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Reusing Old TiVo Hardware?
buss_error writes "I have old TiVo hardware that I'd like to reuse — however, I find in searching that the most frequent reply is: 'Don't cheat TiVo!' I don't want to cheat TiVo — in fact, I'd like to nuke the drive with a completely open-source distro with no TiVo drivers at all. Some uses I think would be interesting: recording video for security cameras or a drive cam; a unit for weather reporting; fax/telephone; a power monitor for the home; or other home automation. I would prefer a completely TiVo-free install — this is because I have major issues with TiVo and don't want the slightest taint of their intellectual property. But, since I paid for the hardware, I'd like to wring some use out of it rather than simply putting it in the landfill."
I don't know. Most TiVos only have a few ports. I think the biggest is ethernet, but that's probably too small for most people.
Wow. I tried it, and the best answer I found was "don't bother". I figured that since the thing runs Linux, it'd be easy enough to repurpose. Boy was I wrong. I'd like to say that I enjoyed messing with it anyway, but the truth is, it was just a pain. All of the important drivers are wrapped up in a huge binary blob, and unusable without the TiVO software. A TiVO is worthless as pretty much anything but a TiVO, unfortunately. Maybe you're a lot smarter than me (a quite distinct possibility), but I didn't get anywhere. If you decide to go ahead anyway, I wish you luck, and a lot more success than I had.
Isn't TiVO-ization one of the main reasons why the GPL was updated to v3?
The reason you are being rebuked every time you try to do this is because it's exactly the same sort of thing that the crackers use. Even if your use is legitimate, you won't find anybody willing to give you much help unless you go and hang around with the cracker crowd, which may not be the sort of associations you really want to make. What you're asking for shouldn't be impossible, but it won't be easy either. Getting a basic kernel running may not be too bad since Tivo released their kernel modifications back to the community, but using the hardware on the system probably won't be the easiest thing unless you're really lucky and there is already a driver for it.
I read the internet for the articles.
Everyone knows that you can't do anything with a tivo. It may be using open-source software, but the hardware checks the software's checksum, and if it doesn't match, it simply doesn't run the software. If you remember, this is a major reason (if not the only reason) why Richard Stallman got all upset and created GPL v3.
A Tivo without service doesn't just up and die. Rather it loses its guide data but can still be programmed like an old VCR. Having it record from a security cam should be super easy to do, just program 24 different one hour recordings on whatever port the camera is on and let it go. The Tivo will even manage its disk space and everything, removing the oldest recordings as the disk fills up and replacing them with new ones.
I read the internet for the articles.
*MIPS Debian
http://www.debian.org/ports/mipsel/
* An older thread on video sharing hacking with TIVO boxes
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25139
* Knoppix MythTV
http://www.mysettopbox.tv/
Life is irony, and nothing ever goes as planned.
"and don't want the slightest taint of their intellectual property"
The software is not the only intellectual property. To get about from the evil IP you would have to sell the box on ebay/craigslist/whatever and buy something else instead.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This is an old site that hasn't been updated in years. I used it a while back when hacking iOpeners was still popular (those were the days!). He sells some equipment for hard disk upgrades and there's some hacking info, specs, schematics, etc. in the forums. www.linux-hacker.net
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
A lot like any old computer hardware you can prop open a shed door for airflow or hands free operation while you use both hands to carry in more obsolete crap.
Upon a bit of reflection, once you have collected enough obsolete crap, you could use some brick mortar and obsolete computers to build a new obsolete materials shed. This should free up your shop to refurbish obsolete crap that you keep planning on, but don't have the room on your bench with which to diddle.
If you load these old machines with old OpenMosix enabled kernels and ethernet you can crunch numbers and have a heated shop. The only drawback to this, besides blacking out your neighborhood and sending your electric meter dials spinning like a centerfuge is the need to then build another obsolete materials shed.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Re-program it, and send it back to earth to seek out the maker.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
Uhm.....NOT a hardhack. A hardhack involves hardware modification to the hardware at a nontrivial level. How is this then a hardhack?
'nuff said.
That sounds as useful as "don't snitch."
Give me your old TiVo.
Sorry, what you're asking for is too easy to abuse
Genuine question (I'm not being rhetorical): do you consider using hardware you own for personal, constructive purposes ever to be "abuse"?
Sure there is intellectual Property on the hardware. Just has every AMD cpu based system that you buy contains AMD ip, but that is not a reason to stop one from using it for something other than the original designer intended. He bought the hardware, he is entitled to use it for whatever he wants, and is in no way required to go to that huge on-line fencing operation to get rid of it.
Perhaps just the opposite attitude would be more appropriate. Since Tivo basically cheated the intent of the GPL by taking their software and building a system that avoided giving back to the community, even to the point of deliberately making their hardware difficult to re-purpose after it reaches its normal end of life, I think the smart thing for an on-line community rich in open source tradition would be to change its slogan from "Don't cheat Tivo" to "They cheated us, go ahead and cheat Tivo if you can keep it legal".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If your Tivo has lifetime service then the best use of it is to sell it (working or not) on eBay and recoup your lifetime service cost.
Otherwise, you're looking at a doorstop. The Tivo (series 1 and 2) are woefully underpowered by today's standards. You're better off buying any reasonably expandable PC made in the past 4 years, add on MythTV and some video capture cards with hardware acceleration.
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=46
Scanning Ebay's completed auctions, it looks like that's where my Tivo1 with lifetime subscription is going. It's far too much hassle to try finding some use for it, when I can just pocket $50-100. Now, where did I put that thing??
Sell it and be done with it.
Okay, I admit right off that I am unfamiliar with TiVo aside from what I've heard mentioned on TV. I don't have a tivo, I don't plan on getting a tivo, I've never actually looked into it.
