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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
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 sells most of their units at a loss with the expectation they will make the money back on the service plans. If you were to connect your TiVo to another source, you would have broken no laws, but you would have deprived TiVo of their revenues.
That's why TiVo has to resort to programming-based protections to put the unit into "Boat Anchor Mode" when it isn't subscribed to TiVo's services. Yeah, somebody could make the hacks to do that, but TiVo would then make a design change to break that hack. They're not gonna help you with this one at all.
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.
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.
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.