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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."

18 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 LostCluster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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...

    3. Re:Video extraction? by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 4, Interesting
      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".

      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.

    4. Re:Video extraction? by Eight+01 · · Score: 5, Informative

      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 :)

    5. Re:Video extraction? by ethaz · · Score: 4, Informative
      Many of the common Tivo hacks (hard drive expansion, ethernet connections and web interface) are NOT opposed by Tivo. In fact, Tivo even includes support for ethernet connections in Series 1 machines, which do not have Tivo provided ethernet capability. (Series 2 machines have USB ports and can use USB ethernet adapters). To say that "something the company doesn't intend them to do and is adamantly against." is just flat out wrong and indicates that the writer is not at all familiar with Tivo.


      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.

    6. Re:Video Extraction? by GregGardner · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  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. oh no by vistic · · Score: 5, Funny

    *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.

    1. Re:oh no by Eight+01 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Just remember not to give your real name when you buy the video patch cables at Radio Shack!

  4. Re:Video Extraction (ReplayTV) by crow · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. 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 GregGardner · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  6. 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
    1. Re:TiVo and Video Extraction--a matter of time? by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  7. Re:video extraction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
    TyStudio:

    http://dvd-create.sourceforge.net/tystudio/index.s html

    In short, TyStudio is a Tivo Video Recording (aka tystream) Format framework; TyStudio offers a suite of tools for these types of video streams. These tools enable you to transform the Tivo Video Recording to such formats as an MPEG program stream, which is commonly used by DVD players. It also offers the option of GOP boundary editong of the Recording prior to actualy doing the conversion. Pleas see the whatis/about page.
  8. Re:video extraction by gosquad · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well I am the author of the mfsstream tivoweb module (used to extract shows in .ty format directly from a web browser which can then be converted to .mpg).

    see - http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t hreadid=8092

    I have been asked to be a contributor to this book so it looks like they aren't shying away from the topic at all..

    -gosquad

  9. Re:30 Second Skip Questions by greenskyx · · Score: 4, Informative

    I agree... For those of you who don't know how to do this you can look here...

    http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?po stid=205706#post205706

    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.