However, I was under the strong impression that TiVo was a DVR. How can one "crack" or "rip off" a DVR? What does a TiVo provide which would be something that, if one were able to re-flash a TiVo, "crackers" would be able to use to some disadvantage to TiVo? Is TiVo cracking something which is actually done? What benefits does it have? What makes it "bad" as opposed to just "bad for the company that wants you to keep using its software"?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I'd give ya the +1 myself but, I'm probably gonna post more in this thread :)
Genuine question (I'm not being rhetorical): do you consider using hardware you own for personal, constructive purposes ever to be "abuse"?
The abuse is in the percieved theft of service.
If you're using a TiVo, as a TiVo, without paying TiVo, you're 'stealing'.
This is a self-regulating phenomenon that popped up in the TiVo community.
Much the same way anime fan-subbers will stop distributing online when it comes out on DVD for their language.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Typically it means buying the hardware at a discount and then modifying the software to use some sort of alternative TV Guide feed, instead of the TiVo paid subscription service.
You can argue the merits for or againt, but most Tivo fans with the necessary hardware and software experience want the TiVo company to succeed and will staunchly refuse to help you.
Don't "cheat" TIVO my arse. Aparently the defintion of cheat has become using something you own to do something you want to do. If they have a business model that subsides the hardware, why is that anyone else's problem?
Seriously, why do people buy a locked down piece of hardware, then wonder why they can't do anything that hasn't specifically been authorised with it? Your solution starts with not buying the damn product in the first place!!!
Stallman may be a crazy loon that I don't want representing me, but in this particular case he's absolutely right. You shouldn't be allowed to create an abomination like TIVO with open source.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
If I use my genuine, personal hardware to do something illegal with a legal program, I am using the hardware in an illegal/abusive way. I'm not equating legality and use/abuse, but it's not hard to see how the freedom to use any given device legally often opens abusive or illegal options.
It's about the guide data. Tivo would sell a DVR for $199 but charge $5 a month so you could dial into their server monthly to download the guide (and some value added TVGuide stuff.) They also sold identical hardware for $350 that had a lifetime subscription. You could simply alter a few bits on the non-lifetime DVR and re-sale it for a profit as having a lifetime sub. (past tense, since I have no idea what tivo has done in the last 2 years) TIVO did deserve the hack though. They sold lifetime subscriptions for $150. Even on hardware with a service plan, the hardware failed (even under warranty) they would replace the hardware and refuse to update to lifetime subscription unless you paid another $150. This pissed off a programmer so much he went on a mission to avoid paying twice, succeded and shared it with all.
Re: "cracking" / "ripping off" -- Typically it means buying the hardware at a discount and then modifying the software to use some sort of alternative TV Guide feed, instead of the TiVo paid subscription service.
At least some TiVos (I have one; it's actually a Toshiba/TiVo joint-branded thing, also a DVD player, which I bought 4 or so years ago) were sold w/ lifetime service (lifetime of the device, not the purchaser ;)), rather than subscription.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I think maybe you didn't get what he was asking.
He isn't asking to "cheat Tivo" or use their service with the box when he is done......He's simply wanting to repurpose the hardware - the attitude that there is something wrong with this seems very out of place around here.
I could understand if he said he was trying to bypass paying for Tivo, or was somehow going to try to take advantage of the service in some way that isn't kosher; but no, that's not the deal - he just doesn't want to throw away what amounts to a computer...
I'm fairly interested in this as I have 2 series 2 tivos just laying around, they work fine and I would feel very wasteful just throwing them away......
- I upgraded to the series 3 (and I like it, and have been happy with the company as well as after I purchased a new HDTV I called them and told that I had owned 2 series 2's and wasn't about to pay $300 or more for an HD box, the deal they gave me was probably one of the best retention offers I've ever received from a company - not only did I get an HDbox for next to nothing, I got several months free and monthly fee reduction of over 40% for life)...
So I wouldn't ever advocate screwing them - but using perfectly good hardware for your own purposes (when it doesn't rip anyone off) rather than trashing it is something everyone should support - it's the sort of thinking I feel like a lot more people need to get with given the rampant consumerism and it's impact of the world and that people in it....
Figure out if there's a JTAG or serial header you can use on the MB and go from there. It's pretty much the only way you would get anything meaningful done.
Also, the older Tivo's are probably the only ones that would be useful, since they can record analog sources. The digital ones are laced with DRM hardware that would probably make things hell.
but it's not the same as that at all, fan subs are copyright infringement. this is just a bunch of morons who so love corporatism that they cannot see the difference between not buying something and stealing from the seller.
The problem is that repurposing a tivo would require the exact same skills, tools and methods as cheating tivo by stealing their service. Short of personally knowing the requester, there isn't a real good way to distinguish the hacker (repurposing) from the cracker (stealing service).
so why not have discount hardware and subscription _agreement_ for some defined period of time ?
the only reasin against this that i can imagine is some law preventing such agreement clauses that disallow customer to cancel subscription but keep the device.
i don't own tivo and don't plan to get one (not had a tv at home since it broke 3 months ago), but applying such hardware limitations would surely make me less interested in one if i even was a target demographic.
Rich
I have one TiVo I got for $12, and another I got for free. Both series II, one is a dual tuner.
It turns out both of the models I have require a chip mod for you to be able to do anything at all. There's a guy that sells these, but he doesn't publish much information about them. Alternatively, he'll do if for you at (IIRC) $100 a pop. After that, you can start to put in your own mods, etc.
About the only widespread hacking information you'll find is on how to increase the disk sizes on your TiVo. As others have noted, TiVo supporters are fiercely in support of the company.
