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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."
"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".
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.
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?
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.
*pssst* (yeah, you)
hook up a vcr or dvd burner or what-have-you to the video-out of your tivo... playback the show you recorded while simultaneously recording with your attached device...
i hope this wasn't too controversial of a hack to share with you... don't report me.
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.
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...
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.
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
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
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.
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.
...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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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