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Peter Seebach Pokes Around His TiVo
Warrior points out Peter Seebach's look into his Series 2 TiVo, writing "There are a lot of sites about 'hacking' the TiVo, to do this to it and that to it (and there's always the other thing too). After all, half the fun of owning something that runs Linux is to make it do something more (or different) than it was intended to do. But most of us only need so many Web servers (off the top of my head, I think I have 10 or 15 Web servers in my house already, including the embedded systems)."
Until someone senior at IBM notices and has it pulled down. Interesting to see some of the people at IBM as real people though with a real interest in what they do.
10-15 webservers? Wow! We, Slashdotters, have been asking "does it run Linux" for a loong time and now we have it.
And now excuse me, I have to cross-compile apache for my wrist watch.
...TiVo pokes around Peter Seebach?
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
Unlike most linux appliance devices, there is aactually a LOT of usefull things that can be done by rinning a web server on Tivo - like remote scheduling/control of the device for one.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
While this isn't information that wasn't already known about the Tivo, the way he presented it is very interesting. Documenting the process of how he figured out the drive map and how to read the drive is invaluable.
Teach someone how to fish...
Who knows how to leave the HD connected to the TiVo for recording, but also simultaneously connected to a regular Linux box that can mount the HD "ro"? Without changing any of the SW running on the TiVo?
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make install -not war
"But most of us only need so many Web servers (off the top of my head, I think I have 10 or 15 Web servers in my house already, including the embedded systems)." ...Not anymore you don't.
http://alderflats.com/slashdot_mirrors/tivo/
Pretty Pictures!
Enjoy!
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Check out the Uncyclopedia.org
The only wiki source for politically incorrect non-information about things like Kitten Huffing and Pong! the Movie !
Please allow me to hate the creator of the 120-character limit: *HATES*. Thank you.
Nice sweet poke-around in a tivo, of course now I want play with one too ;)
Yeah, it's called newsgroups. :D
...would it be possible to apply these same "hacking" techniques to open source TiVo solutions like Freevo?
Ron dies in chapter 9 of book 7.
I am happy to report that the TiVo seebs hacked on is working just fine as a plain and ordinary DVR. It came up just fine after I reattached the hard disk cable that seebs had forgotten to reattach (although he did put all the old screws back in).
It's replaying today's stage of the Tour right now.
Been done. He didn't analyze anything, just recorded his experience (the screenplay of which was scripted by the giants whose shoulder he stands on). The fact of the matter is proprietary and defensive hardware prevents you from exerting your OSS/GNU/HaXHiPPie powers. So buy it for what it's worth and use your time meaningfully OR hack to your hearts content with a freevo or equiv.
The point still stands that Tivo is understandable by the majority of significant others out there. I got my wife a tivo. She loves it. We control TV and have more prime time together. End of story.
Forget the AV and TIVO supported forums if you want to REALLY delve into a TIVO. They will freak out if you mention video extraction and you're likely to be banned before getting nay answer. Instead head for http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/ and get into the GUTS. Warning, they eat their young over there so do some research before daring to post. Also grit your teeth as more senior members are designated as "gods" by some of the more irritating.
That said - my S2 DTIVO is now running a 250+Gig HD, has a USB2 NIC attached, has encryption disabled, allows me to EASILY archive shows using MFSFTP (Etivo is looking interesting), and I'm running 4.x software that was designated for the SA versions of the TIVO but has features I wanted (folders!). I learned all about how to do that on DealDatabase and by doing research on the tools I heard about there. I honestly still am no "pro" with a TIVO but I've learned enough to make my TIVO more useful and that of a few others too. While that forum may be a bit hostile for the uninitiated it's about the best going for serious TIVO stuff and they won't ban you for daring to utter "extraction"!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
anyone know? I know with tivo2go you can make dvds and transfer video and what not, but are they doing annoying stuff like encoding macrovision on it and what not?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
In Soviet Russia, TIVO pokes you!
How does one look at the raw bites of a drive? And how can one dump the whole or a specified section of the memory?
Drives which can be simultaneously connected to multiple computers are expensive and certainly not IDE. If you really wanted to I'm sure it would be possible to create a device to do something like that with IDE but it would be a lot of work. Then you'd have to worry about caching and filesystem inconsistency issues because the kernel assumes that nothing else besides it is changing data on a hard drive. It's just not worth it.
I don't yet own a Tivo, and as for where I work I should. It would be great if we could figure out a way to hook a nexus - s card, no wait, this has USB, one of the USB FTA cards to this. The possibilittes are endles, and could be very useful.
~MrArmyAnt
http://www.modlife.net/
ModLife.Net - If it ain't modded, what's the point?
Seriously, the biggest feature I wanted from the SA TIVO was Folders for recorded shows - only on the SA models. I had two fairly slow but decent 120Gig drives in my unit and listing recorded shows took an eternity - it sucked. I had also used a method of modding the software that was no longer "supported" and in fact the developer had been driven out of the community. Asking for help from the guys who had driven the guy out was pretty useless. Well, one of the drives toasted somehow so...
Okay, starting from scratch I did some research and learned that the 4.x software that has folders and HMO works FINE on the DTIVOS! I also wanted a better drive so I popped for a 250+Gig drive with 16meg of cache. Problem - LBA48 kernel needed. Yup, you can get a kernel that does this too - even purchase a CD to do it from a vendor (and the 4.x image too!).
Bottom line - my TIVO runs the SA software, works fine, is FAST, has folders, has a standard interface to setup the supported USB NIC (okay, I upgraded to better drivers), doesn't encrypt my shows, and I can do extraction.
Honestly? I SUCK at Linux but there's enough info out there that mortals can do this if you're halfway technical. I did lose the shows I'd already recorded and I would advise not reusing the original drive but overall it's doable obviously if I can do it. I purchased my images and the tools to support the vendor, I asked questions when I needed to on DealDatabase, and in general just muddled my way through.
Now I just want to get TIVO2GO! on my DTIVO box, not yet sure how I'll do that - slices? Folks are reversing the TIVO2GO! protocol and the encryption on that has also been whacked so that might be a "significant other" friendly way of doing extraction... All in all I really like my DTIVO and it's got higher quality recordings than the SA boxes to boot .
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
You must be high. Can you turn my fiat into a LEO capable space vehicle for $57 using parts only from walmart? I mean, it seems impossible. And it's clearly not in the spec range for the car. But by your logic, holy shit, it must be able to be done! Fuck yeah!
Schwartzwald!
I'm in Europe (not the UK) where we can't get TiVo..Grrrr
2B || !2B