Probably my only options now are to reuse the HDs, DVD-R and perhaps the remote (my MythTV one's buttons have their labels wearing off). Plus, the TiVos are not HD, which means they are now perhaps of limited interest to me.
Ultimately, my MythTV machine is much more flexible, although HD/cable recording with firewire remains a joke. Getting an HD-PVR might my the best bet here to link up to it.
The only way you would be stealing (theft of service) is if you were feeding off Tivo's TV guide listing service without paying for it. If you can find a way to use a free listing service on a TiVo there is NO moral/ethical conflict.
Good-bye
I own two TiVo's, and If I could help you, I would. But both of mine work and so I haven't even cracked the case.
TiVo has zero to fear from Hackers I think.
so why not have discount hardware and subscription _agreement_ for some defined period of time ?
the only reasin against this that i can imagine is some law preventing such agreement clauses that disallow customer to cancel subscription but keep the device.
Er, this is how cell phones work in the US. You get a phone at deep discounts or even free and sign a multi-year contract. You cancel early you pay through the nose in 'cancellation fees' and the phone is yours to keep. Or you complete the contract and the phone is yours to keep. Nothing illegal about this sort of arrangement.
However, people don't generally LIKE these contracts and we should hardly cry foul when a company gives you discount hardware without the lock-in, and tries to rely on things like 'good customer service' and 'quality product' to keep its customers.
The abuse is in the percieved theft of service.
If you're using a TiVo, as a TiVo, without paying TiVo, you're 'stealing'.
This is a self-regulating phenomenon that popped up in the TiVo community.
I totally don't get it, unless people are talking about the guide data (which of course makes sense). I bought my TiVo when they first came out -- it was $400 and it belongs to ME. I didn't have to promise to buy their service to get the box at that price, and I never did -- I already know what channels all my shows are on, so I just use it as a plain DVR and program it by hand. How am I a criminal? Now I just wish the damn thing knew about the new daylight savings rules, or at least had a way to set the clock short of pulling out the hard drive and adding a command to the startup script (the RS232 port has never worked). Plus it would be nice to make it stop giving an error screen every time I go to the main menu, badgering me to buy the service. Why is it considered sacrilege to ask how to deal with that, on an expensive box that I already paid for?
I guess you've never met Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda.
Isn't it interesting that Tivo has such a loyal crowd! I own three Tivos and I pay for service for two of them (the third is not connected). I wouldn't consider hacking my Tivo to avoid paying. Tivo has developed such a loyal following by being user friendly to it's users and trying to give them what they want that you are you can get kicked off and banned from forums for discussing it. :)
:)
Sounds like the RIAA should hire Tivo to do it's PR work.
Way to go Tivo. I love my Tivos. Can't wait until next year. I'm getting a HD Tivo!
Well, I did say most.
If you're using a TiVo, as a TiVo, without paying TiVo, you're 'stealing'.
:CueCat for a preemptive rebuttal to any arguments to the contrary.
Absolutely, positively false.
I personally own a Toshiba-branded TiVo series 2 box, which came with free lifetime basic service (which essentially means the channel guide and nothing else, but that works for me just fine).
I have never paid a dime directly to TiVo (though no doubt Toshiba paid some form of licensing fee), and use one of their their products 100% legitimately. I do note, however, that they appear to no longer offer their "basic" service, nor any "lifetime" terms - Their loss, because I will never buy another box from them (and really, I would upgrade at this point, what with no digital or HD support in my box; but as TiVo clearly doesn't want to sell to me, I will probably end up screwing around with Myth again in a year or two instead, and have a lot more motivation this time to make it work as I want).
That said, if you remove the channel guide from that (and yeah, I know about the "advanced" features like remoting and such, but I've never found myself "needing" to watch a recorded show anywhere but home), what does TiVo really sell? If you turn their box into a time-based (rather than content-based via the channel guide) digital VCR, you've "stolen" absolutely nothing. They sold you hardware, you used it in a way they might not like but don't really have any right to complain about (again, key point, without using any of the features of their subscription). See
Does it currently work, and have a lifetime program guide subscription? If so then sell it and use the money to buy something more general-purpose. If it doesn't have a lifetime subscription, I'd just junk it and find something else. The hardware is a bit specialized to it's task, and if it's a Series 2 then it's processor is a bit underpowered by today's standards. For cheap you could put together a micro-ATX box with an Atom processor based motherboard in it and not have to worry about proprietary hardware.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I bet you conflate backing up legally acquired movies and games for personal use only with piracy, right?
FC Closer
in that cultists support an anti-consumer DRM'd product to their own detriment.
Education is the only answer to people who think defending corporate rights over their own is a good idea.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
What about the iPhone jailbreaking community? Or the AppleTV hacking community? Or even the Hackintosh community? TiVo has nothing like these, and instead, any sort of hacking is extremely underground and frowned upon by most users. If you jailbreak your iPhone, other iPhone users generally have no problem with it.
unless you go and hang around with the cracker crowd, which may not be the sort of associations you really want to make
Who let this guy in here!!
I ran into this exact same mentality when I started looking into satellite TV. I wanted a solution that I could roll myself, with DVR and the whole bit. It turns out that there's a popular video standard called DVB-S that almost all international satellite providers broadcast in. The hardware is cheap, the video and audio are plain MPEG2. There are lots of DVB tuner cards that go right in your PC and many of them even have Linux drivers.
