Dreambox DM7000: Hackable DVR

An anonymous reader copies-and-pastes "The Dreambox DM7000 from Dream-Multimedia-Tv (DMM) is a $395 Linux-based digital radio and digital TV (DVB) satellite (or cable) receiver with digital video recorder (DVR) functions and PC connectivity. It is implemented using IBM's STB04500 set-top box chipset, which provides the necessary DVB functions like transport stream demultiplexing and MPEG2 decoding inexpensively. A minimalistic, GPL'd Linux-based software implementation has made the DM7000 popular with Linux programmers and TV device hackers."

Comments

Or just use your PC

[Brahmastra]

http://dvr.sourceforge.net/html/main.html

Re:Or just use your PC

[Anonymous Coward]

myth tv is better

www.mythtv.org

Re:Or just use your PC

[The Kiloman]

There's also MythTV and Freevo.

Both are fairly immature, but moderately stable. MythTV in particular is feature-rich, but most of the features don't behave quite right.

I'd recommend giving them a try, and maybe contributing of any one is interested, but I don't see any OSS replacing the TiVo quite yet.

Re:Or just use your PC

[Anonymous Coward]

No, screw the lifetime subscription. It is tied directly to the tivo unit, and it is not transferable. Thats almost 2 years worth of the $13 monthly fee, assuming you don't invest the money (assuming you can get an 8% return, the present value of the annutiy is about 27 months worth of the service).

So, if sometime in the next 27 months,
- you decide that you want to upgrade to the latest and greatest, because lets face it, in 27 months your Tivo series 2 is going to be a dinosaur
- you decide that you don't want to use your tivo at all anymore
- a power surge fries your tivo
- the hard drive crashes and your tivo becomes inoperable

then you didn't get your money's worth from the lifetime subscription.

Little correction, partial GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Dreambox software is partial GPL the kernel modules which drives many devices are closed source and developed by IBM... IBM was the company defending the GPL open way? err...
What a flash-back

Still doesn't support HDTV *sigh*

[YetAnotherName]

Look, it's pretty simple:

1. Jennifer Garner of Alias has lots of super-cute freckles.

2. Those super-cute freckles are only visible on the local HDTV broadcast.

3. This box doesn't do HDTV.

Luckily, there is an ATSC receiver card that's for Linux only that does do HDTV. And Jennifer Garner. And her super-cute freckles. And yes, it's quite hackable, and source is included.

'nuff said.

Clickable link

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dvr.sourceforge.net/html/main.html

Please use the A tag, Linux's copy and paste mechanism SUCKS, and its a PAIN IN THE ANUS to copy and paste URLs that havnen't been hyperlinked.

Hackable

[smoyer]

I work with Scientific Atlanta and Motorola set-tops every day and can tell you that there are serious limitations to the hackability of any unit like this.

Each vendor has their own proprietary encryption format (for the content) and will only work with QPSK and QAM headend equipment that they manufacture. There is very little unencrypted content on CATV networks as digital service is generally an extra charge service. You also need to be provisioned in their billing system.

I suspect that the hackability of this unit stops at controlling the behavior of the device. I would be very surprised if anyone managed to receive free pay services the way those who built sync inverters, tone strippers, etc to receive free analog pay channels.

Please let me know if anyone has success!

Re:Hackable

[tzanger]

Each vendor has their own proprietary encryption format (for the content) and will only work with QPSK and QAM headend equipment that they manufacture.

I thought that's what the CAM was for? I am probably being overly naive about the whole procedure but I had throught that the system provided the CAM with the questions, the CAM responded with the answers (typical ZK tests) and if the answer was correct the signal came through. I know that the CAMs are relatively low-speed devices (if you pull the CAM out of your receiver you get a few seconds of video before it konks out) so they're not acutally decrypting the stream ... but jeez... You'd figure they'd have learned by now. Ugh.

No chance this thing has Nagravision capability, is there?

Re:Death to TiVo

[smackjer]

Actually, you can use a Tivo without paying the monthly (or lifetime) fee. You don't get the program guides, season pass functionality, and suggestions, but it works as well as a VCR when you schedule to record at a date/time/duration (without tapes), and still lets you pause and replay live TV.

The monthly/lifetime fee gets you the premium services, which are all based on having the program guide available. Well worth the cost, IMO.

Re:Scart-interfaces?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is DTV, DVB uses MPEG2 component video thereforing makeing PAL obselete, so you don't need to worry about old analogue formats, a SCART interface outputs composite/s-video/component RGB/YUV along with stereo sound and various switching signals for 16:9 and auto switching.

I reguarly watch 'NTSC' digital broadcasts without any problems, note that nothing is actually encoded in NTSC or PAL but their legacy scan rates still persist, but my TV is capable of scanning at 60Hz anyway.

Re:Death to TiVo

[crt]

The answer is "both". It used to work fine without the subscription, and that was allowed under the EULA for the software on the device.
However, at some point (around 2.3?) they changed the EULA and stated that a subscription was required to use it - at all.

They grandfathered in everyone who purchased before that date, so you can still buy a used TIVO that works without the subscription, but new ones technically require one. There may be a way to work around it on the new ones, but it's not going to be supported by TIVO.

All that being said... get the subscription. It's worth it for all the time it saves and the number of times it "catches" changes that you would miss if you had to do it all manually. If you can't stand monthly, get the lifetime and pretend the device is more expensive.