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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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"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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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!
To look at the raw bytes on the drive, just fire up a hex editor and aim it at /dev/hdx. I assume that's what you meant, since looking at the raw bits isn't really all that useful.
Do dump specific sections of the disk to a file, just use dd with the bs, seek, and count args.
I've never been silly enough to try it under windows.
I'm pretty sure there are Windows hex editors that will read the entire disk. If I'm not mistaken, HackMan has that ability.
As for dumping specific sections of the disk, I'm not sure if dd under Cygwin can access the raw disk or not. I've honestly never tried. Hackman probably has the ability to dump subsections of the displayed file to a separate file, though I'm not sure about that.
In short, it's probably "possible" under Windows, but I don't see much reason to try it.
You're going to need a Linux system in order to get anything useful done to the TiVo anyway, may as well bite the bullet and learn it.
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.
SHIT!!!!! I forgot this part!!!
DON'T BOOT INTO WINXP WITH YOUR TIVO DRIVE ATTACHED TO THE COMPUTER!!!!!!
DON'T DO IT!!!!
XP will write its "DiskID" or whatever they call it to the boot sector and it won't work in your TiVo anymore.
Shit, I got sidetracked thinking of tools that would do the job that this "minor issue" completely slipped my mind. Long day, couple of beers, you know... Damnit! It's times like this that I really wish it was possible to go back and edit posts on this site.
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?
"DON'T BOOT INTO WINXP"
Enough said!
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
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
And sometimes yelling is appropriate.
I had just made a post listing some ideas on how to repeat what the original author did using WinXP. As soon as I hit "submit", it occured to me that doing so is a really, really bad idea.
Given that I had just (possibly) nudged somebody into trying it out, I wanted to make sure that my followup post got noticed by anyone who read the parent.
Believe me, I don't make a habit of posting in all caps, but when you're limited to text and need an attention getter, the choices are limited.
No, you are arguing that the converse is necessarily false. A logical fallacy. No wonder you're not a hacker, but just a poser. By your logic, since this TiVo hack isn't in the specs, it is just a figment of our imagination. Now, if you had some authority in IDE, you might be persuasive in claiming "it can't be done", especially if you could back that up with examples of experts who have failed. Instead, you're just an Anonymous loudmouth Coward who knows nothing.
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The stuff about "lameness filter" wasn't directed at you. I just pasted it in there as filler after the filter blocked my post. I agree that your message was worth shouting.
Ahh..
Strange that the lameness filter didn't touch my post, actually.
Experts only haven't failed because they have no rational reason to even try. Certainly one could create a 40-pole, double-throw switch to do it, but that's obvious. You cannot, however, run three bi-directional TTL systems on the same bus, as any high bit would be monkey wrenched by the inactive controller resting at ground pulling it low. You'd need a way to synchronize the two controllers, and at that point you no longer have two controllers, you have one. Doubtless it could be done with a dedicated piece of IDE emulation hardware, but that's hardly a "hack"...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The reason to hack is to hack. For crying out loud, What Kind of Man Reads Slashdot?
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Well then get off your ass and hack it together, for fuck's sake!
It's YOUR itch. YOU scratch it!
I haven't asked anyone to do anything for me, other than share IDE hacking knowledge. For which I got slammed by a bunch of know-it-alls, who just don't know much about IDE. You act as if I demanded that you, or anyone else, hack it for me. Even if I did ask for something like that, I haven't acted like I'm entitled to it.
What the hell is wrong with you? You don't ask for things you like, from people who might give it to you, at no cost to them? You don't brainstorm with hackers, by posing questions to which you don't know the answer? No wonder you spend so much time watching TV.
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There has been plenty of knowledge shared with you. Two main points come to mind:
1) While your idea is probably technically possible, it's simply not worth pursuing because of....
2) There doesn't seem to be a practical application. (Especially in regards to hacking a TiVo, where simply installing nfsd would be a far more "elegant" hack)
You'd probably get a better response if you could actually present a practical application for what your proposing. Instead, you simply dismiss anyone who doesn't see value in it as a "poser".
So. This device that you're proposing, what exactly would it be used for?
It would be used for accessing the TiVo video, if the TiVo software couldn't be modified to do that. But since you have corrected the author of the article we're discussing, pointing out that such a SW hack is easy, I have accepted that. So I have not continued to ask for the IDE hack.
That doesn't mean that I accept that the IDE hack is "impossible", as so many in this thread have screamed at me. I find the entire antihacker attitude in this thread distasteful. I dismiss people who post in a device hacking discussion, who dismiss IDE hacking purely out of their own ignorance, posers. Not, as you now claim, because they "don't see the value in it", but because they claim it's impossible, only because they don't know how. That's not how hackers operate.
So, after being attacked for merely asking a simple question with a difficult answer, after my accurate descriptions of "poser" have been twisted to represent something I did not say, I've had enough. I know what hacking is. And I have little to learn from you, or the others shouting their ignorance in this thread. Except maybe someday if I want to install NFS on a TiVo. Which is a tiny, narrow scope that I don't expect will draw me back in again soon. Especially if this is the kind of fun I can have in the "TiVo hacker" community: none at all.
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OK, I see where we got off on the wrong foot.
You were taking TFA at face value, while I didn't. The reason I didn't take it at face value is because I have actually done the things that you were assuming (based on TFA) to be impossible.
For the record, I wasn't dismissing IDE hacking out of ignorance. I was dismissing it out of the knowledge that the problem you were trying to solve had already been solved in a much simpler manner.
If you are not experianced with Linux, and don't want to installit on your harddrive, just pop in a Knoppix CD/DVD and boot.
http://www.knoppix.org/
The reason to hack is to achieve a goal. Two IDE controllers on one drive simultaneously is akin to trying to get water to come out of your electrical wiring. It can't be done without fundamentally altering some aspect of the original goal. The more general goal of accessing the contents of tivo-attached drive is certainly possible, but clearly suggests a different approach.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.