The first problem I ran into is that whenever I went asking for information in satellite forums, I got yelled at. A lot. It turns out that there's a subculture of individuals in the satellite scene who trade information on cracking the encryption for Dish Network and some Canadian provider. Apparently these two networks use (or used to use?) standard DVB hardware and bolt some kind of weak encryption on top. Out of curiosity, I checked into this a little but and found that they were a pretty hypocritical group: they create tools and hardware to crack Dish Network's encryption so that they can watch premium TV for free, but have a huge problem with other people sharing the same information or cloning their work. One of the most popular forums actually charged a subscription fee for firmware updates to grey-market boxes. (The firmware updates contained "fixes" whenever Dish would change their encryption.)
The TL;DR summary: satellite crackers are about as far away from the actual hacker scene as you can get.
The second problem I ran into is that there's little genuinely free DVB content in the American hemisphere. Except for home shopping and religious channels, the NASA channel is about it. On the other side of the world, you have a lot more options. Once I found this out, I kinda lost interest in the whole thing.
They do still offer a lifetime service. I believe it costs $400.
You are quite correct. I bought 2 Tivo's about 3 years ago when there was a rumor of the end of lifetime service. They keep trying to sell me a new HD box, and I'd like to buy, but they either don't offer transfer of my lifetime, or they want another $300 or so.
So as much as we like the Tivo, it's not cost effective over Verizon's DVR.
I would like to turn them into time-based recorders, but the rational thing to do is sell these boxes to someone for $300 each (the subscription can be transferred).
It's crazy how the Tivo crowd thinks that unless you're paying Tivo a monthly fee that somehow you're not doing the right thing.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
No, I don't, I believe that falls under acceptable use. I don't neccessarily agree with the "Don't hack your Tivo" attitude either. I'm just trying to bring some clarification as to why the "don't steal from Tivo" folks try to also clamp down on the "repurpose my Tivo" folks.
I run into this a lot in quite a variety of circumstances. If you attempt to do anything outside of the norm, use anything for any non-standard purpose, you are assumed to be breaking the rules are to be corrected.
Most people are not concerned with what things can do. They are concerned with what they are told they do. What they are told it does is a rule. People that attempt to circumvent that rule are out of line. (...and, probably up to no good.) And, since someone is asking about it, are not asking if it is possible, or how, but rather, if they should break the rule. And, they should not.
So, the would be preachers preach the rule to the heathens, rather than actually answering the damn question. It is not like they would know anyway: They do not care if such things are possible; so, they have no interest in actually learning nor remembering if they even are, much less how.
However, people don't generally LIKE these contracts and we should hardly cry foul when a company gives you discount hardware without the lock-in, and tries to rely on things like 'good customer service' and 'quality product' to keep its customers.
What's Popcorn Hour have to do with this? I thought we were discussing TiVo?
If you're using a TiVo, as a TiVo, without paying TiVo, you're 'stealing'.
No, you're not. If you paid $ for a piece of hardware, that's your hardware. Perhaps you mean attempting to access TiVo's schedule/listing service with an unofficial client, or otherwise outside the terms of its contract. Alternate, platform-neutral and OSS-friendly listings services do exist, try http://www.schedulesdirect.org/ .
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
If you can't get the serial port working on a series 1, you probably didn't follow the instructions. Once you are in, the Tivo recording/scheduling stuff can be ignored, but you need the userland Tivo binary (I think it's called "mother") running to manage the stored files. You can make the hardware sing and dance by "echoing" hex values to various s2c bus addresses. I experimented with this years ago and was able to initiate recordings, switch the video input between the tuner, component, and s-video ports, switch the audio between the tuner and the line inputs, etc. I probably should dig up all those old notes since I have 4 series 1 boxes that are now mostly obsolete for analog TV.
Originally, you needed to set up the box for satellite or cable-with-a-box so the line inputs (channel 0) were used. That still works fine if you don't want to get inside and mess around on the s2c bus. You can then just schedule a round-the-clock series of recordings on channel 0 and plug in a security cam.
IIRC (it's been a decade or so) the series 1 has a 53mhz PowerPC CPU, 16 megs of DRAM, a proprietary GAL chip that handles the hardware and emulates an IDE controller, and a Sony video encoder chip. The Series 1 is actually pretty much just the original Sony set-top box reference platform with an added Tivo identity chip so they can lock the membership to that hardware. To do a complete rewrite without any Tivo software, you'd need to dig up the original developer's kit and use those drivers. I guess you could write your own drivers from the technical reference if you were so inclined.
Personally, I think it's a lot easier to just use any old x86 box and a USB or ethernet cam.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
The problem is that repurposing a tivo would require the exact same skills, tools and methods as cheating tivo by stealing their service.
Then maybe TIVO shouldn't design their hardware so you have to hack it to use it in perfectly legitimate ways.
Even on hardware with a service plan, the hardware failed (even under warranty) they would replace the hardware and refuse to update to lifetime subscription unless you paid another $150. This pissed off a programmer so much he went on a mission to avoid paying twice, succeded and shared it with all.
Sounds like grounds for a nice, fat lawsuit as well.
If I use my genuine, personal hardware to do something illegal with a legal program, I am using the hardware in an illegal/abusive way.
What illegal action? He's not downloading child porn, distributing copies of software, or hacking government databases, so your point doesn't seem relevant.
I have a Series 1 DirecTiVo and it's gathering dust in a box ever since I tried to sell it off on eBay early this year and had TiVo shutdown two of my eBay auctions on me, even after I complied and tried to sell it without the access card. Everything in the TiVo is legit and the access card is original. The only upgrades that I made to the box was to install a network card in it so that I could get guide data downloads without a phone line that I no longer have in the house. I canceled my DirecTV with TiVo service last year because of this and also because I got tired of TV.
eBay and their Vero system is full of crap about checking authenticity. They complained about selling the box with their Intelectual Property and sent me a nasty e-mail about the access card. So I re-listed it again without the access card and still got shutdown with a warning that a third violation will close my eBay account. My next step was going to be to file a federal lawsuit against eBay and TiVo for preventing me from re-selling my own bought property under the right of first sale but I got busy around the house and never filled out the paperwork.
