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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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From discussing something like this with a friend who used to work with one of the local university TV stations, the way these systems work is by looking for the "network black" screen as the program fades out to commercial, and comes back. You'd have to program some method of identifying this solely black screen and triggering the pause/record method around it.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
I wonder if ROW (rest of world) realizes that its irrelevant for them to hold opinions. America can buy, sell, destroy, or reconstruct any nation, any group of nations, or any other policital or geographical entity many times over. For all practical purposes, you don't exist. You are ants to our godhood
Empires rise, empires fall. History's full of examples.
America won't always be the world's only superpower. And when that change happens it won't be as obvious as you'd imagine.
Until that time, I'm sure you and others like you will happily live in ignorance thinking that other nations are just pawns on your chessboard. Just try to remember that, in the endgame, pawns are often the deadliest pieces.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I think the price decrease is across the board, as well--you might find Hughes units at 99 at Circuit City.
I'm not sure about your setup--I live in a condo, and hence the dishes I use are multi-dwelling units, and so my signal comes in via a single stacked and diplexed coax line. I need to destack it, re-diplex it, and then feed both the odd and even transponder signals to the DTivo.
When you say your basement only has one input, does that mean just one coax drop? If so, you'll either want to run another length of cable down, or stack the odd and even transponder signals on the one line (and destack after it comes out. Since stackers run in the hundred+ dollar range, I think the extra cabling would be a more cost effective option.
If, however, you're already using a Sony B-55 DirecTV receiver (what I believe is known as a wideband receiver) down there, you might already have a stacked signal going down to the basement, and all you'd need is a destacker and a signal splitter.
Otherwise, you might look into putting the Basement TiVo with your living room setup and using something like a remote and video sender combination or something that to get reception in the basement...
This thread at the Tivo community forum was most helpful in figuring out my problem with the stackers and destackers.
Hope this helps...
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
Every description of why someone should buy a TiVo sounds like it's aimed at people who have never seen a VCR.
Comparing a TiVo to a VCR is kind of like comparing a computer's word processor to a typewriter. Sure, you use both of them to type letters and documents and whatnot, but the only people who would ever say that the two are the same are those who have never used a word processor, or for some maniacal reason like to use white-out on their mistakes.
Took a week's vacation recently. When I got back home, there was 22 hours of new programming for me to choose from.
This is more of an "Ask /." question but I figured knowledgable /.-ers and the occasional moron would be likely to post here too...
I have seen the glory of TiVo as well as its own unique tyranny. So instead of rushing out and spending $300 on equipment (plus or minus depending on upgrades) then the yearly or monthly service fee, I borrowed a friend's Gateway Destination PC (p2 300 Mhz) and tried to build a DVR just with software and the included tunner card. I can watch cable TV on it beautifully (its currently running windows bu I am willing and able to upgrade to Mandrake or Slackware).
Unfortunately I have been un-able to record. Any advice on programs, cheak tunner cards with encoders, the better Linux distro for the job, etc... I'd like it to sit under my TV and serve up recorded tv shows, downloaded movies and mp3s (sored on my win XP box) to my home theater system. The plam pilot trick is cool too but one thing at a time.
I got tivo four years ago and instantly fell deeply in love with it. That love continues to this day, but has changed form. About a year ago, I realized that my giddy passion had given way to serenity, by which I mean that I realized that I just didn't want to watch tv any more, even on tivo. It was tivo that got me to this state of mind. It started by seeing how intrusive commercials were, and how much better tv was without it. The next phase for me was the realization of how manipulative the networks were with their program timing and scheduling; how wonderful to be free of that too! And then last summer I found I had dined at the table of paradise enough. I had actually watched enough episodes of The Simpsons, Futurama, Friends, Seinfeld, Frasier, and tons of other shows. To borrow an analogy from another slashdot writer, it was like the weekly trip to the hardware store after you've bought a new house, where one day you get there and you realize that you just don't need anything else, and you turn around and leave.
This has been a profound experience for me. And I don't think I could have gotten here without Tivo. Maybe I would have and it would have taken longer, but I like to think it was tivo.
Now I keep tivo around for the kid (Sesame St, etc).
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.