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Book Review: Hacking TiVo
As a relatively early convert to the TiVo way of life, I always found it hard to describe to people who didn't have one why their lives could be changed by it. If I was lucky, I could get friends to visit and with a few short minutes of demonstration, I'd sold another one. If they were farther away, I just hoped they would stop by some day and I'd have another convert. Why was I so intent on this? Because if you watch TV, or even if you don't watch as much as you used to, TiVo can change your life completely. It frees you from the tyranny of watching shows when you're told to watch them, and then goes on to turn your entire television experience from one bombarded with ads and missing all the "good stuff" on scattered random channels, to a true symbiotic relationship where you sit down in front of the tube and every single moment is one filled with shows you want to watch about stuff you're interested in.
A lot of Slashdot readers know what I'm talking about, because they have a TiVo or other PVR in their home right now. So when I tell you that this book will take your TiVo to the next level, I hope you get as excited as I was after reading the dozens of tricks, programs, and hacks this book lists.
The opening chapter describes, in succinct but energetic fashion, why every person with a TV should have a TiVo. Keegan's description may fall towards the evangelical side of things, but he goes out of his way to explain why his feelings are so strong. In fact, this book has an interesting side-effect: converting those who don't own a TiVo. Just a quick browse through the first few chapters will have someone who's heard of TiVo but never used one chomping at the bit to get down to the store. To the TiVo army, this is a powerful munition indeed.
From there, it's a powerful spiral into chapter after chapter of modifications, starting with back doors in the code and moving into opening the TiVo's case (explained with lots of clear pictures), adding storage, and even working with the TiVo's OS (a variation of Linux) to turn it into a web-accessible site or to improve performance.
One inspiring chapter describes the author's experience at a baseball game, having his father go to get refreshments and missing some great plays, and the author pulling out his Palm Pilot with cellular modem to tell his TiVo over the web to record the game's highlights on the news. With that tantalizing trick presented, Keegan goes into the whole involved deal, everything from modifying the TiVo to creating the external server to feed the TiVo information.
As I said, the tricks come fast and furious: TiVo as a way to browse photo galleries. TiVo pulling down the current weather and presenting the radar maps. TiVo printing Caller ID information on the screen when someone calls. By the time you're done with the book, you'll be wondering what there is that you can't do with it. And that, to me, is the sign of a truly great instructional book.
A warning: If you want a neutral voice in the author, this isn't the book for you. Keegan's enthusiasm drips from many pages, written in the tone of the guy down the street with the new toy who simply has take you to the den and show you how cool it is, describing in greater and greater detail all the cool stuff he's discovered tinkering with it. The author's wife, newborn daughter, mother and father make appearances all throughout the book, including a particularly touching description of having his father design an assembly language program to manipulate an LED display. No, really, it's touching. I did a search for Jeff and information on him and I found a photo of him in this costume. Honestly, I'm speechless. The man has achieved what we call "full commitment."
By about halfway through the book it stops being an instruction manual and begins being a full-on reference book, giving you explicit instructions on programming in Tcl, mucking about in Linux, and generally being a hard-core warranty violator. One appendix is dedicated to being a Tcl reference list while another hits you up for some basic Linux training (to be able to work comfortably in the OS).
Keegan has also been kind enough to include a CD-ROM with pretty much all the programs and utilities needed to accomplish what's in his book. It's a telling personal trait that he apologizes for putting it all on a CD instead of enabling readers to go out and search for the programs themselves.
To say I learned things in this book is an amazing understatement. Just to know that some of these things are even possible with my TiVo guarantee how I'll be spending the next few hundred dollars, buying larger drives, getting a cache card, and wiring the machine for ethernet. And Yes, it tells you how to get the shows off of your TiVo onto your computer's hard drive.
When I ordered this book from Amazon, I found out it was an Amazon exclusive, so that's the only place to get it right now. On the other hand, I was able to get my copy in a very short time, so I'm fine with that ... but I hope that you can get it in other places in the future. Regardless, it was worth the money I paid for it, especially since Amazon had 30 percent off in some effort to push to product. Great for me; I'm glad this book came into my collection and I think any TiVo owner (or hopeful TiVo owner) will agree.
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I'm still not sure why more people haven't adopted ATI's All in Wonder cards. I use mine for everything that the TiVo can do, plus a lot of the stuff that you can hack the TiVo to do. I can login remotely and set it to record. I can burn VCD/SVCD/DVDs without hacking anything. And adding storage? I've got its cache and recording space set up on my NAS. And all for less than $150
Tivo Community Forum
Deal Database Forums
Tivo Web Project Home Page
I found it to be really enjoyable to sift through many different forums for instructions on how to mod my TiVo. I learned more by reading more than one persons account on how to do things, and was able to get help by posting questions.There's a ton of info out there if you're willing to search, otherwise, I guess the 21 bucks is a decent price to pay, and you won't have to get flamed for asking a dumb question.