Forget the TiVo, forget eBay Vero, they suck.
Buy yourself a $70 USD Intel Atom 330 motherboard with Dual-Core 1.6 GHz x86 compatible processors and 1Gbig NIC with 2-SATA, 1-PATA, and 1-DDR2 DRAM slot and go crazy with it. I did just the thing with Elastix PBX. The cost savings in power and frustration will pay for any money you save with that obsolete 8-year TiVo!
While it will mean forking out more money, you could spend $300 and get a shuttle or somthing like it off of newegg or some other store and not worry about the TiVo, best part is once you buy it an load mythTV on it, all you have to do is play for your TV service. You could later make a file server with 10 TB of storage and stuff it in a closet or basement or something later, so you can store more shows.
O.o
Even on hardware with a service plan, the hardware failed (even under warranty) they would replace the hardware and refuse to update to lifetime subscription unless you paid another $150..
Sounds like grounds for a nice, fat lawsuit as well.
Except that the "Lifetime contract was for the lifetime of the hardware, not the lifetime of the person who bought the box. It was in the in the language of the contract he signed.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
>>>If you're using a TiVo, as a TiVo, without paying TiVo, you're 'stealing'.
This is a self-regulating phenomenon that popped up in the TiVo community.
Did I just step into the novel called 1984? Jeez. "If you are suspected of doing something illegal your neighbors, or even your own children, will report you. The government will investigate."
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
tivoza and oztivo
Both sites will help you understand what is involved in doing what you ask.
Nuff said.
Close thread
The idea that the 'channel guide' is some valuable thing is stupid anyway.
We need to get away from the entire model of having third parties provide guides.
Channels should provide their programming guide. Each channel should, somewhere, have that information in a standard format.
And a list of the links to those guides should be collected on the cable and sat providers websites, in some format computers and boxes can important them.(And I'm sure someone would provide broadcast lists for major metropolitan areas.)
Someone makes a damn standard XML format, and the channels would just dump their data straight into it. It's like 20 fucking hours of programming, one time, to publish their damn schedule, and from them on it just works.
The idea that anyone should ever pay for that data shows how retarded the media companies are in this country. You should want to tell us what's on your channel, you morons, so we can watch it. Because you are too flat-out bone stupid to do that, we have to pay other people to do it for us.
Can you imagine if other places worked this way? What if each bus had its own schedule that they didn't bother to make public, so we had 'bus guide' companies that would run around peacing the entire system together and changing us whenever it changed?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Channels should provide their programming guide. Each channel should, somewhere, have that information in a standard format.
In the US, they generally do, now that digital TV is the standard.
The big problem is that the box basically needs two tuners if you want to update guide data while watching a channel, since it has to "tune" to the other channels (however briefly) to get the latest data.
I am not aware of that digital TV provides future programming information.
Providing what is currently on the channel is all well and good for TV stations, but they really need a place to download upcoming stuff.
Heck, they could encode the URL of the file in the channel itself so that devices could pick it up automatically, during the original auto-tune. Then cable companies don't have to worry about collecting it.
Even if the upcoming shows are on the channel, unless it covers a week in advance or something, it's not that useful. You shouldn't have to 'update guide data while watching a channel', because the box should have an entire week in advance always.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
So what? We train people in all sorts of skills that could be abused.
Locksmith for one.
Knowledge is not the culprit.
The digital TV standard allows for providing up to 16 days of guide data. However, the FCC only mandates that a station provide 12 hours of guide data, and many stations only provide the minimum. In many cases the station is just going with the default settings and can be convinced to change them; however, the most guide data I've seen, at least in the Denver area, is 7 days of guide data.
I am amazed at the timidity, childishness and ignorance of some posters on the issue of re-use of a piece of hardware someone paid good money for. There is no "abuse" of TIVO involved, as far as the intent of the original poster is concerned. The word "abuse" is over-used and reflects a politically-correct embracing of the notion of victim-hood that makes me cringe. Someone even went as far as to assert that the phone companies who offer discounted phones as a hook to con suckers into paying grossly exhorbitant phone charges for years at a time become innocent victims when a purchaser ends the subscription contract and keeps the phone to do with as they like. How silly. Grow up!
Traditionally DVB streams are of the encrypted variety around Northern America. While there is a steady transition to digital feeds for the cost savings there is still a very healthy analogue infrastructure.
Many syndicated shows are delivered via this infrastructure in the form of "wild feeds." This changes seasonally and it's always fun to manage when there is a wealth of syndicated content to acquire.
More recently there has been the push to digital content distribution systems. Pathfire being the predominate provider that I can remember. This methodology still uses satellite communications, but is actually performed using terrestrial IP + multi-cast. (Still DVB receivers/modems in the end).
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I have never paid a dime directly to TiVo (though no doubt Toshiba paid some form of licensing fee), and use one of their their products 100% legitimately. I do note, however, that they appear to no longer offer their "basic" service, nor any "lifetime" terms...
I can tell you haven't looked at Tivo's web site in around two years, as they've been (and still are) offering "lifetime" service since one year after they introduced the very first Series 3.
Originally they reintroduced lifetime service only for pre-release Series 3 buyers who were willing to transfer their earlier lifetime service to the new unit. Then they continued the same offer beyond the release date. Then they expanded it to allow any existing subscribers to upgrade. Then new lifetime subscriptions were available to any subscribers, plus any "friends and family" by referral from any Tivo subscriber. Then they offered it to anyone. And that was about two years ago.
