Blowing TiVo's Lid

An anonymous reader writes "Taking things apart is just plain fun, but there's also a lot to learn about how to build a foolproof Linux-based appliance. Break out your Torx drivers and take a closer look at TiVo's inner Linux workings. Examining the TiVo system reveals how one company made the transition from desktop operating system to embedded system."

Comments

Something useful?

[dledeaux]

This article is a birds eye view of TiVo. It barely scratches the surface of the inner workings of the unit. He touches on things that people have known about for years.

What I would love to see is someone totally hack a TiVo, and come up with their own distro that is capable of running MythTV.

Yes, it may seem a little redundant, but with the future of TiVo up in the air, a lot of customers may have nothing but useless doorstops one day and having an alternate TiVo distro would be a great way to save them and keep them running. After all, why dedicate a PC to the task when you can have an embedded unit doing what it was designed to do.

For people who don't watch low-def TV

[callipygian-showsyst]

you can see the inside of a HD TiVo.