No, no Series 2 hacks are in the book (from what I can tell... I haven't read it.) Series 2 hacks are out there. They just haven't become routine just yet.
As for BASH on a Series 2, the trick is to get a trusted kernel to boot, then have it run a hacked kernel. Yes, Tivo added some integrity checks on the Series 2. (Insert DMCA disclaimer.)
The author probably doesn't want to get into Series 2 machines because they are still in a state of flux, and he would be trafficing in a circumvention device if he did!
Some of the blogs out there specifically avoid hacks with DMCA implications, but others do not. If you can't find what you're looking for for your Series 2, keep looking. (Hint: Try this one first.)
Here's what I do to rip tv shows off my tivo:
Telnet to the tivo, start TyServer.
Launch the TyServer client on my windows machine.
Select the shows I want. click "grab"
They are pulled down as seperate streams, one for audio, one for video. You can directly import these files into several DVD creation programs, that automatically recode them to the DVD spec, or you can edit the files with a program such as TMPEnc to remove commercials and such. Re-ecoding such files gets a bit tricky, I'm still trying to find the best parameters to fit about 4 hours of acceptable quality video onto a 4GB DVD-R
Okay, because you asked for it, here are the major differences between Series 1 and Series 2 standalone devices:
Series 1
Series 2
There are people who've successfully hacked the Series 2 TiVos by replacing the BIOS with one that has the signature-check edited out, but that requires soldering, which is more than most TiVophiles are comfortable with.
In contrast, people with Series 1 devices have added ethernet cards, installed more RAM, installed Apache and a full web-based UI for programming TiVo, etc.
I own a couple of Series 1 standalone TiVos, but don't own any Series 2 standalones. I do own an HDVR2, which is the second generation DirecTV-integrated model. I haven't done anything to it yet.
Q: I'm confused.. Where can I buy it again? :)
A: Only at amazon.com. Anyone who's ever written or knows a writer knows how little writing pays, so if you'd like to give more at no cost to yourself, use that link.
Q: Can't I get all of this for free elsewhere?
A: Absolutely, the hacks talked about are all out there. What this book does is bring them together in one place, walk you through them with a consistent voice, and start you off on what's needed to write your own hacks (for example, with a description of the internal APIs TiVo has to access their proprietary MFS filesystem, etc). I've had many friends who are competent developers who wanted to try implementing a few ideas in their TiVo, but didn't want to play the catch-up game of reading through thousands of posts to try to gleam what collective knowledge we've all accumulated. Re-inventing the wheel might be fun, but it's not as fun as creating something of your own using the creations that have preceded you.
Also, many of the sites that used to host various TiVo hacks have disappeared because the authors have moved on to other things. I wanted to make sure these hacks were collected in one permanent place (on the CD-ROM for the book).
Q: Does your book cover Series2?
A: Yes and no. Series2 users can use the book and accompanying CD-ROM to add larger hard drives to their TiVo, and to mount Series2 drives. As for describing how to get a bash prompt, that I don't describe, for various legal reasons (the exemptions granted under the DMCA aren't as nice as my publisher would like them to be). Once you've gone off to find out how to do that (via the BASH_ENV and 2-kernel-monte exploits described at places like dealdatabase.com), much of the book still applies.. (even though I don't ship series2 binaries for everything, my descriptions of the tools and the development talk still applies and makes for interesting reading).
Q: Does your book cover Series1 DirecTiVos?
A: Yes, although again for legal reasons there's one step where I tell you in the book that you need to look elsewhere first (obtaining a bash prompt by flashing your prom). If you purchase a TurboNET card (as I'd imagine you will if you have a Series1 DirecTiVo) then the software on the TurboNET site will flash the prom for you so you can move on. Once that step is done, the rest of the book applies to your DirecTiVo completely (with the exception of video extraction).
Q: Hey, yeah, video extraction.. Do you cover video extraction?
A: Yes, I cover video extraction (and insertion), for Series1 standalones only. Series1 DirecTiVos scramble video by default, and though there is a simple hack out there to disable this scrambling, I'm prohibited legally from talking about it in the book. I don't cover Series2 extraction either.
Those are the main five I get asked most. I spent many months on this, and I'm glad that people finally have a chance to read it. I hope everyone enjoys the book! More than that, I hope this attracts new developers to this great platform.
..Jeff Keegan
seven syllables explain TiVo: kee gan dot org slash ti vo