They still offer lifetime subscriptions today. Not that you'd know, you haven't checked within the last two years...
Maybe you need to learn more about the various useful aspects of this tool called 'knife', 'air', 'keyboard', 'gun', 'towel'. All can be used for good and ban purposes. Legal and illegal.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how could anyone even use older TiVo hardware for its intended purpose? If the only signals they understand is standard NTSC, those are now obsolete, as NTSC has been shut off and all stations are now ATSC.
So? The SSH program can be used to hack into other people's servers.
Does that mean when anyone asks how to use SSH to get into their server, we should tell them "Don't try to hack into servers", and refuse to assist?
Seriously, why do people buy a locked down piece of hardware, then wonder why they can't do anything that hasn't specifically been authorised with it?
Because they're hackers. Hacking doesn't make any practical or economic sense. There's always some off-the-shelf solution that's less hassle and probably less money.
Electronic hardware depreciates 50% per year. So it's not very long before all its market value is gone. Does that make old C64s useless? Not to the hackers who are still playing with them 15 years after they were discontinued.
Now about your headline. "Don't buy TIVO, or any other locked down device". You're making an apples and oranges argument here. Yeah, it's stupid to buy a Tivo to repurpose it for some other use. But here's a flash: pretty much all Tivos are bought by people who plan to use them the way they're intended. The Ask Slashdot wasn't submitted by somebody who went to a store and bought a brand new Tivo — he's somebody who has an old one he doesn't want to throw away.
I work for a TV station.
See I thought that too. But it has taken me 2 weeks to pull data directly from our software package into routines that I can use. I am currently working on making an RSS feed.
it is easy
in Australia there is a free to air epg that most digital recivers can pick up and display easily
free, open, more accurate than newspaper listings
easy!
The reason you are being rebuked every time you try to do this is because it's exactly the same sort of thing that the crackers use.
Who are these "the crackers"? Are they related to "the terrorists"?
AccountKiller
Exactly. TiVo is so obsessed with being a subscription-model company that they will do ANYTHING to the hardware to keep the subscription model going.
Two examples:
The HD box has no general-purpose inputs. That's right. It's a DVR that can't actually record anything. You either use the RF input or you get a CableCard. This is because they don't have to have the DVD companies screaming at them that users are copying movies etc. onto their hard drives.
Well, this pissed me off so much that I avoided upgrading to an HD box. So you know what TiVo did? They gave me the HD box for free.
All this, just so they can get my $14/month.
There are places in this world where tivo will not sell their services and there are work arounds.
These sites will not help you steal as the software will not work here in the US.
But they will give you information about what you can do with the unit.
http://www.oztivo.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome
And
http://tivoza.nanfo.com/wiki/index.php/TivoZA
xmltv works fine here in europe (free guide).
The idea is it's a public domain software that queries web sites automatically.
Europe, 10 points!!!
but there is a lockin, just a different one.
now, if both are so bad, maybe companies should offer less subsidised hardware... that might make people actually research their options and require some quality hardware.
Rich
Heh, so do I - Not fun, is it? I do feed encoding, and every dang morning, I have to check the Tivo/replays
each digital channel /does/ have the next 8 or so hours worth of shows encoded into its meta data per ditial standerdy
From Tivo's point of view they expect you pay for on-going services after you bought the box. No subscribing to their revenue stream is "abuse".
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That is precisely why replacing the boot PROM is illegal. Remember, the DMCA only talks about
circumventing technological measures (eg here), it doesn't require actually accessing the copyrighted work itself afterwards.
By replacing the PROM, you circumvent a technological measure that controls access to the TiVo code, regardless of your motives.
Not true. The boot PROM checksum dance does NOTHING to protect the TiVo code; it is intended to prevent anything EXCEPT the TiVo code from running. Bypass the checksum dance, and your TiVo will run the TiVo code exactly as before; thus, there's no "protection of a copyrighted work" being circumvented here. All that changes is that the (BTW, uncopyrightable) hardware will now run YOUR operating system of choice. Before tou argue that the checksum thingy protects the copyright on THAT code, let me point out that the "protection measure" is supposed to protect a specific copyrighted work, and cannot mean categorically locking out an entire class of works (i.e., everything EXCEPT code from a specific vendor). There's even a specific exception for compatibility, which this modification would fit into.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
TIVO can call it anything they want. They still can't make you buy their service just because you own their hardware.
Which is an argument for doing exactly what I said, not the opposite. ;)
For all I know, it is immensely complicated to get a listing of TV shows. But that's all the more reason for the TV stations to do it once, and publish it in some standard format (An RSS feed with some custom fields is probably the best bet right now.), instead of having five third parties come in, do it themselves, and sell the results and attempt to keep copyright over the listings.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Eight hours is not enough, and neither is requiring all devices that get that information to have a tuner. Perhaps someone wants to put it on a web page, and things like that.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
As someone who works creating software for set top boxes for a satellite company that uses the exact same chips as tivo's, I can tell you its going to be pretty damn hard to re purpose that box unless you have an insane amount of time on your hands. First of, at least for our boxes, we create one series of boxes that are unsecured and used in house for development, these dont check checksum values on bootup and have different bootloaders. The second set of boxes are for public consumption that do all the security checks and what not.
Second, even if tivo doesnt have these checks, you may be able to get a kernel going, as pretty much every set top runs linux including the tivo's, but without the proprietary drivers to interface with every piece of the broadcom processors inside, its pretty damn useless to use one. These arent generic processors but more in the vein of microcontrollers with many separate functions in blocks inside the processor and without the drivers they are fairly useless as you cant really use them. That is unless you want to illegally dig up the docs which you wont have since you arent a paying customer to broadcom. Either way its going to be hard to build your own working software running on there without all this, and even with all the docs it is an insane amount of work for one person to try.
