, they are slower than Series 2. There are some great hacks you can do to a S1 such as programming it remotely, caller ID, and instant messaging. But as of now the Series 2 can't be hacked, although you could add a new hard drive, and some of the 'hacks' are supported officially by the new Home Media Option.
Eventually someone will figure out how to hack the Series2, this will almost definitely involve replacing the unit's PROM chip (aka BIOS), then installing a new kernel that would allow hacks. Of course, that won't be in this book because it hasn't been figured out yet.
This whole "sell at a loss and sue your customers to act in a way which will generate a future profit" business model has to go. It's done with the Xbox, tivo, and plenty of other hardware systems. If your hardware can be used without having to pay you future costs, then don't sell the hardware at a loss. These companies think they can control the behavior of their customers, when in reality that's just never going to happen. If they'd realize that, they'd realize that they have to make a profit intially, rather than expect a lawsuit-based profit later on down the road.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
The 'advance' button is designed so that while in fast-forwarding mode, the advance button will jump to the next 15-minute tick mark. Its kind of like the track skip on a DVD.
Personally, I hate the 30-second skip hack. I find it much easier to manually FF past the commercials, and upon hitting Play, TiVo will jump back a bit so I don't miss any of the actual show.
{Too lazy to actually create a /. account}