Of course this is all based on the tivo's running broadcom chips, the older ones I would have no clue on.
It's the first useful post in this entire discussion.
The short story is, the Tivo-ized Linux is infected with checksum routine that will fail if you make any changes to the OS and binary driver blobs that aren't publicly available. The first person publicly cracking the checksum routine will probably get served DMCA-related litigation. (aka DVD-Jon)
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
They still offer lifetime subscriptions today. Not that you'd know, you haven't checked within the last two years...
Thank you for pointing that out. You have it correct, I do not check their website regularly. I have absolutely no loyalty to companies themselves, and tend to only search for "physical things I buy" on sites that directly sell those things, such as Amazon. And I base my original objection on the fact that TiVo's product listings on such sites, if they mention service at all, always say "TiVo service subscription required".
I do think I've looked within the past two years, but cannot argue that they currently offer exactly what you say they do. Of course, they also want $300 for it, or 50% more than what I paid for my current unit with lifetime service included. But yeah, they do offer it.
Mmmm - Self-regulating themselves into Serfdom to Tivo.
I gots to get me some of that . . ..
Actually, no - I was *this* close to saying "When I get my money in December, I'm gonna buy a DVR rather than build another one (I had one I built a few years ago)" but if this is the mess that happen when supposedly Linux based DVRs are updated, screw that, I'll build a new one thanks.
Cheaper in the log run anyway, and they just made it cheaper in the short run too - {G}.
Glad to have the new info though. Sounds like I saved a heap o' trouble.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
sounds like every other service in the world which requires relatively-specialized hardware... and none of those have this problem. /tomorrow.html to the end of a URL.
If TiVo just lets anyone anywhere dial in, send a "can I have TV listings?" request, and it responds to those requests with "ok, sure", they don't get to complain about people "stealing" their listings any more than a website can complain about someone adding
It's not stealing if the server says "you can have it" without you saying "I am bill gates, really"
And if you do need to say "I am bill gates, then the process involves more than flipping a bit.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Warranty replacement should still count as the lifetime of the device. I think that they are being rather cheap about it there. Say you had a lifetime transmission warranty but the transmission went out, well guess what it's lifetime is over and now it wont be replaced. Would you like to have that happen to you?
Technophile
They don't want you to record a show and then copy it off the box (say, to your PC, as an MPEG2 file, which can be burned to disc). Which explains the closed system.
It wasn't much of a change, but to make the change: You would completely dis-assemble the Tivo, take the hard disk out of the tivo and place it into your PC. Then you would boot a linux distro with a modified file-system for the tivo, that would modify the proper file. Remove and re-assemble into the TIVO. Generally one would strip the TIVO password so it could be accessed from a bash shell in the future (and turnd off the DRM used internal) to be able to download movies off of it at the same time (Also it was popular to install a larger drive as well.)
Apparently *your* morals.
(However, there may very well be a *legal* conflict.)
Series 1 Tivos can be used without a subscription(*) as a 'dumb' DVR, but that was clearly not what they intended. However, since the information/advertising at the very beginning was slightly ambiguous, they allow(**) series 1s to be used without a subscription. In fact, when they accidentally (or not, depending upon your tinfoil-hat-ness) broke it on an update years ago, they fixed it fairly quickly AFAIR.
(*) I originally intended to use a Tivo without a subscription way back when. Personally, using a Tivo without a subscription (except for the RARE "Tivo Basic" platforms) is WORSE than using a generic intentionally-subscription-less DVR. At least for multiple recordings. (I do one late night manual recording on my sole S1 that I still use.)
(**) Yeah, some people say you should be able to do whatever you want on the hardware you bought.. However, with series 2 and beyond, it's clearly designed to be used with the Tivo service.
IMHO, Tivo has been *more* accommodating of "hackers" than most companies, at least regarding upgrading hard drive size. (Though unfortunately, nowadays drives are coming out at the $100 range that are bigger than the max capacity current Tivos on a single drive... so you're wasting part of the drive.)
Serious questions about the home built DVR:
* Can you do multiple tuners on your home built DVR?
* How do you deal with encrypted channels? This does NOT just mean premium channels e.g. HBO, it means basically EVERYTHING beyond the 'broadcast' stations on cable, and the relatively few remaining analog channels on most systems -- if you're doing it via an 'IR blaster', then you're likely not able to do multiple tuners.
* How do you deal with SDV?
At least in the US, free, over the air ATSC broadcasting DOES include a (brief) guide. It is encoded in a standard, open manner, and the ability to read it is available to anyone who wants to bother. Cable?? That's another story...
People *are* copying movies onto their hard drives. They're using third party tools to do it.
You act like that's a negative. Of COURSE it can record things. It can record cable (analog or digital), or OTA (which is nowadays digital only except for a few areas that have waivers from the transfer to digital).
Personally, I use one of my Tivos just to record analog (I took advantage of a lifetime transfer offer), though I am starting to think I'll eventually get cablecards for it.
A Tivo is designed to record TV. Why would you want an RF in? It already has two tuners inside. The older Tivos had A/V in because they were using a "skanky hack* of controlling external cable boxes via an IR blaster. Current Tivos *REPLACE* the cable box (or not, if you only want analog or OTA stations).
No, they also "understand" analog cable. While analog cable is less available than it used to be, as one data point, I still get my broadcast channels and a few higher channels in analog (Discovery being the most important to me that pop to mind). Most have moved to being only available via digital.
Also, the old Tivos have A/V inputs. Even though I picked on the idea in another post, someone could theoretically send something in via composite in on an old Tivo and use it for something.
Yes. The number of tuners is a function of the capture card. You can have capture cards with multiple tuners, or multiple capture cards.
Cable box & IR Blaster. Multiple boxes if you want multiple tuners.
Yeah, that's a pretty hacky "solution". I can't imagine that people realistically deal with multiple cable boxes in one location with multiple IR blasters (and carefully shield/tent them so that only the right cable box is controlled by the right blaster).
I think there are cable-card capture cards availalble now or will be available.. but still, that seems much more of a pain than (and not as reliable as) just using a standalone DVR.
Are there lots of things I wish Tivos would do that they don't do? Yes, but for what they already do, compared with the competition, I think they're far ahead.
Nope! Cablecard slots have lovely DRM that must be licensed. So Cablecard will never be available as an option in MythTV.
We have this. It's one of the reasons we went thru this digital TV conversion. The fact that some devices don't scan and cache the data to show in a compact fashion is just a limitation of that make and model, as many devices do.
~Donald / Just RTFM
Even on hardware with a service plan, the hardware failed (even under warranty) they would replace the hardware and refuse to update to lifetime subscription unless you paid another $150. This pissed off a programmer so much he went on a mission to avoid paying twice, succeded and shared it with all.
It's called "screwing the secondary market" and "fucking anyone who won't knuckle under to their profit plan". It's the same shit Cisco pulled as the dotcom bubble popped. Companies bought high-end routers and other hardware for top dollar. When the company imploded after a couple of years of big, blowout parties and giving out Ferraris to top execs, the hardware was sold in bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar.
It was scooped up cheap and people went to Cisco to subscribe to updates. The Cisco fucks then insisted that a months-old router be brought in for a very pricey "re-certification". "Please leave one arm and the leg from the same side at the counter on your way out. Fuck 'right of first sale' -- we'll make that useless to you."
Same thing the copyright pricks are doing to restrict the sale of used CDs. Same thing that publishers tried to do to public libraries many years ago. And are still trying to do.
Posting anonymously because I don't feel like getting flamed by the Tivo cultists.
I've done this; the info is out there if you look hard enough. OZTivo is a great source; there's a TIVO service emulator that consists of a few perl CGI scripts that sit on Apache; I have it in a file called "tivo-service-emu-djb.zip" so look for that.
Also, look for "wktivoguide-3.5.tar.gz" (http://minnie.tuhs.org/Programs/Wktivoguide/index.html) as a means to convert listings in a certain format to TIVO "slices", which are binary listings data files.
I wrote a perl script to convert the download XML program data from XMLTV to the format that wktivoguide wants, then ran the wktivoguide script to convert those to TIVO slices and copy them into the appropriate directory to be served by the Tivo service emulator on Apache.
It took a bit of research but I did figure it out and have been running this set of scripts for years. I just need to install a bunch of CPAN modules to satisfy dependencies when I move the setup from one machine to another, but it's no big deal. I run this stuff on a Mac using the provided copy of perl and Apache that comes with OS X, so there's really nothing special.
After getting the service emulator and listings pipeline working, you need to hack your Tivo to point it at your own Apache site; that's thoroughly documented on the web. Look at dealdatabase.com.
I got my tivo for free from a co-worker because its drive had died; I bought a Tivo OS installation CD and installed to a new drive, hacked it, and did the work described above. Would I have paid for Tivo listings? Probably not; it's been a lot more fun to have figured out what I did anyway.
Am I pirating listings? Well, I'm not stealing from Tivo - at worst I'm violating a EULA for the tivo software. I don't care. It's my box and I'll do as I please with it.
Happy hacking.
They're more related to the people who buy Tivos, flip the bits in them to make them think they have lifetime service, then sell them on eBay as "NIB Lifetime Service TiVo!".
I read the internet for the articles.
You guys are absolutely nuts. It's HIS TIVO! He's not trying to get something for free from TIVO! He's trying to use an old TIVO for something besides a brick!
If an application is not open source, then by definition, it cannot be free software...
Sure it can.
What if someone has written a piece of software, dropped it online, and publicly stated that they give up copyright and release it into the public domain, but for some reason they did not release the source code? If it's in the public domain, that's about as "free" as software can become - not having the source may make it difficult to modify, but that hardly makes it non-free.
How about if someone coded an entire program by hand in binary? In this case there would be no "source code". Efficient, no. Possible, yes.
The same concepts would apply if any FSF license were applied to any closed-source application. As long as you're given the right to modify and distribute, that's free software by any definition, source code or no.
Someone makes a damn standard XML format, and the channels would just dump their data straight into it. It's like 20 fucking hours of programming, one time, to publish their damn schedule, and from them on it just works.
Eh? Guides need constant feeding and care--not just because of obvious things like schedule changes, new or canceled shows, and special events, but also for little things like episode descriptions and meta-data.
How, exactly, is this fire and forget?
Except that channels already have that stuff.
I mean, where do you think the guides are getting it from, magic land? They're not getting it from the shows, shows do not write their own episode descriptions, nor do shows know when they will be run.
No, the channel knows all that. The problem is that they have that stuff in some custom proprietary database somewhere, and send it to a few specific people in some crappyass format, who have each, individually, developed tools to handle each channel's format.
And then they have to figure out what channels each and every cable station is carrying, and paste that all together into some interface.
It's a hell of a lot of work, and it's entirely fucking stupid and pointless.
Channels who want people to watch them should publish, in some standard format, what is on them. That is in their best interests, but in fact they're too damn lazy.
Cable stations are not lazy, but certainly don't have time to do all that work, which is why they get the TV Guide channel instead.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I watch a lot of dvb that is not encrypted. It is up there you just have to know where and who to talk to. The cracker community is not the friendliest group to get information out of. Try FTA groups instead.